Every open PO confirmed, chased and dated without inbox hunting
A done-for-you supplier follow-up automation is an AI agent that tracks every open purchase order line, emails suppliers for acknowledgements and ship dates, reads their replies and PDF confirmations, and updates promised dates in your ERP. It spots price, quantity or date changes, warns buyers about orders that will land late, and escalates suppliers who go quiet. BufferSol builds and runs it in your mail and ERP, live in 3 to 6 weeks.
- Live in 3 to 6 weeks
- Works with SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business One and more
- People approve what matters
Is this you?
Procurement and purchasing teams at manufacturers, distributors and retailers that place hundreds of POs a month with suppliers who confirm by email, PDF or phone rather than EDI.
- Buyers keep a spreadsheet of which suppliers have confirmed and which have not.
- Promised dates in the ERP are blank or out of date, so planning works from guesses.
- You find out a shipment is late when the production line or customer asks where it is.
- Suppliers change price or quantity in their confirmation and nobody notices until the invoice arrives.
- Smaller suppliers will not use your supplier portal.
Today vs done for you
The current way, and the new way
What your team does by hand today, and what the automation does instead, step by step.
How it works today
- A buyer sends a PO from the ERP and waits for the supplier to confirm.
- They check their inbox and a tracking spreadsheet to see who has replied.
- They send reminder emails and leave voicemails for suppliers who have not.
- When a confirmation arrives, they read the PDF and type the promised date into the PO line.
- Near the due date they chase again for ship dates and tracking, and pass bad news to planning by email.
What it quietly costs you
- · Buyer days spent on reminders instead of sourcing, negotiation and supplier risk.
- · Production stoppages, expedite freight and missed customer dates from late surprises.
- · Overpayments and disputes when supplier changes slip through to invoice matching.
How it works done for you
- When a PO is released, the agent records each line and its required date, and sends the supplier a clear request to confirm.
- It follows up on a schedule you set, by supplier tier, and changes tone and channel when replies do not come.
- It reads supplier emails and attached confirmations, extracts promised dates, prices and quantities, and matches them to PO lines.
- It writes confirmed dates back to the ERP and flags any difference in price, quantity, item or date for the buyer to accept or reject.
- Before each due date it asks for ship confirmation and tracking, and checks carrier tracking where available.
- It alerts planners in Teams or Slack about lines at risk, with the supplier's latest reply attached, and suggests options.
- Each message, reply and ERP change is logged by PO line, building a supplier on-time and responsiveness record.
Your people
What changes for your team
| Role | Today | Done for you |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer | Chases confirmations by email and phone and types dates into PO lines. | Handles the suppliers and lines the agent escalates and works on sourcing. |
| Production or demand planner | Plans around missing or stale promised dates. | Gets early alerts on late lines with the supplier's own words attached. |
| Procurement manager | Has no reliable data on which suppliers confirm on time. | Reviews supplier responsiveness and on-time scores built from the logs. |
The numbers
What it's worth to you
Estimate the time and cost you get back with your own numbers. We baseline the real figures in week 1 and track these KPIs from day one.
Example inputs · change them to yours
The automated share covers routine confirmation requests, reminders and date updates; negotiations, escalations and sourcing changes stay with buyers.
Staff time back
83 hours a month
About 0.5 full-time people freed for higher-value work
Capacity reclaimed a month
$3,135
A year
$37,620
An estimate from your inputs only. In week 1 we measure your real baseline, so results are tracked against your own numbers.
PO acknowledgement rate
Share of new PO lines confirmed by the supplier within your target window, baselined from current ERP data.
Lines with a current promised date
Open lines with a supplier-confirmed date, checked weekly.
Late lines found early
Lines flagged late at least a set number of days before the required date, versus lines found late on the day.
Expedite freight spend
Premium freight caused by late supply, tracked monthly against the prior year.
Confirmation discrepancies caught
Price, quantity and date changes flagged before receipt or invoice.
