Moots Insights.

In the world of custom manufacturing, your expertise is your greatest asset. But what happens when that expertise is wasted on administrative tasks? For many businesses, the "enquiry-to-order" process is a manual, time-consuming drain on resources that puts a hard ceiling on growth.

Every new email is a potential sale, but it's also a new task. It needs to be read, understood, validated, quoted, and manually entered into your system. When you're handling hundreds of these a day, your most skilled people end up working as data entry clerks instead of the expert engineers and artisans they are.

We saw this exact growth ceiling holding back a successful 50-person metal manufacturing firm.

The Challenge: Drowning in 500 Enquiries a Day

This company thrives on creating custom metal parts for a wide range of clients. Their challenge was twofold: volume and compliance. They were receiving around 500 email enquiries and orders every single day. Furthermore, by law, they had to perform a "fit for purpose" validation on every single custom order to ensure the proposed design and materials were sound.

This critical validation required an expert's eye, but the repetitive nature of the task created a massive bottleneck. Their most experienced staff were spending their entire day in their email inbox instead of on the factory floor, and customer response times were suffering.

The Solution: An AI Workflow That Acts Like Your Best Engineer

We used our Digit Automate service to build a powerful AI workflow that acts as a tireless, intelligent member of their sales and engineering team. The solution constantly monitors their sales inbox and performs the validation process automatically.

For each incoming email, the AI workflow now does the following in seconds:

1. Analyses the Enquiry: It reads the email and attached documents to understand the customer's requirements.
2. Performs Validation: It checks the proposed materials and design against engineering rules to confirm if it's "fit for purpose."
3. Checks Capacity: It determines whether the part can be built in-house or requires a supplier.
4. Quotes and Processes: It calculates pricing, converts valid orders into the correct ERP system format, and creates the entry.
5. Communicates: It sends automated confirmations to the customer or flags the rare, complex enquiry that still needs a human touch.

The Outcome: 90% Automation and a Foundation for Scale

The results were transformative and immediate. The AI workflow now handles approximately 450 of the 500 daily enquiries with zero human intervention.

• Operational Bottleneck Eliminated: The manual workload was reduced by 90%, allowing customer orders to move from inbox to production in minutes instead of days.
• Experts Unleashed: The skilled engineering team was freed from repetitive administration, allowing them to focus on complex, high-value custom projects and improving production processes.
• Scalability Achieved: The company can now triple its enquiry volume without needing to hire a single new administrative employee. Their capacity for growth is no longer limited by their inbox.

This isn't just about efficiency; it's about fundamentally changing what's possible for the business. By automating the bottleneck, we helped them lay the foundation for their next phase of growth.

Is your sales or order process holding your business back? Let's talk about how a custom AI workflow can automate your administrative tasks and unlock your team's true potential.