Automating Order Processing in Manufacturing: An AI-Powered Digital Sales Assistant on SAP BTP

LeverX was responsible for the entire use case delivery, starting from architecture design, through implementation, and ultimately the rollout of an automated digital sales assistant. Implementing this solution reduced manual sales order processing time by 60% for a major manufacturing company, eliminating inefficiencies caused by multiple data formats.

Client

Our client is a leading American manufacturing conglomerate with a diverse portfolio spanning automotive components, industrial machinery, and specialized consumer goods. Operating across dozens of facilities and distribution centers throughout the U.S. Midwest and Sun Belt, they handle a high volume of orders daily. Their business model, which relies on a complex supply chain and numerous sales channels — ranging from direct B2B contracts to dealer networks and E-commerce platforms — resulted in a chaotic and inconsistent data flow. This severely impacted their operational efficiency, leading to significant bottlenecks in customer order processing that ultimately affected customer satisfaction.

Challenge

The core challenge for our client's customer support team was the excessive manual effort required to process incoming sales orders and invoices. These issues stemmed from several key areas, exacerbated by the client's diverse portfolio and extensive operations:

• Fragmented inbound data streams from diverse channels:
  Orders and invoices arrived from dozens of sources, including complex B2B contracts, varied dealer networks, and growing E-commerce platforms. This resulted in numerous inconsistent formats, ranging from standard emails and scanned PDFs to disparate versions of EDI messages. This fragmentation made it impossible to achieve a unified view of customer demand across their automotive components, industrial machinery, and consumer goods divisions.
• Manual data extraction from unique document structures:
  Each inbound format possessed a unique and unpredictable structure. This forced customer support staff to dedicate hours to manually searching for, identifying, and painstakingly re-entering critical order data (e.g. part numbers, quantities, delivery dates, complex billing details, and specific packaging requirements) into the central corporate ERP system. This process was a significant bottleneck in their high-volume, multi-divisional operations.
• High risk of costly errors and supply chain disruptions:
  This slow, repetitive manual data entry process was highly prone to costly errors. These inaccuracies directly led to downstream issues, including shipping delays for time-sensitive automotive parts, incorrect invoicing for industrial machinery, and disputes across various product lines, ultimately harming profitability and customer trust.
• Operational strain and deteriorating customer experience:
  The significant administrative burden created constant pressure within the customer support teams spread across their U.S. Midwest and Sun Belt operations. Valuable resources were diverted from proactive customer engagement to tedious data management, negatively impacting their ability to provide the responsiveness and accuracy expected by their diverse customer base. This was particularly critical as fast customer service was nominated as one of the key objectives of the company by customer leadership.

Solution

We engineered a comprehensive, integrated solution that transformed the client's disparate data landscape into a truly unified enterprise ecosystem. Our approach centered on leveraging the power of SAP Business Technology Platform to connect the client's core SAP S/4HANA On-Premise system with all existing third-party services and inbound data channels.

To directly address the manual data handling and inconsistent formats, we implemented intelligent process automation. Key business workflows were automated using SAP Build Process Automation, allowing for the seamless ingestion, parsing, routing, approvals, and notifications of data from all sources–emails, PDFs, EDI, and web portals–directly into S/4HANA.

For a superior user experience and enhanced team efficiency, we delivered a modern, intuitive user interface. This included custom web applications and mobile apps created with SAP Build Apps, providing the customer support team with streamlined tools for managing orders, regardless of their original format.

The cornerstone of this transformation was the integration of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI). By leveraging SAP AI Core and GenAI Hub, we connected the solution with custom AI models, including integrations with various Large Language Models (LLMs). These intelligent capabilities automate specific, complex tasks:

• Automated document parsing:
  Extracting critical data points (part numbers, quantities, delivery dates) from unstructured documents like emails and diverse PDF layouts.
• Intelligent data entry:
  Automatically populating fields in S/4HANA, minimizing manual re-keying and validating field values.
• Real-time data reconciliation:
  Cross-referencing information from different sources to ensure accuracy and resolve inconsistencies before they cause downstream issues.

This strategic fusion of process automation, intuitive user interfaces, and advanced AI empowered the client to move beyond reactive manual processing to a proactive, automated, and error-resistant order management system.

Technology Stack

The solution was built on a robust, scalable, and integrated technology stack, primarily leveraging the SAP ecosystem:

• Core platform & integration: SAP BTP
  The solution is built using the side-by-side extension model. It's designed to receive input from various systems and act as a bridge to SAP S/4HANA. SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) served as the foundational cloud platform, enabling seamless integration between SAP S/4HANA On-Premise and various third-party systems.
• Process automation: SAP Build Process Automation
  SAP Build Process Automation for orchestrating and automating key business workflows, including data ingestion and routing.
• Application development: SAP Build Apps
  SAP Build Apps was used to create the custom web and mobile applications, ensuring a modern and intuitive user experience.
• AI & machine learning: SAP AI Core, GenAI Hub (for LLM integration)
  SAP AI Core provided the runtime and lifecycle management for AI models, while GenAI Hub (part of AI Core) facilitated custom integrations with various Large Language Models (LLMs) for advanced natural language processing and data extraction.
• Database: SAP HANA Cloud
  SAP HANA Cloud served as the high-performance, in-memory database for efficient data processing and storage within the SAP BTP environment.
• Core ERP system: SAP S/4HANA On-Premise
  The solution seamlessly integrated with the client's existing SAP S/4HANA On-Premise for core business operations via available OData APIs and standard and custom BAPIs where needed.

Results

The implementation of the automated digital sales assistant brought significant and measurable benefits to the client:

• 60% reduction in manual sales order processing time: Achieved through the full automation of email parsing, order entry, and invoice data extraction.
• Reduced data entry errors: Process automation minimized human error.
• Accelerated order fulfillment: Reduced order processing time led to faster shipments, increased operational efficiency, and overall customer satisfaction with fast service.