Authority-aware routing encodes an organisation's delegation of authority — who may approve what, up to which value, under which conditions — and applies it at the moment a decision is being made. It routes requests to the person with standing to decide and blocks those where the signer has no authority.

The failure this prevents

Unauthorised approvals are overwhelmingly a speed problem, not a fraud problem. A deal needs signing before quarter end. The account lead knows the discount is above their ceiling but the approver is unreachable, so they sign anyway. The exposure only appears later during audit, dispute, or diligence.

What the system needs to know

Five dimensions: subject (discount, contractual commitment, headcount, data processing, capex), threshold (value or scope at which authority changes hands), holder (the role — never the individual), conditions (standard terms only; requires a second approver; requires legal review), and delegation (who holds it when the primary is absent).

Where it plugs in

Most valuable at the point of drafting, not signature. Three outcomes: Clear (person has authority — nothing happens), Route (commitment exceeds authority — handoff prepared), or Hold (precondition unmet — reason stated with the policy clause it comes from).

The build is mostly not technical

Most organisations discover their delegation matrix is incomplete or internally inconsistent. Encoding it forces those gaps into the open. Many clients get most of the value before a single line of automation ships.