How AI Turned Inbound Purchase Orders into Straight-Through SAP Transactions
How Our Client Eliminated Manual Sales Order Entry and Increased Order Processing Speed 10 Folds
The Challenge
As the client scaled its operations across the Nordics and Baltics, the manual handling of inbound Purchase Orders (POs) became a drag on sales operations. POs arrived as PDF attachments or in email bodies. They were in different languages with no standardized format. Each document required a sales representative to read, interpret, and manually re-key line-item data into SAP S/4HANA to create a Sales Order (SO) – a time-consuming process with a high risk of error at every step.
Unstructured, multilingual inbound documents
POs arrived in varying formats and layouts, written in different languages, with no consistent structure.
Complex product descriptions
Line items often contained long-form text descriptions, where the team had to manually identify and extract individual product characteristics and values.
No automated customer or product validation
The sales team had no systematic way to confirm whether an incoming customer existed in master data or whether a requested product configuration had previously been sold.
Fully manual SAP entry
The sales team had to enter every validated line item into SAP S/4HANA by hand, making processing each PO a slow, error-prone task that scaled poorly with volume.
Limited auditability and visibility
With no structured workflow in place, the team had no reliable way to track the status of inbound POs or identify where errors occurred in the process.
Limited scalability without increasing headcount
As PO volumes grew, the only way to keep up was to add more people. The manual process offered no way to absorb volume growth without a proportional increase in staffing.
The Solution
We deployed Graip.AI as an end-to-end automated Purchase Order processing solution, transforming the journey from email receipt to SAP Sales Order creation into a structured, auditable, mostly hands-free workflow.
Intelligent document ingestion
POs arrive as PDF attachments or within email bodies. Graip.AI automatically recognizes and ingests these POs, regardless of layout or language.
Structured data extraction
The platform extracts all key fields – customer and supplier product codes, quantities, delivery dates, pricing, and customer details – directly from the document without manual input.
Product characteristic parsing
Where line items contain long-form product descriptions, Graip.AI parses each description to extract individual product characteristics and their corresponding values, translating unstructured text into structured, usable data.
Real-time master data validation
Our platform validates every record against the ERP master data in real time. Graip.AI confirms customer identification using document address and name. It uses item-level checks to verify whether the product configuration has been sold before.
Automated SAP S/4HANA export
Validated records are posted directly into SAP S/4HANA via XML export, automatically creating Sales Orders with full auditability at every step.
The Implementation
The solution was delivered through Graip.AI's structured three-phase methodology:
ALIGN (Discover & Blueprint)
Graip.AI worked with the client to map the existing PO intake workflow, identify the highest-friction steps in the path from email receipt to SAP entry, and define the scope of automation – including document format coverage, language requirements, and master data integration touchpoints.
PROVE (Build, Validate & Launch)
Our team built the extraction and parsing logic and validated it against client's PO data, paying attention to multilingual document handling and long-form product description parsing. We configured customer and product validation rules against the client's SAP master data and thoroughly tested the XML export pipeline before it went live.
SCALE (Measure & Expand)
Following user acceptance testing, the solution went live across the client's operations. The automated workflow immediately began absorbing inbound POs in different languages, with the architecture designed to scale across additional regions without proportional increases in operational overhead.
The Results
Graip.AI shifted the way the client's teams handle purchase order volume. It significantly reduced manual efforts in ERP entry by 90%, lowering handling time per PO, and freeing the team for higher-value work.
With Graip.AI, validation is built into the process, improving data quality and reducing the risk of downstream errors entering SAP S/4HANA. With this approach, the client can process 1,000-1,500 POs monthly.
95-99%
Graip.AI automates both PO intake end-to-end and Sales Order entry into SAP S/4HANA, minimizing manual data entry by 90% and taking straight-through processing rate to 95-99%.
Key Advantages
Straight-through processing at scale
By automating the full journey from PO receipt to SAP S/4HANA entry, the client can process purchase orders across countries without proportional headcount growth. Volume increases are absorbed by Graip.AI, not the operations team.
Superior data quality serves as a foundation for reliable fulfilment
Real-time validation against master data – for both customer identity and product configuration – means errors are caught before they enter SAP S/4HANA. This protects the integrity of downstream processes, such as order fulfilment, inventory management, and financial reporting.
Handling complexity that resists standardization
Long-form product descriptions and multilingual documents are the kind of inputs that conventional automation struggles with. Graip.AI's ability to parse product characteristics from unstructured text, and do so consistently across languages, addresses a category of complexity that rules-based approaches can't handle.
Full auditability across every processed document
Every PO processed through the solution is logged with a complete audit trail – from ingestion through extraction, validation, and SAP export – giving operations teams the visibility they need to monitor performance and resolve exceptions efficiently.
Conclusion
Before Graip.AI, every inbound Purchase Order meant manual reading, interpretation, and data entry into SAP – across multiple languages and document formats. That bottleneck is gone. Today, the client's PO intake runs as an automated pipeline: documents come in, data is extracted and validated, and Sales Orders are created in SAP S/4HANA with minimal manual handling in the case of exceptions.
With that foundation in place, the same logic can extend to other document workflows as the client continues its operational transformation across regions.
Ready to eliminate manual data entry from your SO creation process? Contact us today for a workflow audit.
We prioritize the security and integrity of your data
We take pride in maintaining a secure environment, so you can focus on your core business with confidence. Your data security is always our top priority.
ISO 27001: Information Security Management System
Your data is safe with us. Our processes ensure it remains confidential, available, and protected against unauthorized access.
ISO 9001: Quality Management System
Our processes deliver consistent, high-quality solutions and services you can rely on.
ISO 22301: Business Continuity Management System
Proactive measures keep our services running smoothly, even during challenging situations.