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Home/Industries/Procurement/Vendor Inbox Automation

Vendor Inbox Automation + Routing +Follow-ups

Turn vendor emails into structured, routed work — confirmations, ETAs, quote replies, and document requests — with auto follow-ups, clear ownership, and SLA tracking.

CORE PROMISE
IntakeUnderstandValidateRoute / RespondTrack

(Less chasing, faster cycle time)

Best For:
Procurement Ops
Buyers
Vendor Management
Sourcing Support
Shared Services
Purchasing Teams

Common pain points we solve

Procurement teams run a huge part of their operation through email:

PO acknowledgements and confirmations

Delivery ETAs and delay notices

Invoice/payment questions

RFQ/quote replies

Onboarding/compliance document requests

Back-and-forth for missing fields and approvals

The pain is not “email exists.” The pain is:

PO acknowledgements and confirmations

Delivery ETAs and delay notices

PO acknowledgements and confirmations

Delivery ETAs and delay notices

Where this fits

Ideal starting scope for a pilot implementation

Teams Involved

  • Procurement Ops
  • Buyers
  • Vendor Management
  • AP (optional)
  • Compliance (optional)

Channels

  • Shared vendor inbox
  • Individual buyer mailboxes
  • Forwarded threads

Ideal Pilot Scope

  • 1 shared vendor inbox
  • 6–10 request categories
  • Routing rules by vendor / category / urgency

Inputs & Outputs

What goes in and what comes out

Inputs

  • Emails, threads, attachments

  • SOPs / templates (missing PO, ETA confirmation, invoice status)

  • Optional reference data

    • Vendor master
    • PO master
    • Site mapping

Outputs

  • Routed work items (buyer / queue assignment)

  • Tickets or tasks with structured fields

  • Draft replies + follow-up templates (auto-filled)

  • Exception queue for unclear or missing info

  • Dashboards: volume, aging, SLA risk, vendor responsiveness

  • Audit log of actions and decisions

Categories it handles (starter set)

Start with the highest-volume procurement inbox intents:

Invoice/payment status query routing

(optional for procurement, often AP)

PO acknowledgment / confirmation

Missing info follow-ups

(PO no, ship date, line items, etc.)

Delay notice + escalation trigger

Quote / RFQ reply triage

ETA update / delivery reschedule

Vendor document request routing

(W-9, certs, compliance docs)

The Workflow

Step-by-step automation from intake to tracking

Step 1

Intake

Vendor email arrives (new or reply thread)

Step 2

Understand

Classify intent (PO confirm, ETA update, quote reply, invoice query, doc request)

Step 3

Extract

PO number, vendor name, delivery date, item refs, invoice ref, quantities, site/plant, urgency signals

Step 4

Validate

Required fields per intent (e.g., PO no. mandatory for PO-related actions)

Step 5

Route

Assign to buyer/queue based on vendor/category/site rules

Step 6

Take Action

Create ticket/task, draft reply, request missing info, escalate if SLA risk

Step 7

Track

SLA timers, backlog aging, vendor responsiveness, repeat failure reasons

What ApexIQ Delivers

Intent Taxonomy (6–10 categories)

Tuned to procurement language

Auto-followups + Reply Drafts

(template-driven, auto-filled fields)

Routing Engine

(vendor → buyer mapping, site rules, urgency)

Entity Extraction

(PO/vendor/date/qty/invoice refs) + normalization

Exception Workflow

Reason codes + assignment + SLA

Validation Rules

Per category (prevents wrong routing)

Dashboards

Backlog, cycle time, vendor responsiveness, top missing fields

Audit Trail + Monitoring

Explainable routing and continuous improvement

Integrations & Data Sources

We integrate based on your stack

Email

  • Outlook/Microsoft 365
  • Gmail/Google Workspace
  • Zoho Workspace

Ticketing/workflow

  • Jira/ServiceNow/Freshdesk
  • Zendesk/internal tools

ERP/P2P tools

  • SAP/Oracle/Coupa/etc (optional for validation & updates)

Vendor master/PO master

  • Exports or API for
  • Reference checks

Notifications

  • Teams/Slack (optional)

Accuracy & Safety Controls

Built-in safeguards and quality measures

Confidence scoring for extracted fields

Required-field checks before actions

Human-in-the-loop for high-risk actions

Exception queue for ambiguous emails

Reference validation (PO exists, vendor matches)

Full audit trail of extraction, routing, and responses

Honest positioning

Automates triage and follow-ups.

Humans retain control over approvals and money decisions.

Pilot Plan (2–4 Weeks)

A proven timeline to get you to production

W1Week 1

Discovery

  • Select inbox + top categories
  • Gather sample emails (anonymized)
  • Define routing rules + templates + SLAs
W2Week 2

Build

  • Configure classifier + extraction
  • Implement validation + exception handling
  • Build ticket creation + draft replies
W3Week 3

Shadow + tune

  • Run parallel to current triage
  • Measure routing accuracy and reduce misclassification
  • Improve missing-info templates and completeness checks
W4Week 4

Rollout + expand

  • Enable automation for high-confidence cases
  • Add SLA alerts + dashboards
  • Expand to another category or second inbox if stable

Pilot KPI Targets

Reduced manual triage time
Faster assignment time to the right buyer/queue
Reduced “missing info” loops
Faster response time to vendor updates
Backlog aging reduction
Vendor responsiveness improvement (time-to-confirm/ETA capture)

What We Need From You

Client checklist to kick off the pilot

1
200–400 sample QA emails (anonymized) with attachments if possible
2
Defect / incident taxonomy + severity rules (or we draft them)
3
Routing matrix (who owns what)
4
Workflow destination tool access
5
Reference data: part master / supplier list (optional but strong)
6
One QA lead + one reviewer for weekly tuning

Want procurement inbox workflows without chasing and forwarding?

Book a consultation or request an assessment—we'll recommend the best first workflow to pilot.