When customer orders arrive as PDFs or email attachments, your team already has the information it needs. Getting that information checked and entered into the ERP can still take a lot of work.
For the people handling those orders, every new document means another round of looking up customers, matching part numbers and entering quantities. Similar work happens in receiving, where packing slips need to be checked against purchase orders before the delivery can be recorded.
The latest Time to Build episode shows how applications built with Rover AI can help with these tasks, along with the more complex decisions involved in production scheduling. Watch the video to see three working examples and consider where they could help your operation.
Spend less time retyping customer orders
Your customer’s purchase order may use different item descriptions or part numbers from those in your ERP. Before you can enter the sales order, someone has to work out which records match and check that the details are right.
The sales order entry app shown in the video reads the incoming PO and matches the customer, ship-to address, contacts and parts against ERP records. That gives your team an order to review without having to copy every line from the original document. Once the details have been checked, they can create the sales order and prepare the customer’s confirmation.
You can see how this changes the work for customer service. Staff still handle questions and exceptions, but less of their day needs to be spent transferring information from one place to another. The application takes on the repetitive entry work so they can concentrate on getting the order right and helping the customer.
Make receiving paperwork easier to process
When a delivery arrives, recording it can involve several people and systems. A packing slip gets passed to accounting, someone finds the open purchase order, and the receiving details are typed into the ERP. When the invoice arrives, the paperwork needs to be brought together again.
The receiving app connects those steps. It extracts information from the packing slip, matches it to a purchase order and presents the details for review before the receipt is recorded in the ERP. Batch uploads let your team process several packing slips together, and an agent can be configured to collect new documents from a shared folder.
That same record of what was received becomes useful when it is time to check the vendor’s invoice. The app compares the purchase order, receipt and invoice through three-way matching, bringing the records together so accounting can review whether the invoice is ready for payment.
For your team, the benefit carries through from receiving into accounts payable: less searching for documents, less repeated entry and an easier way to check the records against each other.
Make scheduling decisions with a clearer view of production
A production schedule can look workable until equipment goes down, scrap starts increasing or a customer order becomes urgent. Deciding what should run next means weighing those changes against the jobs already scheduled and the equipment available.
The scheduling application in the video uses a foam manufacturing operation with 120 production stations as its example. It brings production data and ERP orders together so planners can ask AI to recommend changes using their scheduling rules and customer priorities. They can then send the proposed changes to the ERP to update the schedule.
One example connects repeated scrap to a particular mold. The app checks the mold records, identifies that no spare is available and recommends sending the mold for repair. That gives the supervisor both a problem to investigate and a suggested next action.
For a planner managing competing demands, this is where the application becomes useful: it helps bring the relevant information into the decision while leaving room for the team’s judgment.
Improve the work around your existing ERP
These examples give you a starting point for using AI in processes your team already knows. You can focus on a recurring task, connect the application to the records it needs, and decide how much of the work to automate and where employees should review the results.
Rover AI lets you describe what you need in plain language and refine the application through conversation. Your knowledge of the process helps shape the rules it follows, whether that means matching customer orders or deciding which production jobs take priority.
Watch the episode to see how those choices work in practice.
Want to reduce manual work in order entry, receiving or production scheduling? Talk to the Rover AI team about an application for your operation.
