Checking order confirmations is one of those daily tasks in operational purchasing that consumes time without adding strategic value. Quantities, delivery dates, and prices must be reconciled item by item with the purchase order. With several thousand order items per year, this becomes a burden, and overlooked discrepancies quickly lead to supply bottlenecks. In this webinar, Riedel Kooling, part of Glen Dimplex, demonstrates how the company automated this process in collaboration with Tacto.

In the webinar, Elena Dörfler, Head of Purchasing at Riedel Kooling, and Jakob Hafner from Tacto will show how automated order confirmation checking was implemented at Riedel Kooling. Riedel Kooling is part of the Irish Glen Dimplex Group and belongs to the Precision Cooling division.

Why Manual Order Confirmation Checking Became a Bottleneck

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Riedel Kooling's purchasing department works with approximately 500 suppliers and about 10,000 different items. This results in around 25,000 order items per year, whose order confirmations are recorded and reconciled by operational purchasing. Traditionally, this means every confirmed quantity and delivery date is individually compared with the purchase order, and any discrepancy requires manual follow-up with the supplier. Quantity discrepancies lead to supply bottlenecks, and with such a high number of items, the human factor becomes a risk as discrepancies can be overlooked. A survey among webinar participants confirmed this picture: a large proportion spend more than five hours per week checking order confirmations, and only about 20 percent currently use partial automation.

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Collaborative Development with Tacto

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Riedel Kooling began its collaboration with Tacto back in 2022 and had automated order confirmation checking on its radar early on. In 2024, the company, together with Tacto, specifically started implementing the solution. Instead of switching the process overnight, the team initially ran the automation in parallel with manual checking. This allowed the purchasing department to build trust in the solution and ensure that the AI agent reliably performed its intended tasks. A prerequisite was the integration with the existing ERP system. Tacto works with all common systems, from SAP to more specialized solutions, thus covering heterogeneous system landscapes.

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How Automated Order Confirmation Checking Works Today

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In the automated process, the AI receives order confirmations as documents, for example as PDFs, and extracts their data regardless of the supplier's specific format. The system then reconciles each individual item on the order confirmation with the purchase order. Discrepancies in quantity, delivery date, or price are identified and highlighted, allowing the purchasing department to focus specifically on exceptions instead of reviewing every confirmation individually. This eliminates manual reconciliation for the majority of items, and the likelihood of overlooked discrepancies significantly decreases.

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Conclusion

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Riedel Kooling's practical example illustrates that automating order confirmation checking is less about cost and more about process optimization. The time saved can be used for more strategic purchasing tasks. A gradual approach is crucial, where automation initially runs in parallel and trust is built before it fully replaces the manual process.

Elena Dörfler, Head of Purchasing at Riedel Kooling, and Jakob Hafner from Tacto demonstrate how Riedel Kooling transformed the checking of approximately 25,000 order items per year from a manual bottleneck into an automated process. They discuss the initial situation in operational purchasing, the collaborative development with Tacto, and how an AI agent now checks order confirmations item by item, thereby freeing up time for strategic topics.