A 34-vendor backlog, replaced by eight working agents.
A multinational spirits group operating in 150 countries swapped a sprawling point-solution stack for a handful of governed agents its own people run.
After a cyberattack pushed a mountain of work back into inboxes, the group needed to move fast, without adding yet another vendor it could not maintain. We embedded as their AI CTO, audited the whole business, and shipped a small set of agents on the systems they already run.
The challenge
- Thirty-four overlapping tools, each solving a sliver of the problem and none of them talking to each other.
- Manual invoice entry and reporting were eating entire days across finance and operations.
- Leadership had been burned before by software the team could not own or maintain.
What we built
- A four-week audit mapped where AI would actually create leverage, and where it would not.
- We built eight production agents on their existing ERP and data stack, behind one portal and a governed control layer.
- Department champions were trained to extend and own the agents, so the capability stayed in-house.
The outcome
- The 34-vendor backlog collapsed into eight agents and one in-house platform.
- Invoice entry that took days now runs automatically, with humans supervising exceptions only.
- First measurable value landed inside 4 to 8 weeks, and stayed after we left.
In numbers
- 90% less manual invoice entry
- 4-8 wks to first value
- 8 AI agents shipped
They did not sell us software. They left us a capability our own people run.
Group operations lead