A buyer sends a PO, chases the acknowledgement, checks the reply with planning and updates the order. The same buyer also has quotes to compare and suppliers to negotiate with. Mandel takes on that routine follow-through. Your team keeps the supplier choices and approvals.
Mandel runs sourcing and ordering work from RFQ through invoice. It sends requests, follows up, resolves discrepancies and keeps the ERP current within the rules you set. Start with one job your buyers know well so they can check the result and see what they can stop doing themselves.
This guide covers what your team needs to prepare: the first job, examples of past work, supplier instructions, approvals and the review of live results. Use the procurement AI rollout workbook (Excel) to assign the preparation tasks and record decisions as you go. Agree the schedule around the selected work and systems; access, approvals and supplier response times will affect it.
Choose the first job Mandel will take on
Choose work that comes up often enough to make a difference and has a result the team can check. Good starting points include obtaining complete PO confirmations for one buying team, preparing comparable quotes for a recurring RFQ, or pursuing a defined set of supplier credits.
Be specific about the finish. For confirmations, the supplier has agreed the relevant quantities and dates, any changes requiring approval have been decided, and the accepted plan is recorded. For quote collection, the buyer has complete offers on a comparable basis and can select a supplier. For a claim, the team needs to know whether the supplier has accepted it, issued the credit and settled the amount.
Include ordinary orders as well as the difficult ones. If you start only with the oldest backlog, you will learn how the product handles a backlog, but less about the work your buyers face each morning. Set aside a backlog as a separate job if it needs different rules or follow-up.
Also decide which work stays with the team. Material approval may belong to quality or engineering; supplier selection belongs to the buyer. Mandel can obtain missing information and prepare the comparison, then carry out the approved next steps. Give it a clear route to the person who makes each decision.
Name the people who can answer questions
Choose an operational owner who knows the purchasing process and can bring in the right people. A procurement manager or experienced buyer can usually explain how the team handles supplier replies, which changes matter and when another department must decide.
The systems owner confirms the records and connections for the selected workflow. Planning joins where delivery changes affect production. Quality or engineering reviews material questions, and finance verifies invoice corrections and credits. Bring each person into the part of the rollout that needs them.
Identify a deputy for time-sensitive decisions and agree how to handle absence. A delivery change cannot wait simply because the usual buyer is on holiday. Show where the approval should go and who takes over if a supplier needs an urgent answer.
Reserve time to review the first results. A smaller starting group is easier to support if the team is busy. The review should help buyers hand work over with confidence, then become lighter as the workflow settles into routine use.
Walk through how the work gets done today
Pick a few recent orders and follow them from the first request to the result. Use the actual messages and records. Ask the buyer where they had to chase, what they checked and which parts they retyped into another system.
Include the supplier details that an experienced buyer takes for granted. One supplier wants RFQ lines in the email body; another quotes per thousand pieces. A delivery date may mean dispatch unless the buyer asks for arrival. These instructions help Mandel do the work correctly, and they belong alongside the steps and approvals for the job.
Before starting, record enough of the current workload to make a fair comparison later:
- How many orders or requests enter this workflow in a typical period?
- How many are completed, and how many are still waiting?
- How much buyer time goes into chasing, checking and updating them?
- Which decisions genuinely need a buyer, planner or technical reviewer?
- Where do delays, price differences or uncollected credits show up?
Label estimated hours as estimates. If possible, observe a small sample of real work. Separate time waiting on suppliers from time spent by your team, and note changes such as a busy season or additional staff that could affect the comparison.
Bring records that show the whole conversation
For a PO confirmation workflow, prepare the original order, supplier replies and attachments, relevant revisions, buyer decisions and the final order record. Include the agreement or other terms needed to check what the supplier has said. A reply on its own may leave out the reason a price or delivery date matters.
Select clean confirmations, missing quantities, changed dates and orders that needed several exchanges to settle. Use the supplier formats common in the first group. Include an example where the buyer correctly left the order unchanged, so the review also catches unnecessary work.
Agree the information and access needed with your systems and security owners. Confirm which suppliers, sites and business entities are included. Use the approved process for sharing records and establishing connections; keep credentials and sensitive source documents out of the planning workbook.
A historical review lets your team inspect what Mandel could have found and done on orders you already know. The review uses the information available at each point in the conversation. A later corrected PO helps check the result, but should not be treated as something known when the original reply arrived.
Set the steps, supplier instructions and approvals
Use the playbook to describe how Mandel should run the selected job. For quote collection, that could mean sending RFQs to approved suppliers, chasing missing terms, comparing the offers and bringing the supplier choice to the buyer. Supplier instructions explain details such as the required RFQ format or price basis.
Agree which actions Mandel can take without asking each time. Routine follow-up can proceed within those rules. Supplier selection, substitutions and additional spend need the approvals you specify. The instructions for a supplier do not change who can make a commercial decision.
