# Fundamentals

## Overview

The Supplier Order Manager is an AI-powered Digital Worker designed to free procurement teams from the administrative work of managing supplier confirmations so they can focus on strategic sourcing, category management, and the relationship building that drives competitive advantage. This intelligent solution handles the complex workflow of confirming purchase orders from suppliers, detecting discrepancies, and updating system records with minimal manual intervention.

By converting reactive, manual supplier management into a proactive, exception-driven process, the Supplier Order Manager gives procurement professionals time back for the work that requires human judgment, negotiation skills, and strategic thinking.

## Key Benefits

**Automated confirmation handling:** Supplier confirmations are parsed, validated against purchase orders, and processed without manual review for clean matches, eliminating the need to open every email and compare it against the system manually.

**Proactive exception detection:** Discrepancies in price, quantity, or delivery dates are caught automatically and surfaced to the right person with full context, rather than being discovered late or missed entirely.

**Consistent supplier communication:** All outbound communications, confirmations, reminders, clarifications, are drafted and sent through a standardized, professional process rather than relying on individual team members to manage their own inboxes.

**Real-time visibility:** Teams have an up-to-date view of confirmation status across all open purchase orders without manually chasing responses or checking system records.

**Effortless scalability:** The automated process handles growing confirmation volume without additional manual effort, eliminating bottlenecks during periods of high order activity.

## The Challenge It Solves

Managing supplier orders is highly manual, fragmented, and reactive. Procurement teams spend significant time tracking confirmations, validating changes to price, quantity, and delivery dates, and following up with suppliers across emails and ERP systems. This leads to delays, missed discrepancies, and limited visibility into order status, ultimately impacting supply continuity and operational efficiency.

In practice, teams are doing tasks like opening supplier emails, reviewing attached PDFs, comparing details against purchase orders in IFS Cloud, identifying any differences, sending clarification or follow-up emails, and then manually updating the ERP once changes are agreed. When suppliers propose modified terms, the process involves even more back-and-forth before anything gets resolved. Multiply this across dozens or hundreds of confirmations per day and the administrative burden becomes a significant drain on procurement capacity.

## Before and After

### Before

Before the Supplier Order Manager, processing a supplier confirmation requires manual effort at every step:

{% stepper %}
{% step %}
Process inbox and review purchase order confirmation emails and attachments
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
Compare confirmation against the purchase order in IFS Cloud
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
Identify any discrepancies
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
Send follow-ups or clarifications to the supplier
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
Track supplier responses
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
Update the ERP with any approved changes
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
Send confirmation back to the supplier
{% endstep %}
{% endstepper %}

This manual process leads to delayed confirmations, frequent back-and-forth emails, poor visibility into open order status, and error-prone ERP updates.

### After

With the Supplier Order Manager, the same cycle is handled in three automated steps:

{% stepper %}
{% step %}
Monitor inbox continuously and extract purchase order-related data
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
Match confirmations with ERP records, detect and flag any changes to a human for review
{% endstep %}

{% step %}
Handle supplier communication and update the ERP with confirmed changes
{% endstep %}
{% endstepper %}

Exact-match confirmations require no human involvement at all. Exceptions are routed immediately with all the context needed to make a fast, informed decision.

## How It Works

The Supplier Order Manager executes a six-step automated workflow that covers the complete purchase order confirmation cycle.

**Information Extraction:** The Digital Worker extracts all relevant information from the supplier's purchase order confirmation, whether it arrives as a PDF, image, or through EDI. An AI-powered extraction tool converts unstructured document data into structured format with key-value pairs.

**Details Retrieval:** A specialized Purchase Order Details sub-agent retrieves the original purchase order from IFS Cloud, including site information, line items for each part number, quantities, prices, delivery dates, and all relevant metadata.

**Intelligent Comparison:** The system performs a line-by-line comparison between the supplier's confirmation and the original purchase order. It checks for duplicate requests, uses LLM-based comparison to identify any differences, and determines whether to confirm as-is or flag discrepancies for review.

**Exception Routing:** When discrepancies are detected, the system triggers a human approval workflow. A detailed notification is sent via Microsoft Teams or the configured channel, outlining exactly what changed and waiting for explicit approval before proceeding.

**System Update:** Once approved, the Digital Worker automatically updates all relevant purchase order line items in IFS Cloud to reflect the confirmed changes.

**Supplier Communication:** The system drafts and sends confirmation back to the supplier, maintaining consistent, professional communication throughout.

## Purchase Order States

When a purchase order is created in IFS Cloud, it begins in a planned state. Once sent to the supplier, it moves to a released state. The Supplier Order Manager monitors continuously for incoming supplier responses and processes them as they arrive, handling both types of supplier response:

* **Full acknowledgment:** The supplier agrees with all terms and confirms as submitted
* **Modified acknowledgment:** The supplier proposes changes such as reduced quantities, adjusted prices, or revised delivery dates

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