Order to Cash Accelerated with AI at Koninklijke Van Leeuwen
In an internationally operating trading organization such as Koninklijke Van Leeuwen, the Order to Cash process is of crucial importance. Customers expect fast quotations, error-free order processing, and complete documentation upon delivery. At the same time, the administrative workload at Van Leeuwen has increased significantly in recent years. Large volumes of quotations, orders, and certificates were received daily via email and were largely processed manually.
This way of working resulted in long turnaround times, a high risk of errors, and a strong dependence on individual employees. Together with Tacstone Technology, an AI-driven solution was therefore developed to fundamentally accelerate and simplify the Order to Cash process.
What applications?
Document-AI, Microsoft Power Automate, Azure OpenAI, SAP
Level of automation:
Approximately 80–85% of documents processed automatically
Result of the solution:
Drastically shorter turnaround times, less manual work, and higher data quality
Reason
Van Leeuwen processes large numbers of price requests, orders, and material certificates every day. These documents arrive in various formats, often as Excel or PDF attachments via email, and vary greatly in size, from requests with only a few lines to documents containing hundreds of order lines
In the existing process, this meant that account managers and back-office employees had to manually interpret customer data, translate product descriptions into internal article codes, and enter this information into SAP one by one. Determining the correct article number alone required in-depth product knowledge, as customer descriptions are often brief but still need to result in an exact match for material type, standards, tolerances, and technical specifications.
This manual nature meant that a single price request could easily take several hours, and sometimes even days, to process. Especially when urgent requests came in between, the Order to Cash process would be delayed, while customers expect fast responses.
Approach
Together with Tacstone Technology, Van Leeuwen developed an AI-driven automation solution that takes over multiple steps within the Order to Cash process. The core of the solution is Document AI, which understands unstructured documents and converts them into structured data, combined with workflow automation and direct integration with SAP.
For price requests, this means that AI analyzes customer documents and automatically extracts relevant information. Customer product descriptions are broken down into meaningful components, such as material grade and standards. Based on this, the system automatically selects the most likely internal Van Leeuwen article code. Where account managers previously had to enter everything manually, only a final check remains before a quotation is sent.
Sales order processing was also greatly simplified by AI. Orders come in via e-mail, often in free text or as attachments with customer-specific layouts. AI automatically analyzes these orders and recognizes relevant data such as the customer, desired delivery date, item numbers or descriptions and quantities. AI also recognizes when this customer orders in VLB item numbers. When the reliability is above a set threshold, the order is automatically transferred. Only in cases of doubt or exceptions is human intervention required. This shifts the role of employees from manual entry to checking and exception handling, resulting in a significantly faster order turnaround time.
In parallel, the certificate process was also automated. Every pipe delivered by Van Leeuwen is accompanied by a Material Test Certificate (MTC). These certificates contain a large amount of irrelevant information but also a limited number of critical data points that must be correctly linked to batches and sales orders in SAP. This process was also fully manual and prone to errors, partly because suppliers use different formats and terminology.
How does it work?
When a document arrives, whether it is a price request, order, or certificate, it is automatically picked up by the AI solution. The AI recognizes the document type and extracts the relevant data. Microsoft Power Automate then takes over the workflow and handles validation, routing, and registration in SAP.
For price requests, this results in an automatically generated quotation proposal. For certificates, the relevant product information is linked to the correct batch and sales order. If the AI does not have sufficient confidence, the document is automatically placed in a need-to-check bucket, where an employee only needs to review the exceptions.
The solution continuously improves. By adding examples and feeding corrections back into the system, the AI model becomes increasingly accurate. As a result, the automation rate has now reached around 80–85 percent, without the need for hundreds of fixed templates, which is often the case with traditional OCR solutions.
The process
Results of the solution
The impact of the solution is immediately noticeable within the organization. A large portion of the administrative activities in the Order to Cash process has been eliminated. At the German branch, where Automatic Certification Creation is running test-live, work that was previously carried out by two employees is now largely handled automatically.
Importantly, employees are not replaced but rather relieved. Manual typing, searching, and checking have been significantly reduced, shifting the focus toward exceptions, quality control, and customer contact. At the same time, turnaround times have been shortened and the risk of errors has decreased, directly contributing to a more reliable Order to Cash process.
Comparison with the original situation
Where the Order to Cash process was previously characterized by manual input, fragmented information, and long turnaround times, the process is now largely automated and standardized. Documents are processed faster, data is recorded more consistently, and dependence on individual knowledge has been significantly reduced.
The greatest gain lies in scalability: where growth previously led to increased administrative pressure, Van Leeuwen can now process larger volumes without a proportional increase in back-office capacity.
How can you apply this in your organization?
Would you like to discover how AI-driven automation can accelerate and simplify your Order to Cash process?
Contact Tacstone Technology and discover how Document AI, workflow automation, and SAP integration can work together to reduce manual work and shorten turnaround times.
