Case Study: Logistics & Supply Chain

From 40 Hours of Data Entry to Zero.

How a mid-sized logistics company eliminated manual invoice processing, saving $408,000 annually with a custom AI extraction pipeline.

$408K
Saved / Year
0%
Error Rate
$8K
Build Cost
1 Week
To ROI Breakeven
System Walkthrough
03:42

The Manual Tax

The client's AP department was receiving over 2,000 PDF invoices per week from various vendors, each with a completely different layout. A team of three full-time clerks spent their entire week manually opening emails, downloading PDFs, finding the relevant line items, and typing them into their legacy ERP system.

This process was not only expensive but highly prone to human error, leading to delayed payments, vendor disputes, and a massive bottleneck as the company tried to scale operations.

The AI Intervention

We didn't try to replace their ERP or force vendors to use a standardized portal. Instead, we built an invisible AI layer that sits between their email inbox and their database.

Using a custom Vision-Language Model (VLM) pipeline, the system now automatically intercepts incoming emails, extracts the PDF, reads the unstructured data regardless of the invoice format, validates the totals, and pushes the structured JSON directly into the ERP via API.

Workflow Transformation

BEFORE: MANUAL
1
Vendor emails PDF invoice
Sits in inbox until clerk is available.
2
Clerk opens & reads PDF
Bottleneck: 3-5 minutes per invoice.
3
Manual data entry to ERP
High risk of transcription errors.
4
Payment scheduled
Often delayed due to backlog.
AFTER: AI AUTOMATED
1
Vendor emails PDF invoice
Standard process for vendor.
AI Agent intercepts & extracts
Reads unstructured PDF, validates totals instantly.
API push to ERP
Structured JSON injected directly into database.
4
Payment scheduled
Completed in < 5 seconds.
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

Under the Hood

Tech Stack

  • 01
    Ingestion Layer AWS SES + Lambda for email interception and attachment parsing.
  • 02
    Extraction Engine Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet (Vision) for unstructured data extraction to strict JSON schema.
  • 03
    Validation Logic Python/Pydantic layer to verify line-item math matches totals before ERP injection.
  • 04
    Integration Custom REST API connector to legacy NetSuite instance.

Unit Economics

One-time Build Cost $8,000
Monthly Volume ~8,500 invoices
LLM API Costs ~$140 / mo
Cloud Infra (AWS) ~$45 / mo
Strata52 Management $1,200 / mo
Total Ongoing Cost $1,385 / mo
* Compared to $35,385/mo previously spent on manual data entry headcount and error remediation.

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