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  • 73% Reduction in monthly close processing time

How a luxury apparel manufacturer saved days of monthly work by automating material ledger monthly close.

Transforming a 5-day manual process into 4 hours with intelligent reconciliation automation

160
EFFORT HOURS
PER PERIOD

Total manual effort eliminated per period

1920
EFFORT HOURS SAVED ANNUALLY

Cumulative effort hours saved annually

71
EU PLANTS
AUTOMATED

Across 20 company codes

95%+
ACCURACY
ACHIEVED

Post-automation

The Challenge

A Month-End Process Spread Across Five Days and Dozens of Systems

The company is one of the world’s foremost luxury apparel brands, operating a sophisticated European distribution and retail network spanning more than 65 plants across 20 countries — from flagship wholesale operations in France and Germany to retail and concession stores throughout Scandinavia, the Iberian Peninsula, and Eastern Europe.

Every month, the finance team faced a demanding, multi-day ordeal: manually executing the Material Ledger Closing (MLC) process across all EU company codes within SAP ECC. The process required skilled SAP finance staff to log in and navigate dozens of transaction codes – CKMF, CKMG, SE16N, CKMLCP, and MMRV – running status checks, price determinations, six sequential costing sub-processes, and period locks, all while monitoring for errors across every plant.

The manual workflow unfolded over Thursday night, Sunday morning, and Monday, consuming up to 8–10 hours of high-skill finance staff time monthly. A single missed step or status code anomaly could require escalation, a ServiceNow P2 incident, and a full restart from the point of failure.

Our cost accounting team spent an entire weekend managing SAP transaction codes instead of analysing what the numbers were telling us. It was not a sustainable model as we expanded across Europe.
– Director, Finance Operations, EU

The Solution

An Intelligent RPA Bot That Runs the Entire Close Lifecycle

The team deployed a robotic process automation bot using UiPath to replicate and enhance the complete workflow for closing the material ledger—from prerequisite validation on Thursday night through final period-lock confirmation on Monday morning.

The robot autonomously handles every SAP interaction, including logging into the SAP portal, executing transaction codes, validating output statuses, managing the six-step costing run with parallel processing, closing monthly periods via MMRV, and raising P2 ServiceNow incidents with structured subject lines whenever an exception is detected. After a human resolves the exception, the robot resumes from the correct step.

Why It Mattered

SSC Inefficiency Was Blocking GBS Evolution

The organization’s long-term goal was to evolve its SSC into a Global Business Services (GBS) model — a centralized, standardized, and scalable operational engine.
But without automation:

  • Integration synergies ($38M projected over 3 years) were at risk
  • Operational complexity increased with every new acquisition
  • Client-facing teams absorbed backend inefficiencies
  • Attrition risk increased across key accounts
We had acquired the right agencies, but we were running them like 70 separate companies. The back office was a spreadsheet held together with goodwill and overtime.
– Chief Technology Officer

Technologies Deployed

UiPath
Core automation engine executing all SAP bot interactions and orchestrating the end- to-end MLC workflow
SAP ECC
Primary ERP system – transaction codes CRMF, CKMIQ, CKMLCP, MMRV, SE16N, SM37 automated end-to-end
ServiceNow ITSM
Attended and unattended robot fleet for cross-system data entry, process routing, and field population in MediaOcean Prisma and Maconomy ERP
Microsoft SharePoint
Pre-requisite check source for costing data validation and cross-team status coordination
SAP SM37 Job Monitor
Batch job monitoring for SAPRCM23 costing release jobs across all EMEA plants prior to MLC execution
Email Trigger Automation
Structured subject-line protocol enabling machine-readable human-bot handoffs and step-specific restarts

Implementation

The bot was configured via structured pre-configuration tables listing all EU plants and company codes. Exception workflows used structured email subject lines to enable precise human-bot handoffs without requiring full restarts. Deployment was phased across Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday execution windows, with the highest scheduling priority assigned to the MLC.

