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High volume, low variation, enormous drag.

Order processing, carrier quoting, exception handling. Each one is small, each one is rules-based, and together they consume most of a team's week. Rules-based work like this is a good fit for an agent, and easy to measure before and after.

Map your own processSee an example result
Covers
Retail distribution centers, Logistics & freight companies, B2B distributors
Closest result
Not at a distributor yet: the same read-only connector, running against a manufacturer's ERP. See what it did

How this business usually runs

An order from inbox to delivered, and the exceptions that eat the margin on the way.

  1. CustomerEmails, EDI, portal or phone
  2. CarriersLTL, parcel, dedicated
  3. Take the orderReceive it, key it, confirm it, release itCustomer service. Email, WMS
  4. Pick and move itPick, quote the freight, book, dispatch, trackWarehouse and transport. WMS, Carrier portals
  5. Bill and resolveReconcile the delivery, handle claims, invoice, audit the carrierFinance and claims. Accounting, Excel
  6. CustomerReceives the goods and the invoice
  7. Manage the accountReorders, account reviews, the rate review or re-tenderAccount manager. OMS, Spreadsheet

Click a step marked with a plus to see the work inside it.

How an order moves: a 7-step process. Steps in order: Customer, Carriers, Take the order, Pick and move it, Bill and resolve, Customer, Manage the account. 1 rework loop returns work to an earlier step.purchase orderreleased ordercapacityand ratesproof of deliverygoods andinvoicerepeat customerreorder · reorderCustomerEmails, EDI, portal or phoneCarriersLTL, parcel, dedicatedTake the orderReceive it, key it, confirmit, release itCustomer serviceEmail · WMSPick and move itPick, quote the freight,book, dispatch, trackWarehouse and transportWMS · Carrier portalsBill and resolveReconcile the delivery,handle claims, invoice,…Finance and claimsAccounting · ExcelCustomerReceives the goods and theinvoiceManage the accountReorders, accountreviews, the rate review…Account managerOMS · Spreadsheet

No timings, on purpose: how long each step takes is the one number that's genuinely yours.

Where the drag usually lives.

  • Order & PO processing

    Reading orders in whatever form they arrive and getting them into the system correctly the first time.

  • Carrier & freight quoting

    Comparing rates and service levels, then producing the quote without a person opening five portals.

  • Inventory & replenishment

    Watching stock positions and surfacing the reorder before someone notices a shortage.

  • Claims & exceptions

    Handling the damaged, the delayed, and the disputed — the queue nobody wants to own.

Agents we'd build for this work.

Each one is a blueprint: scoped against this process and built during an engagement. None has been built for a client yet. What has been built is on Results.

  • Blueprint, not built yetOperations: order entry

    Inbound order processing

    An agent takes orders arriving by email and PDF, normalizes them, and files them into the ERP with exceptions routed to a human.

    Between the order arriving in whatever form it arrives and it being in the system.

  • Blueprint, not built yetLogistics: quoting

    Freight quote comparison

    Rates and service levels pulled and compared across carriers, returned as a quote your team approves instead of assembles.

    The five-portal comparison between a picked order and a booked carrier.

  • Blueprint, not built yetFinance: claims

    Delivery claims and short-pays

    Reconciles what was delivered against what was promised, assembles the evidence a claim needs while it still exists, and keeps each one moving instead of ageing.

    Between a delivery that went wrong and the money being recovered.

Which of these fits your process is what the questions work out. Map your own process, or see what they gave back to a made-up industrial-supplies distributor.

The other 6 blueprints for distribution & logistics
  • Billing narrative assembly The month-end assembly that currently happens from memory on the 30th.
  • Stock position and replenishment Between demand landing and material being committed to.
  • Dispatch and dock coordination Between an order being picked and it leaving the building.
  • Invoice follow-up and collections Between an invoice going out and the money arriving.
  • Account health and demand signals Across the accounts you already have, between one request and the next.
  • Carrier capacity and booking Between a load needing a truck and the truck actually arriving.

What we've actually built.

Not at a distributor yet: the same read-only connector, running against a manufacturer's ERP.

Running, small pilot

A connector between Claude and the ERP

An ISO 9001-certified specialty chemical manufacturer running Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The client isn't named; that's theirs to give.

  • Within a weekfrom the first working session to go-liveMeasured: Engagement time log, 3–8 September 2026
  • Every callaudit-logged under the asker's own identity, from the first oneMeasured: The client's own log workspace, first production call, 8 September 2026
  • Still upoutside health check passingMeasured: Our external health probe, 20 September 2026
Read the full write-up, including what hasn't been measured yet

Who this covers.

  • Retail distribution centers

    Inbound and outbound appointment scheduling, ASNs and retailer compliance, vendor scorecards, and the chargeback disputes that follow a missed OTIF window.

  • Logistics & freight companies

    Rate quoting and load matching, carrier onboarding and packet collection, rate confirmations and BOLs, and the claims queue for damaged and delayed freight.

  • B2B distributors

    Order entry arriving by email, PDF, and EDI, customer-specific part numbers matched against your item master, quoting, and backorder and substitution calls.

Why off-the-shelf tools miss here.

  • Your process

    Every customer orders differently — EDI here, a PDF there, an email with a photo of a handwritten sheet. The exceptions are the job.

  • Your data

    Item masters, customer-specific part numbers, and pricing rules living in an ERP nobody has fully mapped since it was installed.

  • Your people

    Your best order desk person knows which customer means what when they write it wrong. That knowledge isn't in any system.

A tool that only handles the clean orders automates the half that was never the problem.

Where the sector is going

  • 28%of supply chain leaders are using AI today
  • 54%say they plan to within the next five years
Sources:
  • MHI and Deloitte, 2025 MHI Annual Industry Report: The Digital Supply Chain Ecosystem — responses from more than 700 manufacturing and supply chain leaders, roughly 83% at executive level, fielded end of 2024

How we'd start.

The same way in every industry: a 30-minute call, then exploring your process with the people who run it, shaping a solution together and one proposal, before anything is built. How an engagement runs, step by step.

What happens to your data

  • Runs in your cloud; only answers reach Claude
  • Your logins, your permissions
  • Read-only to start
  • Every question is logged

The order desk is a good place to start: high volume, rules you can state out loud, and a result you can count. Every order an agent handles shows it one more way a customer writes things wrong.

Next: which process costs you most?

You'd be talking to Robert Dopart directly: the person accountable for the build, not a salesperson.

Book a callrobert@aidaea.com