Make approval requests useful. For a late order, the buyer needs the affected quantity, production need date, available alternative, additional cost and supporting quote. Mandel should do the investigation and preparation so the buyer can make the decision, then follow through after approval.
Work through the approval matrix with examples from the first job. Check an ordinary action that can proceed, a change needing approval and a request outside the agreed work. Confirm who receives each decision and how the buyer can take over.
Check the result before starting live work
Review the historical examples with the buyers who handled them. Did Mandel find the missing term, understand the supplier's answer and propose the right next step? Was an approval actually needed? Would the buyer have had enough information to decide?
Inspect mistakes and uncertain answers as well as successful examples. If a supplier's quantity basis was misunderstood, settle the instruction and check another example. If the record does not contain enough information, check that the missing fact is requested before a conclusion is drawn.
Use the historical review to identify discrepancies and check the proposed actions. During live work, check supplier responses and follow claims through to verified credits. A proposed claim in the review has not recovered money. The evaluation guide includes a scorecard for this review.
Before the agreed live start, confirm the included orders, working connections, supplier contacts, permitted actions and approval owners. Where ERP updates are part of the job, check the update in your system. Record any issue that must be fixed first, along with who will resolve it. The operational owner agrees when the selected work can begin.
Preparing the first Mandel workflow
Agree the work, then check the result.
The first job, past orders, current workload and a buyer who knows the process.
Results checked, systems connected, supplier instructions and approvals agreed.
Completed work, time spent by buyers and the next job to hand over.
Your operational owner agrees when live work starts and when to add another job or supplier group.
The workbook helps track preparation. Its calculated status checks whether the task, supporting record and reviewer details have been filled in. The decision to start live work is recorded separately by the person responsible.
Show buyers what they can hand over
Walk the buying team through one normal order and one that needs a decision. Show which follow-ups Mandel takes on, where the buyer receives an approval request and what happens after they approve. Make it clear which tasks the buyer can stop repeating for orders in the rollout.
Agree how messages fit the supplier relationship: the sender, reply destination and contact to use. Suppliers can continue using their existing channels. If a portal, ERP or service already sends reminders, assign the follow-up so the same supplier does not receive competing requests.
Give buyers a way to report a problem with the affected order and message attached. “The supplier quoted per thousand, but this comparison uses a per-piece price” gives the owner something specific to investigate. Keep urgent intervention and takeover straightforward.
Review the first live results often enough to catch problems while people remember the work. The frequency depends on volume and consequence. As the results become dependable, reduce unnecessary checking so the rollout delivers the capacity it was meant to free up. Keep required commercial approvals in place.
Example: follow a partial confirmation through approval
Suppose a buyer orders 500 seals. The supplier confirms 300 for October 12 and gives no date for the remaining 200. Mandel requests the missing date under the agreed follow-up rules.
The supplier offers October 19 for the balance, but planning needs the seals on October 16. Mandel brings the buyer the shortfall, the dates and the supplier's reply. The buyer asks for an earlier split. Mandel follows up with the supplier, which offers October 15, and brings that revised plan back for approval where required.
After approval, Mandel confirms the accepted plan with the supplier and updates the order in the connected system. The buyer can see the 300 due on October 12, the 200 due on October 15 and the confirmation behind each date. Warehouse receipt remains a later step.
During the review, check the whole sequence. The missing date should stay open until your team and the supplier have agreed when the balance will arrive. Count the buyer's approval time and any corrections separately from the follow-up Mandel completed. That shows whether the buyer made a necessary decision or had to redo work that should have been handled.
Review the work completed and the value delivered
Review all orders included in the trial, including those still waiting on suppliers. Compare completed work, time to resolve changes and buyer effort with the starting picture. Explain exclusions and mistakes so the team can judge where the workflow is dependable and where it needs adjustment.
For sourcing, check whether complete quotes arrived in time for the buyer to choose. For order management, check whether confirmed plans reached the ERP and changed dates were followed through. For invoice discrepancies and claims, follow the correction or credit to the financial record.
Keep potential value and verified results separate. A price difference found in an invoice is an amount to investigate. An accepted claim, issued credit and settled amount describe progress on that same money. The value measurement guide explains how to report each stage without adding them together as savings.
Use the results to choose the next job or supplier group. Add work where the team can explain what is changing and who owns it. A new site or ERP may need different connections, supplier instructions or approvals, so check those before extending the workflow.
If you pause or end the work, give each open order an owner and next action. Hand over supplier conversations still in progress and confirm where the accepted decisions and records will remain available. Buyers should be able to resume the work without reconstructing it.
Start with a job your team wants off its desk and a few orders you know well. We can use those to show how Mandel would handle the follow-up, where your buyer decides and how the approved work gets finished.
