Solution · By agent
Requesting quotes, comparing them and placing the purchase order eats Purchasing’s whole week. The agent that does that work doesn’t take vacation days —we leave it running on your ERP.
A good buyer turns the internal request into a formal purchase request, asks the right suppliers for a quote, compares price and lead time, places the purchase order and tracks it through to delivery. The problem is that work is repetitive, done by hand in spreadsheets and email, and every hour spent there is an hour not spent negotiating a better price. We ship that work as an agent on your ERP: it turns the request into a purchase order request, asks for and compares quotes, generates the order and tracks it through to receiving, with a person approving the spend before it goes out. We don’t sell you a request form; we leave the purchasing work done.
The problem
Buying well takes comparing and negotiating. Buying the way it’s done today is retyping the same request three times.
- The internal request arrives by email or Slack, someone copies it by hand into a spreadsheet or the ERP, and that step alone eats half an hour per order.
- Asking three suppliers for a quote means writing three near-identical emails, waiting for replies, and copying the numbers into a comparison sheet by hand.
- The purchase order comes out right when someone remembers every field —product, quantity, price, terms; when they don’t, the error surfaces at receiving.
- Nobody actively tracks the order until production stops because the material hasn’t shown up and it’s too late to chase it in time.
Cost of staying the same
It shows up on no invoice: it shows up as Purchasing retyping the same thing three times instead of negotiating a better price or lead time, as the badly built order that surfaces at receiving, and as the stockout that stops production because nobody chased it in time. The real cost of buying badly isn’t the price paid; it’s the time Purchasing doesn’t spend buying well because it’s spent comparing quotes in a spreadsheet.
The solution
A purchasing agent shipped on your ERP that requests, compares, builds the order and tracks it, with a person approving the spend
- 1We set your approved suppliers, the approval thresholds by amount and the comparison criteria with you: what matters most —price, lead time or payment terms.
- 2The agent turns every internal request into a formal purchase order request, works out which approved suppliers to ask by category, and sends the request.
- 3When replies come in, it compares them in a clear table —price, lead time, terms— and preps the purchase order with the best-fit supplier, ready for your approval if the amount requires it.
- 4After approval, it generates the order in your ERP, tracks the committed lead time, and flags a delivery at risk before it slips, not after.
What changes
What you stop losing
Purchasing stops retyping the same request three times: the request converts, gets sent and gets compared on its own, and the team spends its time negotiating, not copy-pasting.
Mechanism
The purchase order comes out complete the first time —product, quantity, price, terms— because the agent builds it against the approved quote’s data, not by hand under pressure.
Mechanism
Tracking stops being reactive: the agent flags a committed lead time at risk before it stops production, not once it already has.
Mechanism
What we measure: average time from request to order placed, % of requests compared against at least two suppliers, receiving issues caused by a badly built order, and deliveries flagged ahead of the deadline versus after.
What we measure
Spec sheet
- Work it removes
- converting internal requests into purchase orders by hand, writing and comparing supplier quotes over email, and building the purchase order field by field
- Typical setup
- 2–4 weeks
- Input
- the internal purchase request, your list of approved suppliers by category and the approval threshold by amount
- Output
- the purchase order generated in your ERP with the chosen supplier, the quote comparison logged and delivery tracked against the committed date
- Works with
- OdooSAPSageHoldedMicrosoft DynamicsEmail (Gmail/Outlook)Slack
- Can connect to
- Your ERP and its Purchasing moduleThe channel where requests come in (email, Slack, a form)Your list of approved suppliers and their termsYour team’s approval thresholds
- What we measure
- average time from request to order placed% of requests compared against at least two suppliersreceiving issues caused by a badly built orderdeliveries flagged ahead of the deadline versus after
- Good fit for
- purchasing teams with recurring request volume and approved suppliers who want to stop retyping and spend the time negotiating instead
- Not a fit for
- one-off, very low-volume purchases, or categories where every supplier needs a case-by-case negotiation that can’t be systematized
Frequently asked questions
A form captures the request; your ERP stores the order once someone types it in. What happens in between —asking the right suppliers for a quote, comparing price and lead time, deciding who to go with, and filling the order with that data— is still manual work. That’s exactly what the agent does: it doesn’t replace your ERP or your form, it does the judgment work between the two. The order still gets stored where it already lives.
Not by default. The agent preps the comparison and proposes the order, and a person approves before it goes out —especially above the amount threshold we set with you. We start with low thresholds in proposal mode and only widen autonomy once the track record backs it. Everything is logged in your ERP: what was requested, from whom, what they replied and why that option was chosen.
Yes, because the criteria are defined per category, not generically. We set with you which approved suppliers apply to each category and what matters most when comparing —lead time for raw materials, payment terms for services. We start with the category eating the most hours and expand as it proves out, not all at once.
Want it running in your business?
You’ve pinned the problem. We ship the fix and leave it measured.