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Industries · Manufacturing and distribution

Orders in, questions answered, less re-keying.

Manufacturers and distributors move physical goods, but a lot of the day is spent moving information: purchase orders, quotes, ETAs and spec sheets. That's where automation pays.

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Where the hours go

Information work around physical work.

These are the tasks we most often hear about from operations and customer service teams.

  • Orders

    POs arrive by email

    Purchase orders in PDFs and email bodies get typed into the ERP line by line.

  • Sales

    Quotes take too long

    Building a quote means digging through price lists, past quotes and spec sheets.

  • Service

    "Where's my order?"

    Customer service answers the same status questions by checking three systems.

  • Purchasing

    Chasing suppliers

    Buyers email suppliers for confirmations and ETAs, then update the ERP by hand.

  • Knowledge

    Specs and SOPs

    Answers live in binders, shared drives and a few people's heads.

  • Reporting

    Spreadsheet reporting

    Weekly reports stitched together from ERP exports and manual adjustments.

Keep the ERP as the source of truth

Information flows we'd look at.

  • Customer PO emailERP sales orderLine items, quantities and ship-to pulled out and staged for review.
  • Price list + historyQuote draftA first draft quote for sales to check and send.
  • ERP order statusCustomer emailAutomatic updates when orders ship or dates change.
  • Supplier repliesPurchase ordersConfirmations and ETAs matched to open POs for a buyer to confirm.

Where we'd start

Practical first projects.

Each one respects the ERP as the system of record.

  • Workflow

    Order entry from email

    What we'd try

    Purchase orders read from email and PDFs, matched to customers and items, and staged in the ERP.

    Where a person stays in

    Customer service approves each order before it's released.

  • Workflow

    Quote drafting

    What we'd try

    First-draft quotes built from price lists, past quotes and product data.

    Where a person stays in

    Sales owns pricing decisions and sends the quote.

  • Workflow

    Order status updates

    What we'd try

    Customers receive updates at key points, reducing inbound status calls.

    Where a person stays in

    Exceptions and delays are flagged to a person.

  • Workflow

    Spec and SOP assistant

    What we'd try

    An internal assistant that finds answers in spec sheets and procedures and links to the controlled document.

    Where a person stays in

    Safety-critical steps always point to the official document.

Handle with care

Accuracy is the whole job.

General information, not legal advice. Rules vary by state and change over time; review your setup with qualified counsel.

  • ERP stays in charge

    Automations stage data for review rather than writing directly into live orders until they've proven reliable.

  • Prices and commitments

    AI can draft quotes and replies, but people approve prices, lead times and anything contractual.

  • Confidential and controlled data

    Customer drawings and specs are often confidential. If you handle export-controlled technical data, tools and vendors must be vetted for it.

  • Safety information

    Assistants should link to controlled SOPs and safety documents rather than paraphrasing them.

Systems we commonly see

Where the data lives.

  • ERP systems
  • Warehouse management
  • EDI
  • Shipping and freight portals
  • CRM
  • Shared drives and spec libraries
  • Spreadsheets

We work inside the software you already run wherever we can.

Insights

Further reading.

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