Architecture & capabilities

Overview

The Supplier Order Manager is built on a hierarchical AI agent architecture with a set of integrated agentic skills coordinated by a Supervisor Agent. This article covers the core skills, the agent architecture, the full supplier order management workflow, integration points, and how the system determines when to proceed independently versus when to involve a human.

Agentic Skills

The Supplier Order Manager operates through five core skills, each handling a distinct part of the supplier order management process.

Email Parsing

Reads and understands supplier emails and attachments to extract confirmations, changes, and intent without manual review. This skill processes incoming messages regardless of format, plain text, PDF attachments, images, and converts unstructured supplier communication into structured data that can be compared against purchase order records in IFS Cloud.

Supplier Coordination

Keeps suppliers aligned by tracking responses, follow-ups, and next steps across ongoing purchase orders. This skill maintains visibility into which confirmations are outstanding, which have been received, and which require further action, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks across a high volume of open orders.

Supplier Communication

Manages structured, consistent communication with suppliers to prevent delays, ambiguity, and missed information. This skill ensures all supplier-facing messages follow a standardized approach, reducing the variability that comes from individual team members managing their own inboxes and writing their own emails.

Email Composition

Drafts clear, professional emails for confirmations, reminders, and clarifications based on the current purchase order context. Rather than starting from a blank page, this skill generates contextually appropriate messages ready for review and sending, whether acknowledging a clean confirmation, requesting clarification on a discrepancy, or following up on an overdue response.

Supplier Negotiation

Supports back-and-forth discussions on dates, quantities, or commercial terms by capturing proposed changes, highlighting trade-offs, and escalating when approval is needed. This skill handles the structured aspects of negotiation, documenting what's been proposed, what the impact is, and what decision is required, so that human reviewers can focus on the judgment call rather than the administrative tracking.

Agent Architecture

The Supplier Order Manager uses a hierarchical agent structure designed for reliability, scalability, and transparency.

Main Agent (Supervisor): The Supplier Order Manager serves as the orchestration layer, overseeing the entire process from email receipt through system update and supplier confirmation. It directs the appropriate skills based on what each incoming communication requires.

Instruction Handlers: Specialized language models handle specific tasks such as data extraction from documents and intelligent comparison of parts and pricing. These handlers provide the AI reasoning capability that makes the system adaptable to various document formats and supplier communication styles.

Sub-Agents: Dedicated AI skills focus on purchase order details retrieval and confirmation management. These sub-agents have deep expertise in their specific domains, ensuring accurate execution of critical workflow steps.

Tools and Integration Layer

The Supplier Order Manager uses three core configurable tools:

• Extract Order Confirmation Details: an instruction handler that extracts structured data from supplier purchase order confirmations

• Compare Parts Tool: an LLM-based tool that compares extracted parts with system records, identifying mismatches in quantities, prices, and attributes

• Teams Integration: configurable channels for agent communication and human-in-the-loop approval workflows

Supplier Order Management Workflow

The following table outlines the full workflow from initial confirmation receipt through to ERP update and supplier communication.

Stage	What the System Does	Action / Output	Channel
Supplier Confirmation Parsing & Intent Detection	Parses supplier confirmations from PDF or email; extracts PO, line items, quantities, dates, and pricing; detects whether the response is a full confirmation, partial confirmation, or rejection	Structures confirmation data against PO, classifies confirmation type, triggers next workflow step	Email / OCR / IFS
PO Matching & Change Detection	Compares confirmation against PO line-by-line; detects changes in price, quantity, and delivery date; identifies missing or extra lines	Highlights discrepancies automatically, classifies changes as acceptable or exception, routes to appropriate workflow	IFS / Teams
Exception Detection & Prioritization	Identifies critical vs. non-critical mismatches; applies tolerance rules for price, date, and quantity; evaluates fulfilllment impact	Triggers exception workflows, notifies buyers for decision, prevents incorrect confirmations from posting	Teams / Email
Supplier Communication & Follow-ups	Detects missing confirmations or delayed responses; identifies need for clarification or negotiation	Sends automated follow-ups and reminders, drafts clarification emails, initiates negotiation flows	Email
Confirmation Posting & ERP Updates	Validates confirmed data against business rules; ensures readiness for ERP update	Posts confirmed updates to IFS Cloud, maintains audit trail of changes, ensures data consistency	IFS
Human-in-the-Loop Decision Support	Identifies ambiguous or conflicting scenarios; provides context for decision-making	Surfaces clear options to reviewer, highlights risks and impact, captures decision and resumes automated flow	Teams / IFS

Integration Points

Email Systems: Monitors Microsoft Outlook and Gmail inboxes continuously, processing incoming supplier communications in real time.

ERP/SCM Platforms: Integrates directly with IFS Cloud and other enterprise resource planning systems to read purchase order details and write updates automatically.

Collaboration Platforms: Uses Microsoft Teams, Slack, OneNote, and Google Drive for notifications, approvals, and documentation.

CRM Systems: Connects with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Qoncierge to maintain supplier relationship context and history.

Document Processing: Handles PDFs, images (JPG, PNG), and text-based confirmations with high extraction accuracy.

Human-in-the-Loop Design

The Supplier Order Manager is designed so that routine confirmation processing happens automatically and human judgment is applied to decisions that genuinely require it.

The system proceeds independently when:

• Supplier confirmations match purchase orders exactly across all line items

• Communications follow established patterns and require no exception handling

• Transactions are low-risk and fall within approved parameters

Human approval is required when:

• Any discrepancy exists in dates, quantities, or pricing

• High-value or high-impact purchase orders are involved

• Cases require business judgment that falls outside defined rules

• Outbound supplier communications are ready to be sent

When an exception is detected, the system sends a detailed notification via Microsoft Teams with complete context, presents a clear comparison showing exactly what changed and why it matters, waits for explicit approval before taking any action, and executes the approved changes immediately once confirmation is received.

Testing and Validation

The platform includes an agent playground for testing and development. Teams can simulate incoming emails with PDF attachments, test responses to various scenarios, review detailed debug logs, and validate extraction accuracy and comparison logic before deploying to production.