eProcureAI / Platform / Manufacturing case study
Case studyKaren M., a VP Finance at a Texas manufacturer, sums up the change in one sentence. This is the rollout sequence behind it and why the order the modules went live in mattered.
The customer's own words are quoted below. The rollout description reflects how these deployments typically run.
The headline is an eight day purchase order cycle becoming under four hours. What Karen M. actually emphasises is different.
We cut our average PO cycle from eight days to under four hours. Our AP team went from chasing approvals all day to doing actual strategic work.Karen M., VP Finance, manufacturing, Texas
The second sentence is the one worth reading twice. Cycle time is a metric. An accounts payable team getting its week back is an outcome, and it is the reason the metric mattered to her at all.
Almost none of it was approvers thinking. In a manufacturing business, a purchase request typically bounces because a quote was not attached, then sits with somebody who is not the right approver for that amount, then waits in an inbox over a weekend. The decision itself takes a few minutes once somebody finally sees it.
That is why the fix is not pressure on approvers. It is guided forms that will not submit incomplete, routing rules that read the department and the amount, and chasing that happens on a schedule rather than in somebody's head.
Worth stating plainly, because it is the first question a finance leader asks. The thresholds that required a manager and then finance before still require a manager and then finance. What changed is that the request arrives complete, reaches the right person immediately, and does not sit unnoticed.
Thresholds agreed, routing rules configured, supplier list migrated. Approval delay is the most visible problem in a manufacturing business, so proving it first gets the plant teams on side.
Multi site manufacturers need this per location rather than centrally, and the sessions usually finish early because the form is six fields.
Requests move onto the platform because it is quicker than the phone call it replaces. Nobody was ordered to use it.
Once approvals are clean, generating the order from the approved request removes the re-keying entirely.
Added last, because matching only works properly once orders and receipts are both in the system.
The temptation is to start with purchase orders because that is where finance feels the pain. Starting with approvals produces the visible win that gets the business on side.
Generating an order from an approved request only removes work if the approval is already clean. Doing it the other way round means automating a messy input.
Three way matching needs orders and goods receipts to both exist. Introducing it before those are in place produces exceptions on almost everything and undermines confidence.
The left column is quoted from the customer. The right explains which part of the platform produced it.
| What Karen M. said | What produced it |
|---|---|
| Average purchase order cycle cut from eight days to under four hours | Guided forms, routing rules and automatic chasing in Intake and Approvals |
| The AP team went from chasing approvals all day | Status visible to anybody with access, so the chasing calls stopped |
| To doing actual strategic work | Capacity released rather than headcount removed, which is the usual outcome |
We publish the quote as given. Where a figure is not something the customer stated, it is not on this page.
Loading fifty items instead of the ones people actually buy teaches everybody to go around the catalog.
Slows the rollout and makes it harder to tell which change produced which result.
Worth using the rollout as a moment to ask whether every existing threshold still earns its place.
Rules and catalogs drift when there is no single person expected to maintain them.
Works less well than making it faster, and produces resentment that lingers.
Without goods receipts, matching produces exceptions on almost everything.
The pattern here is not unusual, which is why it is worth publishing rather than treating as a best case.
Made decisions in week one, attended one session per site, then used it.
Configuration, migration, testing and support throughout the first months.
We will look at where the eight days actually go in your process and what would move first.
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