In many companies, purchase orders still arrive by email and are entered by hand.
EDI, OCR or B2B websites? Too rigid, too expensive or too complicated.
Discover a new approach: simpler, smarter and genuinely adopted by customers.
In many B2B companies, customer orders still arrive by email, as an attachment (PDF) or directly in the body of the message.
And what happens next?
It falls to the sales administrator or the inside sales rep to open each email, extract the information, and then enter it manually into the ERP.
Traditional solutions have shown their limits
Several solutions have been devised to automate purchase order entry, but they run into many roadblocks.
- EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)
EDI provides a direct connection between the customer’s ERP and the supplier’s ERP, for structured data exchange.
But this solution comes at a cost:
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Long, expensive and complex to set up
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Poorly suited to exceptions and to databases that change regularly
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High maintenance costs
- Traditional OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
OCR reads purchase orders in PDF form and extracts their data.
But here again, reality holds back adoption:
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Requires specific configuration for each template (and therefore each customer): unthinkable if you have a diverse customer portfolio
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Stops working as soon as the layout changes
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Requires a detailed review by the sales administrator before validation
- The B2B website
Some suppliers set up a website so that their B2B customers can place orders there directly.
In theory, the time savings are obvious and immediate.
In practice:
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Low adoption on the B2B buyer’s side, who prefers their “historical” channel: email
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Means double entry for the buyer, who has to record the order in their own internal management software, then again on their supplier’s B2B website
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Poor user experience: often incomplete product database, missing prices, …
A new approach with Eledone
At Eledone, we believe it is time to keep things simple and effective, as highlighted in this article on the benefits of purchase order automation: https://siecledigital.fr/2024/02/28/comment-ia-revolutionner-solutions-erp/
Our model is built on artificial intelligence specialized in reading purchase orders. It captures data directly from emails (PDF or text) regardless of their format, matches it against your databases, and integrates it automatically into your ERP.
No action required on the customer’s side. No document-specific configuration. And above all, zero friction for your teams.
Our solution is:
- Compatible with 100% of your customers
- Easy to deploy, with no heavy technical project
- Resilient to exceptions, multiple formats or atypical data
Automation shouldn’t be rigid, it should be invisible
At Eledone, we are convinced that usability is central to software adoption.
Order automation must fit into your existing workflows, without imposing changes on your teams or your customers.
You receive a purchase order by email?
Your ERP updates automatically.
Want to see how it works? We’ll show you everything in just a few minutes.
Book a demo here