A buyer, hundreds of suppliers, “when will it ship?”

The question this file answersDo we really need a trained buyer chasing delivery dates that should already be in the ERP?

Fits: manufacturers with 50–500+ active suppliers (manufacturing playbook) where confirmations and date changes still arrive by email and are copied into the ERP by buyers.

Not for: plants whose supplier base is almost entirely on EDI or a supplier portal with confirmed dates flowing into the ERP — there is little chasing left to remove.

Typical day

What the desk looks like today

Typical, from the manufacturing playbook — not a client's day. A buyer looks after a share of 50–500+ suppliers. Once a PO is out the job is chasing: is the confirmation in, has the date moved. Big suppliers answer over EDI; the long tail by email, late, in prose. The buyer copies the new date into the ERP — or forgets, and production plans against a date nobody confirmed. It hurts when a line stops for a part that was "on its way", and fewer people each year want to do purchasing admin.

What changes

What Monday looks like after

Monday's production meeting. The planner opens the ERP and the promised dates are current — the routine confirmations that came in over the weekend were matched to their lines without a buyer copying them. The buyer's morning starts from an escalation list: the supplier who has not confirmed a line that feeds Wednesday's build, the one whose date moved again, the one who replied "we need to talk about the price". That last one is the buyer's real work. You can see, per supplier, how many chases went out automatically and which lines a person picked up. Nobody in purchasing goes; the reminders and the copying do.

Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.

~40–50%

less chasing of delivery dates — Jaggaer/Coupa-class case studies

Before: buyers live in a thread of “when will it ship?”. After: case studies report 40–50% less transactional follow-up — negotiation stays the buyer's job.

Where this number comes from

McKinsey "Procurement 2025" (2022) finds 30–40% of buyer time on transactional follow-up to be automatable; Jaggaer/Coupa case studies: automated supplier communication reduces follow-up effort by 40–50%. Consultancy and vendor figures, not our measurement. Playbook range 30–50%.

What we install

What we put in front of the systems you already run

Promised dates already live in your ERP — SAP S/4HANA, Oracle, Dynamics, Infor or the one you run — and stay there. Alongside the buyer's mailbox:

open POs and dates are read from the ERP
email confirmations and date changes are matched to the PO line; EDI flows as now
a routine chase goes out before the due date, and the reply updates the ERP date through its API or your import
a late or silent supplier is escalated to the buyer with the PO, the history and what the line feeds
quality, price or claims are not chased — they go to the buyer as a conversation.

First scope: suppliers with the most open lines and no EDI.

What stays human — and what this will not do

Negotiation. Quality disputes. Strategic suppliers, by name. Any message from a supplier that is not about a date.

What can go wrong — and what we do about it

If the promised-date field in the ERP has been ignored, the first weeks show it — planning has run on people's memory, and repairing that is your data work. Suppliers who answer with "soon" or a photo of a delivery note give the reader nothing to match; those lines stay a person's call. An automated chase to a supplier already in dispute damages the relationship, so any thread the buyer marks is excluded. The playbook's 30–50% is transactional follow-up only; negotiation, quality fights and strategic suppliers are not in that number.

How long it takes, and what we need from you

Audit, about two weeks (€1.5–3K): we list a month of open PO lines by supplier and channel — EDI, portal, email — read sample chase threads, and check what your ERP accepts as a date update via API. Pilot, 3–5 weeks — medium complexity in the manufacturing playbook (€10–20K): one buyer's supplier group, routine chases and date updates only, the buyer reads every escalation. Production: the other buyers, then supplier portals. From you: read access to open POs and the buyer's mailbox.

The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →

This is about you if…

Do supplier confirmations and date changes mostly arrive as email prose, not EDI?
Does a buyer copy each new date into the ERP by hand — or not at all?
Is there a promised-date field on the PO line in your ERP that production actually plans from?

What does this mean in euros?

That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.

Get your free savings estimate 60 seconds · no sales call Or write first → Map a manufacturing process like this one — free, 60 seconds →

Not a named Aperanda client. Process file · Manufacturing.

Deep-dive process file. Volumes, weeks and sources come from the industry playbook; nothing here is a named client.

All process files