- Complexity: Standard
- Deployment: Platform-native
The problem
Distributors take orders any way customers send them: email, text messages, photos, handwritten notes and phone calls. Someone has to translate each one into the ERP, decode each customer's shorthand for products and units, and fix the errors. That re-keying consumes hours every day.
- Orders arrive across fragmented channels in unstructured form
- Customer shorthand for products and units has to be interpreted by memory
- Manual re-keying introduces errors that surface at delivery
- Sales staff spend their time on data entry instead of customers
The solution
An order intake workflow reads each incoming order, resolves what the customer meant against their order history and the catalog, and produces a structured order ready for the ERP.
- Captures orders from email, text messages, images, handwritten notes and voice calls
- Parses the items, quantities and delivery details from each message
- Resolves ambiguous products and units by matching against the customer's prior orders and the catalog
- Builds a structured order and sends it to the ERP
- Routes any order below the confidence threshold to a team member for review
Where people stay in control
- A team member reviews any order below the confidence threshold before it reaches the ERP
- Automation thresholds are configurable, so the business decides how much runs unattended
- Corrections from staff feed back into how future orders are interpreted
Systems and data
The workflow reads inbound email, text, image and voice channels, uses each customer's order history and the product catalog for context, and writes structured orders to the ERP. Customers keep ordering the way they always have.
- ERP
Results
- Manual order entry reduced by 50 percent in the documented deployment
- Sales team productivity doubled without additional headcount
- Error rates held at 1 to 5 percent with human review for edge cases
Why platform-native
Order intake is a defined workflow with a clear confidence threshold and a single system of record. It runs well platform-native, directly on the model platform with Altivus providing monitoring and governance.
Frequently asked questions
Can AI read orders sent by text message or photo?
Yes. The workflow captures orders from email, text messages, photos, handwritten notes and calls, and turns each into a structured order.
How does it handle a customer's shorthand for products?
It matches the shorthand against that customer's order history and the catalog. When it is not confident, the order goes to a team member.
Do customers need to change how they order?
No. Customers keep ordering by phone, email or text, and the workflow handles the translation.