For audiences, Cirque du Soleil is about wonder: gravity-defying performers, breathtaking costumes, immersive music, and moments that feel almost impossible. But behind every performance is something just as remarkable: a highly complex global business operation.
It reinvented circus arts and became a world leader in live entertainment, performing for more than 365 million spectators in 90 countries. Today, the organization operates 38 shows in cities around the world, supported by over 4,000 touring artists and staff from more than 80 countries.
Each touring show functions like a moving profit center. A production may operate in Mexico City, then move to London, then Paris—bringing with it new companies, employees, assets, tax requirements, local regulations, merchandising operations, and artists from dozens of nationalities.
As Philippe Lalumière, vice president of Information Technology at Cirque du Soleil, explains, “People underestimate the complexity of running a circus.”
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Orchestrating an autonomous accounts payable process
This is especially true for the company’s accounts payable (AP) department. Every year, more than 70,000 invoices flow through Cirque du Soleil, non-stop, 24/7. Around 40% of vendor inquiries are standard requests for invoice status. But answering those questions was far from simple. AP specialists had to search across systems, review invoice histories, understand payment status, determine the cause of delays, and manually respond.
The work was repetitive, time-consuming, and emotionally draining. “From a morale point of view, receiving e-mails from suppliers, some of them a bit impolite because they’re asking, ‘When are we going to get paid?’—it’s not a fun job,” Lalumière says.
Finding the right problem to solve—putting AI into action
As an SAP customer for more than 25 years, Cirque du Soleil knows firsthand how to leverage SAP technology not only to run its operations, but also to reinvent them.
Cirque du Soleil, known as an early adopter and leader in digital transformation, was approached by SAP AppHaus with a question: how could SAP generative AI technology be used to improve your business processes?
The answer emerged through collaborative workshops involving SAP, Cirque du Soleil’s IT team, and business users across its departments. Accounts payable quickly rose to the top due to its lean structure, high volume of interactions, and clear automation potential. And the choice aligned with the broader business evolution—AP automation is one of the most widely adopted AI use cases across industries.
With a clear opportunity identified, Cirque du Soleil and SAP moved from ideation to execution, developing an AI-powered solution that automated AP processes and improved responsiveness.
AI enters stage right—from vision to reality
The workshops led to something more than an automation project—they led to Genato, a multilingual AI agent that now works alongside the AP team.
The polyglot agent scans the AP inbox, analyzes sentiment, identifies urgency, extracts invoice numbers from messages and attachments, connects to SAP data to retrieve invoice status, and drafts a response for human review. If it cannot find an invoice or resolve an inquiry, it flags the issue.
“Trust in the quality of the answers coming from the agent was an initial concern,” Lalumière says. “But, the team quickly realized that Genato’s information was spot on.”
Together, Genato and the AP team now serve Cirque du Soleil’s diverse global supplier network more efficiently.
Lalumière, however, is clear about one thing: “Yes, AI is a very powerful tool, but it’s not pixie dust. Sprinkling AI into processes is not going to solve everything. There is work involved.”
That work included designing appropriate connectors and integrating with the company’s SAP and AP systems using SAP Business AI Platform. This enterprise AI foundation can bring together capabilities and technologies (think SAP Business Data Cloud, Business Transformation Management solutions, and SAP Business AI), unifying AI, data, process context, and governance, so customers can build, integrate, scale, and run AI that delivers business impact while working to ensure the solution is sustainable and cost-efficient.
The impact was evident almost immediately. Generative AI began prioritizing urgent supplier requests, retrieving invoice information, drafting responses, and translating communications automatically, delivering measurable improvements across the AP organization:
- 97.92% improvement in handling priority requests
- 25% reduction in AP backlog
- 25% faster response times for non-urgent inquiries
- Improved vendor satisfaction and employee morale
The impact on employees cannot be overstated. By removing repetitive research and emotionally charged supplier follow-up from the team’s workload, Genato has become more than a tool. “We now include Genato as a virtual team member,” Lalumière explains, “It’s a paradigm shift.”
That adoption is the clearest sign of success. Lalumière recalls that after the prototype moved into production, one of the end users made her feelings clear: “No, no, no, you cannot take it away from me! There is no way I’m going to live without it now.” Today, she is one of the solution’s biggest ambassadors.
Collectively, the solution demonstrates how AI can be introduced into a focused business process, quickly earn user trust, and create a blueprint for broader enterprise innovation.
As Lalumière puts it, “You could say we’re an SAP shop.”
The next act of AI innovation
For Cirque du Soleil, accounts payable is only the beginning.
Lalumière believes that “AI is a huge and beautiful tool, but you still need human judgment to prioritize use cases and move forward.” He also sees AI evolving across three layers: personal productivity with solutions such as Joule; AI applied to business processes, such as Genato; and, eventually, AI embedded in the audience experience itself. “I think we’re at the dawn of a new era of circus arts,” he says.
His advice to others beginning their AI journey is simple: start small, involve users early, and be willing to experiment. “Try a small proof of concept and be ready to throw them away,” Lalumière says. “The AI train is moving, and you have to hop on.”
For a company built on reinvention, transforming accounts payable may seem far removed from the spotlight, but for Lalumière, the principle is the same: innovation happens when people are willing to rethink what’s possible. Today, that mindset is improving back-office operations. Tomorrow, it may help redefine the audience’s experience.
The full episode
Learn more about how Cirque du Soleil has transformed its AP process using AI to improve vendor relations, staff morale, and overall department productivity:
- Thought leadership podcast: Lalumière sat down with Thulium CEO Tamara McCleary to discuss the shifts in the business and in the world that inspired Cirque du Soleil’s AI vision and application, and how others can learn from their journey.
- Practitioners’ video: Lalumière shares technical insights and advice with Timo Elliott, VP and global innovation evangelist at SAP, about Cirque du Soleil’s AI applications, user experiences, and how the combination of both is essential to Cirque du Soleil’s automation journey.
Explore the on-demand series.
Sid Misra is CMO of SAP Business AI Platform Technology Foundation.
Top image courtesy of Cirque du Soleil.
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