Automate first the back-office workflow that happens every day or week, follows the same rules most of the time and moves between two or three systems. Emailed purchase orders retyped into the ERP, supplier confirmations and vendor bills are good places to start. Pick one where a wrong draft is easy to catch, and count its time before you change anything.
Why start in the back office?
The St. Louis region makes and moves a lot. Greater St. Louis, Inc. counts about 2,750 manufacturers and 118,000 manufacturing employees in the region, and the St. Louis Regional Freightway describes it as one of the largest rail hubs in the U.S., linking six Class I railroads.
Every order a company takes, every part it buys and every shipment it sends leaves work in the office. When that work crosses systems, people do the copying: an email becomes a spreadsheet row, the row becomes an ERP record, the record becomes an invoice and the invoice becomes a follow-up. That copying is a good first target because:
- It repeats. The same steps happen every day or every week, so the hours add up.
- It follows rules most of the time. The exceptions are real, but you can count them and send them to a person.
- A wrong draft is easy to catch. An automation can prepare the work and let someone approve it before anything changes.
Machines and production lines are a different project with different risks. Starting in the office lets your team learn how an automation behaves on work where a mistake shows up on a screen before it reaches a customer.
Six workflows worth checking first
1. Emailed purchase orders
Customers who don’t send orders through EDI or a portal send them another way, such as a PDF, a spreadsheet or a plain email that someone keys into the ERP line by line. An automation can read each PO, match the customer and items and draft the sales order, while price differences, new ship-to addresses and unknown items go to a person. See how order entry automation works.
2. Supplier confirmations
After a purchase order goes out, the supplier’s acknowledgment comes back by email, sometimes with a new date, quantity or price, and a buyer updates the ERP by hand. An automation can compare each confirmation with the PO, record the ones that match and send changes beyond your tolerance to the buyer with the difference highlighted.
3. Vendor bills
Before a bill is paid, someone matches it to the purchase order and the receiving record. When all three agree, the matching is mechanical. When they don’t, it needs a person. Automate the matching, and keep the decision to pay with your team.
4. Freight paperwork
Freight moves through the region by rail, road and river, and the Freightway describes its port system as the northernmost on the Mississippi River that is free of both locks and ice. If you ship often, carrier invoices need checking against the agreed rate and the shipment, and delivery confirmations need to reach the right order. Count both. Where the check follows clear rules, it’s a candidate. Where it turns on a dispute with a carrier, it stays with a person.
5. Invoice follow-up
Overdue invoices need a reminder, but only after someone checks for a payment in transit, a dispute in an email thread or a promise to pay. An automation can do the checking and draft the right message for each case, leaving disputes, payment plans and key accounts to a person. The guide to invoice follow-up without the chasing shows how to sort the accounts first.
6. New customer and vendor setup
A new account gets typed into the CRM, the ERP, the accounting system and sometimes a shipping tool. If you sell on both sides of the river, setup can also mean collecting a tax certificate. Depending on where you sell and where you’re registered, that may be Missouri’s Sales and Use Tax Exemption Certificate (Form 149) or Illinois’s Certificate of Resale (Form CRT-61), and both forms put some of the checking on the seller. One approved record can feed every system, with a missing certificate flagged to a person. The checklist in new customer setup across four tools shows what a complete record needs, certificates included.
How to pick the first one
Put each candidate through five questions. The best first workflow gets a yes to all five, or close to it.
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Does it happen every day or every week? | Volume is where the hours go. |
| Does it follow the same rules most of the time? | Clear rules make a reliable automation. |
| Does it move between two or three systems? | That’s where the retyping and the mistakes are. |
| Is a wrong draft easy to catch before it matters? | A review step keeps the risk low. |
| Can you count the time it takes today? | Without a baseline, you can’t tell whether it worked. |
To size each candidate, multiply how often it happens by how long it takes. For example, with illustrative numbers: 40 emailed orders a week at 6 minutes each is 240 minutes, or 4 hours a week, which comes to 200 hours over a 50-week year. If two candidates come out close, start with the one where a mistake is easier to catch.
What to leave for later
- Anything on the shop floor. Machines and production systems need their own project and their own safeguards.
- Work that happens a few times a year. The setup is unlikely to pay back quickly, and a checklist may be enough.
- A process that’s about to change. If you’re replacing the ERP or reorganizing the team, let the new process settle first.
- Steps that move money or can’t be undone. Releasing payments and changing a vendor’s bank details should stay with a person.
- Work that is mostly judgment. Credit decisions, pricing exceptions and difficult customer conversations are where your people matter most.
A 30-day plan for your first workflow
- Days 1 to 3: list the candidates. Ask the people who do the work which tasks they repeat every week, and write down five to ten.
- Days 4 to 7: count. For the top three, count how often each one happened over the past month and time a few real examples.
- Day 8: choose one. Run the five questions above, pick one workflow and write down what done looks like, such as “draft sales orders waiting for approval.”
- Days 9 to 12: map it. Sit with the person who does the work, at their desk, and write down each step, each system and each exception. Collect 20 to 30 real examples, including messy ones.
- Days 13 to 15: set the boundaries. Decide which systems the automation may access (through a dedicated account or role where the software allows it), which steps stay with a person and who approves the drafts.
- Days 16 to 22: run drafts alongside the current process. Your team works as usual while the automation prepares drafts, and someone compares each draft with what was actually done.
- Days 23 to 26: fix and decide. Adjust the rules for the misses, and decide which cases go to a person every time.
- Days 27 to 30: switch on a slice and measure. Turn it on for one inbox or one customer group, log every run and compare time, errors and exceptions with your count from the first week.
If the automation won’t be ready to run drafts by day 16, do the first half of the plan anyway and move the dates for the rest. You’ll have a baseline and a map, and you’ll need both whichever firm or tool you choose.
Kestrel, an AI-native consulting firm in St. Louis, deploys an AI agent designed to do much of steps 2 and 4: connected only to the tools you authorize, it’s built to learn how the work moves, show where the time goes and draft the automation. We can meet your team in person to agree the boundaries in step 5, and nothing runs until your team switches it on. The agent is in development, and early access is open: see how we work in St. Louis.
Key takeaways
- Start in the back office, with one workflow that repeats weekly, follows clear rules and moves between systems.
- Count the time before you change anything, so you’ll know whether it worked.
- Keep drafts, approvals and exceptions with your team until the results earn trust.