A customer emails asking for 40 cases of something by Friday. Here is what the Sales Order Agent does with that email, in order: where it reads, what it checks, what it drafts, where it stops and asks, and how to decide whether it suits your order desk.
The Sales Order Agent is the companion to the Payables Agent: instead of supplier invoices coming in, it's customer requests. It watches a mailbox, reads requests for quotes and orders, and drafts the document and a reply for a person to check.
One email, step by step
A regular customer writes: "Please can we have 40 cases of the 500ml blue and 20 of the red, delivered by Friday. Same as last time."
Pick up. The agent picks the email up from the mailbox it's assigned to.
Identify the customer. It matches the sender to a contact and customer in Business Central. Unknown sender, or one email address shared by several customers, and it stops and asks.
Understand the request. It works out the items and quantities from the text, using item descriptions and references. "500ml blue" needs to map to one item; if it could be two, it asks or flags it.
Check availability. It checks whether the items can be supplied by the requested date.
Draft the document. It creates a sales quote (or order, depending on how it's configured) with the lines, prices from the customer's price lists, and the requested date.
Draft the reply. It prepares an email back to the customer with the quote attached, or explaining what isn't available.
Wait for review. A person on the order desk checks the draft and the reply, corrects anything, and sends. Converting to an order follows the normal process.
Where it stops and asks
Sender not recognised, or more than one possible customer.
Items it can't match with confidence.
Insufficient availability for the date.
Requests that aren't really orders: complaints, returns, questions about an invoice.
"Same as last time", unless it can see what last time was, and even then a person should check.
What makes it work well
Clean customer contacts with the email addresses people actually send from.
Item descriptions and item references that match how customers describe products.
A dedicated orders mailbox rather than people's personal inboxes.
Customers who order in a fairly consistent way. Free-text, conversational emails work; long PDFs in odd formats are harder.
Is it right for your order desk?
It suits businesses where a good share of orders arrive by email from regular customers, for items with clear names, and where someone currently spends hours re-keying them. It suits less well where most orders come through EDI or a web shop already (those are already automated), or where every order is a bespoke negotiation. As with any agent, it's charged per request on Copilot Credits (see the real cost), so count your email orders first. Then pilot it on one group of customers, with a person reviewing every draft, for a month.
Email this post as a PDF
A branded PDF of this post, sent to your inbox to keep, print or share. Copy in colleagues if you like.
We only use these addresses to send this PDF. Nobody is added to a mailing list. Mike at Business Boxed receives a copy. See our privacy notice.
