This blog was written by Adam Pitman, Senior Editor, ERP Today and SAPinsider. It was originally published here and is republished with permission.

AI is most reliable in enterprise operations when each step of the surrounding work connects to the next. Process orchestration provides that connection. It sets the order of tasks, moves data between systems, and sends each exception or AI output to the person responsible for the next step.

The financial close depends heavily on that kind of coordination. Work moves from ledger balances to reported results through a chain of dependent tasks, with a different owner at nearly every step. In SAP environments, that chain often runs through several systems, and each handoff is a point where context or ownership can drop away.

When those handoffs are orchestrated, AI can take on more of the close without losing track of who owns each step. Trintech’s position, set out in its white paper AI Moves Fast. Your Financial Close Has to Catch Up., is that AI should enter the close only after the work around it has been connected, standardized, and controlled.

Continuity Gaps in the SAP Financial Close

In many SAP environments, the close is not connected, standardized, or controlled.

Balances come from SAP, while supporting data arrives from subledgers, bank feeds, and other ERPs. Organizations moving from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA can end up running both for a period, and individual entities often keep their own close calendars and materiality thresholds. That variation lets small inconsistencies build up from one close to the next.

An unexplained difference in a reconciliation can recur every month with no one assigned to resolve it. The same account can be mapped one way in one entity and another way elsewhere. Experienced accountants can manage these issues, but the fix tends to happen in a spreadsheet or an email thread, outside any system that records it.

AI changes the consequences of those issues. A person working around an inconsistent mapping knows it is a local exception. An AI model sees the pattern in the data and applies it at scale, without the context to distinguish a sanctioned workaround from an error.

Trintech describes AI as amplifying whatever process it enters, for better or worse. That makes the state of the close the starting point for assessing AI readiness.

Trintech’s Approach to Orchestrating the SAP Financial Close

Trintech addresses the state of the close by orchestrating it in stages, beginning with the data that close tasks depend on. SAP customers can schedule and track those tasks with SAP Advanced Financial Closing, but the data behind them still has to move reliably between SAP and the other systems.

Trintech moves the data through connectors that SAP has certified for integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. These bidirectional connectors retrieve the data needed for reconciliation and close work and pass it between SAP and Trintech. Prebuilt integrations also spare teams from rebuilding the same data paths for each entity.

Trintech uses the same connections to support companies moving between SAP systems, saying its software keeps close processes standardized and running while organizations migrate from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA. The company’s software can add targeted controls for period-end work alongside SAP S/4HANA.

The next step in Trintech’s approach is standardization across entities. Each entity follows the same close calendar, account mappings, and reconciliation rules, regardless of which ERP it runs, while local differences required by statute or business model stay in place as approved exceptions. With one standard in place, controls and automation can be configured once and applied to every entity.

Bayer standardized its close with Trintech while preparing its move to SAP S/4HANA. Migration planning prompted a review of its finance tools, and the company chose Trintech to improve its reconciliation processes. Running its close processes in Trintech, outside SAP, let Bayer avoid extensive configuration changes inside the ERP. Trintech says the result was smoother integration and faster, more accurate reconciliations.

Once close processes follow a common standard, automation can take on the predictable work. Trintech’s platform automates reconciliation, transaction matching, journal entries, and intercompany accounting, among other close activities.

Control Inside an Orchestrated SAP Close

Connection gives the close reliable data, and standardization gives every entity the same rules to follow. Control is the next step in orchestrating the close, defining who reviews and approves the work as it moves from one task to the next. Trintech’s platform builds that control into the daily work of the close, so the record of who prepared, reviewed, and approved each item is captured as the close progresses.

That record is what makes AI manageable. Trintech’s AI platform includes embedded AI and agents built for finance and accounting workflows, and the company says they operate inside governed processes where inputs, decisions, and supporting evidence remain traceable and ready for audit. When an agent acts inside a controlled workflow, its output can be reviewed, questioned, and corrected before a local workaround spreads across entities. Trintech positions finance professionals as staying in control of that work.

Across an SAP landscape, the state of the close determines whether AI scales a disciplined process or a fragmented one. Trintech’s AI readiness assessment gives finance teams a way to judge how much of their close is connected, standardized, and controlled before AI enters it. The results show where AI can begin, and its use can expand as Trintech brings more of the close under a common standard and embedded control.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Treat integration as part of the close. The connections between SAP and other systems determine whether close work keeps its context between steps. Governing them as process infrastructure gives orchestration a reliable foundation across the landscape.

Define one close model across the landscape. Variation between entities multiplies the work orchestration and automation have to absorb, and a move from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA adds more. A single standard gives finance a process it can govern and scale.

Build automation on a settled process. Automation reproduces whatever process it is given, which makes connection and standardization the preconditions for scale. Finance teams that follow that order gain a close ready for AI to act on safely.