When a client sends a huge purchase order to your business, they expect a fast reply. If your team has to open a long PDF document and manually type every single part number into your accounting system, giving a fast reply is physically impossible. The client sits for hours just waiting to know if you even received their message. This delay is costly: a landmark study by Harvard Business Review and MIT found that businesses responding to inquiries within five minutes are 100 times more likely to successfully connect with the buyer. Despite this, they found the average B2B company takes a staggering 47 hours to respond.
Manual data entry is the biggest hassle in modern business, and that's what consumes more time. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central solves this exact delay by placing artificial intelligence directly into your daily workflow. By letting the software handle the heavy reading and typing, companies can completely change how fast they communicate with their buyers. Let us look at exactly what this software does to speed up your operations and drastically improve your customer response times.
Extract Data Directly From Incoming Customer Emails
The clock starts ticking the moment a customer's email lands in your inbox. In a normal office, a customer service representative opens the email, prints the attachment, and spends the next forty minutes typing those details into a sales screen. For those forty minutes, the customer hears absolutely nothing from your company.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central integrates with its own AI tool called Copilot to eliminate this waiting period. The software connects directly to your Microsoft Outlook inbox. When an email arrives containing a purchase order, the AI reads the document for you. It scans the text, identifies the customer name, locates the requested item numbers, and reads the exact quantities.
The system then uses that extracted data to automatically create a draft sales order within Business Central. What used to take a human worker forty minutes of heavy keyboard typing now takes the software about a few seconds. Your employee simply looks at the screen to ensure the draft is correct and clicks a button to accept it. Because the data entry happens almost instantly, your team can send a firm confirmation email back to the customer within minutes of receiving their request.
Business Central Verifies Physical Inventory Levels at the Exact Same Time
Customers don’t just want an order confirmation. They want to know exactly which day the products will arrive at their loading dock. When a sales clerk has to leave their desk, walk to the warehouse, or open a completely different software program to check stock levels, the customer response is delayed even further.
Business Central ERP software fixes this by combining the AI order reading tool with your live warehouse database. The exact moment the AI drafts the sales order from the email, it actively checks your warehouse shelves. The software looks at every single line item and verifies if you actually have enough physical stock in the building to fulfill the order today.
If a requested item is missing or low on stock, the software immediately flags that item on the screen. It then looks at your upcoming supply chain schedules and tells your sales clerk the exact date the missing items will arrive from your own vendors. Your clerk never has to put the customer on hold to call the warehouse manager. They can reply to the customer immediately with a highly accurate delivery schedule, telling them exactly what will ship today and what will ship next week.
Flags Outdated Prices and Wrong Item Numbers Instantly
A major reason order processing slows down is because of mistakes. A buyer might use an old template and request a price from two years ago. If your human clerk is typing fast to clear their desk, they might not notice the wrong price. When the accounting department catches the error days later, they have to stop the shipment and call the customer to ask for more money. This creates a terrible customer experience.
Business Central uses artificial intelligence to act as a perfect proofreader. When the software extracts the data from the incoming email, it actively compares the customer details against your live company price list.
If the customer asks for a unit at 50 dirhams (your pricing a few years back), but your database states the current price is 55 dirhams, the software highlights that specific line in bright red. The Dynamics ERP system alerts your sales representative before the order is ever officially logged. Your team can immediately reply to the buyer, explain the new pricing, and ask for a revised approval right then and there. Catching these mistakes in minute one prevents massive shipping delays and keeps your communication with the buyer perfectly clear.
Suggest Substitute Items to Prevent Shipping Delays
Sometimes a customer orders an essential part that you simply don’t have in stock, and your next vendor delivery is not scheduled for another month. In a traditional system, your sales clerk would have to reply to the customer with a simple apology, telling them the order is canceled. The customer is forced to go find another supplier, and your company loses the sale completely.
The AI in Business Central provides a much better solution. When the software notices an item is out of stock, it can automatically search your database for similar substitute products. If the customer ordered a specific brand of copper wire that is unavailable, the software will suggest a different brand of copper wire that has the exact same technical specifications and is currently sitting on your shelf.
Your sales clerk sees this suggestion instantly. Instead of replying to the customer with a rejection email, they can reply with a fast, helpful solution. They can offer the substitute item immediately, keep the project moving forward, and save the revenue for your company. This level of fast problem-solving shows your buyers that you are an active partner in their success.
Automates the Final Manager Approval Process
Even when the order is typed perfectly and the stock is verified, internal company rules can slow the response time down. If a customer places an unusually large order, your company's policies might require a senior manager to approve the deal before it goes to the warehouse. If that manager is in a meeting all day, the order sits on a desk, and the customer is left waiting.
Business Central removes this internal delay by automating your specific approval rules. You can program the software to follow your exact risk levels. For example, you can tell the system to automatically approve any order under ten thousand dirhams from clients who have a perfect payment history. When the AI processes an order that fits those safe rules, it bypasses the manager entirely and sends the picking ticket straight to the warehouse floor.
If the order breaks a rule and requires a manager to look at it, the software sends an instant alert directly to the manager's mobile phone. They can read a quick summary and click approve from anywhere in the building. By speeding up these internal approvals, your company can process orders faster and keep your customers fully updated on their shipping status.
Wrap Up
At the end of the day, B2B buyers simply want to know you are handling their requests. When they are forced to wait half a day just to get a basic confirmation email, they start looking for suppliers who move faster.
Implementing AI-powered Dynamics 365 software removes heavy, repetitive keyboard work that constantly slows your people down. In fact, research by McKinsey & Company reveals that early adopters of AI-enabled supply chain and order management tools have improved their customer service performance by 65% compared to their slower-moving competitors.
However, getting this technology to run perfectly takes careful planning. You need the system to understand your specific inventory logic and your unique pricing rules before you turn it on.
That is exactly where we come in. As an Authorized Microsoft Dynamics 365 Implementation Partner, Cherrie Business Solutions works directly with your team to configure the software to match your exact needs. If you are ready to stop keeping your customers waiting, reach out to us today. We tune your business to move towards heights faster!