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Case Study

AI-Powered Order Processing: Scaling Operations Across 600+ Branches

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Our client is a leading industrial distribution company serving a wide range of sectors across Canada and North America. As part of a Fortune 500 organization, they offer MRO and OEM solutions through an extensive branch network, supported by engineering services, repair, and supply chain optimization. With deep expertise in bearings, power transmission, automation, fluid power, and safety products, they serve industries such as manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and construction.

They faced increasing demand across more than 600 branches, with a surge in manual inbound email purchase order processing that strained their sales team's resources. Their legacy approach required teams to monitor inboxes, identify and extract data from unstructured documents, and enter details manually—resulting in delays, errors, and inconsistent customer experiences.

Results at a Glance

5

in annual value delivered

40

fewer orders handled manually

30

decrease in new customer onboarding time

The Challenge

With rising volumes and mounting pressure to deliver a better digital experience, our client partnered with us to modernize order intake using Intelligent Document Understanding (IDP), Intelligent eXtraction Platform (IXP) and Intelligent Automation (IA). Their main challenges included:

  • Inbound customer email orders came in a variety of formats, often with attachments and free-form content
  • Manual triage and entry created delays, high cost-to-serve, and potential for human error
  • Inability to scale with growing demand risked customer satisfaction and operational bottlenecks
  • Lack of traceability and structure made compliance and reporting difficult

Our Approach

We deployed an AI-powered inbound order processing system that streamlines and standardizes how orders are captured and processed—improving speed, accuracy, and scalability across their network.

"This is the most impactful solution deployed since we rolled out our ERP itself!"
- VP Operations

 

Key Capabilities

  1. Monitor: Watch branch inboxes for incoming customer orders and attachments

  2. Classify & Extract: Identify actionable documents and extract key data points

  3. Validate: Cross-check against master data and flag mismatches automatically

  4. Store: Save structured data to a centralized repository for easy access

  5. Interact: Enable inbox-style human review with traceability for edge cases

  6. Integrate: Seamlessly connect to the ERP with full email and attachment history

  7. Report: Real-time dashboards on volume, order value, and processing outcomes

The Result

This solution delivered more than just process improvements. It reshaped how our client's customer support team served their customers at scale. By removing manual friction points, improving data accuracy, and accelerating response times, their team was able to work faster, smarter, and with greater consistency across all 600+ locations.

  • $5M in annual value delivered
  • 30x decrease in new customer onboarding time
  • 40% fewer orders handled manually

As adoption expands, the solution is on track to process over 1 million orders annually.

“Cycle time to process an order was slashed—helping reduce cart abandonment and meet rising customer expectations.”
- Ryan Mac | Client Principal at Ashling

 

Industry Perspective

Recent benchmarking from APQC highlights how widespread and impactful sales order automation has become in the manufacturing and industrial space:

  • 90%+ of organizations have implemented or are actively implementing sales order automation
  • Cycle times dropped over 40% on average after automation was adopted
  • Organizations save an average of $323,557 per $1B in revenue annually through personnel cost reductions alone
  • Customer experience improvements ranked as the top realized benefit—even above cost savings and workforce efficiency
  • Rather than eliminating jobs, 31% of companies reallocated staff to higher-value, customer-facing roles post-automation

With rising expectations for speed, accuracy, and personalization in B2B buying experiences, intelligent order processing has become a cornerstone of operational competitiveness.

Technology Used

Partners-08-Microsoft-V1

 

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