73%
Works with the tools you already use
- SAP S/4HANA
- SAP Business One
- NetSuite
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
- Acumatica
- Microsoft Outlook
- Gmail
- Microsoft Teams
- Slack
- project44
Guardrails built in
- The agent can update promised dates, but any change to price, quantity or item needs a buyer to accept it.
- Messages to suppliers use approved templates and your buyers' sending rules, with escalation steps you define.
- Strategic suppliers can be set to draft-only, so a buyer sends every message.
- Every supplier message, reply and ERP update is logged against the PO line.
- The agent has read and limited write access in the ERP, scoped to purchasing fields.
Why it hurts today
What teams say about this work
Common complaints from operators, reviewers and industry research.
Smaller suppliers often cannot send order confirmations by EDI, so they confirm on paper or by email and the buyer has to key the data into SAP by hand.
Many buying teams still chase acknowledgements with emails, spreadsheets, phone calls and voicemails, checking inboxes again and again for promise dates.
Supplier-side reviewers of SAP Ariba complain about fees, duplicate accounts and extra work for small suppliers, one reason many vendors avoid buyer portals and keep replying by email.
Done for you
Live in 3 to 6 weeks
We do the build, the integrations and the rollout. Your team gives us access, reviews the pilot and approves go-live.
- 1
Week 1
Discovery and access
We map the workflow with your team, agree the outcomes and KPIs, measure today's baseline and get secure access to your tools.
- 2
Weeks 2–3
Build and connect
We build the agents and connect your systems, with your rules, approval steps, permissions and logging.
- 3
Weeks 3–5
Test and pilot
We test on your real history, then run a pilot on live work while your team reviews what the agent does.
- 4
Weeks 4–6
Go live and hand over
We roll out in stages, train your team, hand over dashboards and runbooks, and keep improving it with you.
Executive Ask: ask your business anything
One plain-English assistant connected to every system you run: CRM, helpdesk, ERP and accounting, HR, inbox and docs. Leaders get sourced answers in seconds and can trigger actions with approval. It respects everyone's existing permissions and logs every answer.
See Executive AskAsk it, for example
- Which open purchase orders are at risk of arriving late this month, and which customers do they affect?
- Which suppliers take longest to confirm our orders?
- Did any supplier change a price on a confirmation this week?
How quickly can this be live?
Usually 3 to 6 weeks. We connect to your ERP and the buyers' mailboxes, agree follow-up rules by supplier tier, and load your message templates. The agent then runs in draft mode so buyers can see what it would send. Once they are comfortable, it starts sending and updating dates on its own within the limits you set.
What does it cost?
We do not publish pricing because it depends on PO volume, the number of suppliers and mailboxes, and your ERP. Cost is quoted after a short scoping call where we look at a sample of open POs and supplier replies. You receive a fixed scope and quote before we begin the build.
Will suppliers know they are talking to an AI agent?
That is your choice. Most clients send from a shared purchasing address with the buyer copied and a short note that the message is automated. Replies go to the same thread, so a buyer can step in at any point. Suppliers do not need to log into anything new.
Can it read supplier confirmations in different formats?
Yes. It reads email text, PDF order acknowledgements, spreadsheets and scanned documents, in English and other common European languages. When a document is unclear or the line match is uncertain, it asks the buyer rather than guessing, and it learns each supplier's layout over time.
Does it replace a supplier portal or EDI?
No. If you already get EDI acknowledgements or use a portal, the agent reads those too. It covers the large group of suppliers who will only ever reply by email, so you get one complete view of every open line regardless of how each supplier communicates.
Pairs well with
Operations & Supply Chain
Purchasing & Inventory Replenishment
Reorder suggestions your buyers trust, drafted as POs every morning
See the outcomeOperations & Supply Chain
Document Intake & Data Extraction
Bills of lading, packing slips and forms read straight into your systems
See the outcomeFinance & Accounting
Invoice Processing (Accounts Payable)
Supplier invoices read, matched to POs and queued for approval the day they arrive
See the outcomeSources
Get Supplier & Vendor Follow-Up done for you
Tell us about your volumes and tools. A senior engineer replies within one business day with scope, timeline and cost.
Live in 3 to 6 weeks · Priced after a short call · Company emails only