{"id":23944,"date":"2026-06-04T08:45:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T15:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=23944"},"modified":"2026-06-09T13:11:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T20:11:28","slug":"streamlining-finance-cash-collection-at-microsoft-with-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/streamlining-finance-cash-collection-at-microsoft-with-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Streamlining finance cash collection at Microsoft with AI"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When it comes to running a business, getting paid on time is critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Global Collection team in the Microsoft Treasury division makes sure payments are seamlessly executed in our fast-moving global enterprise environment. However, our case managers were often losing valuable time figuring out things like who the right contact was for a given customer, which issues were likely to be challenged by a customer, and where an exception should be routed next. This information was spread across systems or buried in handoffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To solve these challenges, our team built a human-led, AI agent-assisted support system to reduce preparation time and streamline their processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBuilding the AI assistance wasn\u2019t the hard part,\u201d says Kathy Brustad, a director in the Global Treasury and Financial Services division at Microsoft. \u201cThe hard part was reimagining the collection experience with AI front and center, and bringing the underlying infrastructure up to speed to get it there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post, we explain how we did it so you can learn from our experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe have over 1,000 collectors around the world who perform collections for Microsoft. They had multiple systems they had to go to in order to find out things like the totality of the customer’s invoice and what conversations a different team had with the customer. The information was fragmented.\u201d<\/p>\nKathy Brustad, director, Global Treasury and Financial Services<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Stitching together information across systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our AI agent is focused on helping our case managers prioritize high-value work by:<\/p>\n\n\n\n