Agentic AI-Powered Order Management: Elevating Accuracy and Scaling Automation

Every aspect of finance is crucial for a smooth-running business. The order management process is critical because, when effective, it plays a unique role in bridging the gap between customers, sales and finance, directly influencing revenue generation, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and operational efficiency.  

In order to bridge the gap between customers, sales and finance, any effective order management system first needs to be able to receive orders and validate that the items are available. Then, it must fulfil the order, track its delivery and secure payment upon successful delivery. The frequency and accuracy with which the order process is completed, from the initial order to the point of payment, largely determines the success of the sales and finance department, as well as the ongoing satisfaction and loyalty of the customer.  

Automation clearly plays a key role in streamlining operations, providing high throughput and consistency, reducing errors caused by repetitive, continuous work, and improving the overall efficiency of the order management process.   Without automation, businesses risk delays and increased operational costs, which can negatively affect their financial performance, customer satisfaction and ultimately, brand loyalty.  

OCR or Agentic AI?

For the majority of mid to large enterprise finance organizations today, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) plays a key role in automation, converting different types of documents such as scanned invoices, images or PDFs into editable, searchable data.  Document conversion may account for up to 60% of the automation effort.  Is this enough?  

The challenge is that most document conversion is dependent on having a template to work from which restricts its usage and flexibility when change is constantly happening.  OCR is limited to text recognition tasks and struggles with complex texts, poor image quality, and handwritten documents.  It cannot deal with complexity, context, tasks that involve decision making or tasks that involve learning from data.  While it still has a role to play (according to various reports, the OCR market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 14.8 – 17.2% between 2023 and 2031)¹², efficient automation is only realized when OCR is paired with new technology that is both intelligent and can understand context.  

Fear Of Missing Out

While OCR is a valuable tool for digitizing text, Agentic AI offers a more advanced and versatile approach to automating complex tasks and decision-making processes. Some Agentic AI systems, such as Hypatos.ai, enable over 80% automation of the intelligent document processing effort of the order management process.  Is the extra 20-40% of automation worth it?  

Most finance professionals will say Yes – absolutely!  This is the reason that many of them are no longer frightened that their job will be taken by AI. Instead, they are embracing AI.  They have a greater fear of missing out on the opportunities that using AI can bring to them, especially in forward thinking organizations.  Take, for instance, this real-world example of the assistance that an intelligent AI agent or Agentic AI can bring to a busy, finance professional.  

A purchase order and invoice data were provided from accounts payable.  However, the invoice received from the vendor did not match the textual description on the purchase order.  The purchase order was a complex series of part numbers, codes, measurements and descriptions from a steel manufacturer that was hard to decipher.  Agentic AI reviewed both documents, triangulated information and rapidly provided a logical response – that the invoice should be posted to a general ledger account for alloys.  Given the word “alloy” was not on the purchase order or the invoice, the result was impressive. This example is a clear case of rapid mundane matching which enables the human-in-the-loop finance professional to simply validate and approve.

Finance professionals can benefit enormously from Agentic AI in the context of order management.  It replaces much of their repetitive, time-consuming work, freeing up time for more strategic process roles.  Finance professionals benefit from:

• Accuracy:  Agentic AI significantly reduces human error by automating complex tasks, ensuring that order management processes are reliable and precise. This in turn leads to fewer mistakes and improved customer experience and satisfaction.

• High Throughput:  The order management process can be accelerated by automating repetitive tasks and streamlining various workflows. The business outcome is faster order processing, quicker response to inquiries, more efficient handling of large order volumes and improved cash flow.

• Data Transparency:  Order management connects customers, sales and finance. AI Agents, such as those from Hypatos.ai, can integrate seamlessly with existing systems thereby minimizing disruption to current operations and avoiding major infrastructure changes which makes it a solution that is both practical and scalable.

Software agents that can autonomously perform tasks, make decisions and interact with real-time data are here to stay. These agents can learn from experiences and adjust their actions over time, handling complex, multi-step tasks that require ongoing problem solving and decision making.    

By leveraging Agentic AI, companies can stay competitive in a fast-paced market, respond more effectively to customer demands, and optimize their order management processes at scale for improved performance and profitability.  To find out more, watch our webinar on demand on this topic.

‍