Key Workflows Automated

Thursday night prerequisite checks
Period lock validation (MARV), previous/current period status checks (CKMLPP via SE16N), and price determination verification (CKMLO) with P2 incident creation on failure.
Sunday costing release checks
SM37 batch job monitoring for SAPRCM23 completion across all EMEA plants and SE16N-KEKO costing version completeness validation before MLC execution.
ServiceNow ITSM
Selection → Sequence Determination → Single-Level Price Determination → Multilevel Price Determination → Revaluation of Consumption → Post Closing—each runs in the background with parallel processing (20 parallel processes, LRD server group).
Post-MLC period closure via MMRV for all EU company codes, disallowing backposting and locking prior periods across all entities.
Monday morning post-process lock validation and automated success/exception notifications to the EU Cost Accounting distribution list.

Automated Process Timeline

Implementation ran over 10 weeks in three phases: discovery and process mapping (weeks 1–4), bot development and integration build (weeks 5–16), and staged rollout with parallel processing validation (weeks 17–22). Change management included role-specific training for 340 operations and finance staff across 14 pilot agencies before network-wide deployment.

The Results

From a Weekend-Consuming Burden to a Hands-Free Close

92%

Reduction in processing time - from 8-10 active hours to under 1 hour of human oversight per month

5 → 0

Manual working days eliminated from the monthly close calendar for the EU cost accounting team

65+

EU plants processed consistently in every monthly cycle, with zero plant omissions or sequencing errors

6

Sequential costing steps executed autonomously with real-time error monitoring and auto-escalation via ServiceNow

100%

Audit trail completeness - every step logged, every exception ticketed, every notification timestamped automatically

10%

Annual volume growth absorbed without adding headcount - the automation scales with new plants and company codes via config tables

Operational transformation
The EU cost accounting team no longer spends their weekend in SAP. The robot executes on Thursday night, Sunday morning, and Monday — sending a success confirmation email upon completion and a structured P2 incident if anything requires human review.
Exception handling with precision
When errors occur, the robot raises a P2 ticket, notifies the team with the exact failed step, and resumes from the correct point in the sequence once a resolution reply is received — no full restarts, no lost work.
Scalability by design
All EU plants and company codes are driven by a configuration table. Adding a new entity or plant to the close process requires a table update – not a code change – meaning the automation grows with the business.
Finance team refocused
Senior SAP finance staff, previously occupied with mechanical transaction execution, can now focus on variance analysis, cost accounting insights, and strategic financial planning – work that demands their expertise.

Key Takeaways

Multi-entity European close processes are prime candidates for RPA

When the same sequence of SAP transactions must execute across 65+ plants monthly, with consistent rules and predictable branching logic, RPA delivers near-total time elimination — not just efficiency gains.

Structured exception handoff unlocks resilient, restartable automation

By designing email subject lines as machine-readable resume signals, the team created a human-bot handoff protocol that avoids full-process restarts — a critical pattern for long-running, multi-step financial processes.

Configuration-table architecture is the key to automation that scales

Storing plant lists, company codes, and execution parameters in editable config tables — rather than hard-coding them — means the automation absorbs 10% annual volume growth without developer intervention or redeployment.

Ready to Transform Your
Close?

Let’s assess your finance automation opportunity. Whether you’re running SAP, Oracle, or a hybrid ERP environment across multiple entities, our team will map your month-end close workflow and identify where intelligent automation delivers the fastest ROI.
View more case studies here
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2026 © All rights reserved by Auxiliobits, Inc.
What You Can Expect

Start with AP. Scale automation across reconciliation, reporting, and broader finance operations.

Most finance teams don’t need another tool. They need a partner who can fix what’s already broken — quickly and effectively. In a focused session, we will:
  • Review your current AP workflow end-to-end
  • Identify your highest-cost bottlenecks and inefficiencies
  • Highlight the automation opportunities with fastest ROI
  • Estimate potential cost and effort savings in your context
  • Outline a practical 6–8 week implementation roadmap
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