Industries · Distribution & wholesale
AI agents for distributors: faster orders, invoices and answers
Distributors win on speed and service, but thin margins leave little room for manual work. Our agents handle the order questions, invoice volume and support load around your ERP, with your team approving every change.
The problem
High volume, thin margins, constant questions.
Distribution businesses feel the cost of manual work more than most, because every order touches several people.
Endless order questions
Customers and sales reps ask about stock, prices, delivery dates and backorders all day, by email, phone and chat. Each answer means opening the ERP and looking it up.
Heavy AP volume
Hundreds of suppliers, frequent price changes and freight charges make supplier invoice matching a full-time job for several people, and errors cost margin.
Support at scale
Order-status, returns and invoice-copy requests pile up after every weekend. Urgent issues get lost among routine questions, and response times slip.
The agents
Agents that solve it, on top of your ERP.
Configured with your price lists, customer tiers, warehouses and routing rules.
ERP Knowledge Agent
Gives sales and service teams instant answers on stock, pricing, open orders and deliveries, from live ERP data.
Explore the agent →Support Triage Agent
Sorts and prioritizes every incoming request, adds the order details from the ERP and drafts the reply.
Explore the agent →Invoice Processing Agent
Matches high volumes of supplier invoices to POs and receipts, catching price and quantity differences.
Explore the agent →Workflow example
A Monday-morning support inbox, sorted before 9am.
Illustrative example, based on a typical workflow. Not a client result.
- 300 new emailsOrder status, returns, invoice copies, complaints.
- AgentClassifies, prioritizes, adds ERP order data, drafts replies.
- Team reviewStaff check drafts and handle flagged complaints first.
- Helpdesk updatedTickets assigned and answered.
A wholesaler's shared inbox fills up over the weekend. Before the team logs in, the Support Triage Agent has read every message, recognized 140 order-status questions and attached the tracking details for each, identified 40 requests for invoice copies, and flagged 12 complaints about damaged deliveries as high priority.
Each ticket is in the right queue with a draft reply. The team starts with the complaints, then works through the routine answers, approving drafts instead of writing them.
During the day, a sales rep asks the ERP Knowledge Agent, "Can I promise 400 units of item 7720 to this customer by Thursday?" The agent checks stock across warehouses, open purchase orders and allocations, and answers with what can ship and when.
Pilot plan
How a support-triage pilot runs at a distributor.
A fixed-scope, fixed-price pilot on your real data, live in 4–6 weeks.
Weeks 1–2: connect
Access to the support inbox or helpdesk, plus read-only ERP access to orders, shipments and invoices. We pull a sample of recent tickets to learn your categories.
Week 3: configure
Categories, priority rules, customer tiers and routing are set up from how your team works today, and the knowledge base answers are reviewed.
Weeks 4–5: shadow run
The agent classifies and drafts replies for every new ticket while your team works as normal. We compare its routing with your team's decisions every day.
Week 6: go live
The agent routes tickets and drafts replies in your helpdesk, with your team approving every reply. We hand over the measures, the logs and the code.
What we need from you: a named support lead, access to the inbox or helpdesk, read-only ERP access for order data, and a few hours to agree categories and routing rules.
Results
What we will measure.
We baseline these numbers in discovery and report them during the pilot, on your own data.
Where distributors usually start
Distributors with a busy support inbox often start with the Support Triage Agent, because the effect on response times shows within weeks. Those with heavy AP volume start with invoice processing instead. Either way, the ERP connection built for the first agent is reused for the next.
A useful rule of thumb: if more than a third of your support tickets are about order status, deliveries or invoice copies, triage plus ERP lookups will free up the most time. If your AP team spends more than a day a week chasing price and quantity differences with suppliers, start with invoice matching. If sales reps keep ringing the warehouse to check stock, start with the ERP Knowledge Agent. The scorecard below weighs these for you.
Read about connecting AI without migration, our security approach, and how UAE distributors are preparing for e-invoicing in 2027.
Next step
Not sure which workflow to start with?
The ERP AI Readiness Scorecard takes three minutes and recommends the three agents that fit your answers.
FAQ
Common questions.
Can the agent take orders from customers?
It can read orders that arrive by email, PDF or chat and prepare a sales order for approval. Orders are created in the ERP only after a person approves them.
Does it work with our e-commerce or B2B portal?
Yes, if the portal has an API or database access. The agent can combine portal and ERP data in its answers.
Can it handle price lists and customer-specific pricing?
Yes. The ERP Knowledge Agent reads prices from the ERP so answers reflect each customer's agreed terms.
We have several warehouses. Is that a problem?
No. Answers can be given per warehouse or in total, following how your ERP stores stock.
What does a pilot cost?
Every pilot is fixed scope and fixed price. See engagements and pricing.
Works with leading ERPs, CRMs and helpdesks — cloud, hybrid or on-premise.
ERPCRMHelpdeskEmail inboxDocument storageDatabases & data warehousesCloud, hybrid or on-premiseSee an AI agent running on your ERP data in 4–6 weeks.
Fixed scope · fixed price. Human approval on every write. We reply within 1 US business day.