Arena saw 78% fewer disruptions in their inbound supply chain

Arena runs a supplier base that spans hundreds of counterparties, each with their own way of confirming an order. The purchase orders lived in the ERP. The confirmations lived in the inbox. Closing the gap between the two was a full-time job for the planning team, until they handed it to an agent.

The work lived in the inbox

Arena's planners spent their mornings the way most planning teams do: chasing suppliers who had not confirmed a purchase order, reading confirmations buried in forwarded threads, and reconciling replies that arrived as PDFs, spreadsheets, or a line of text in an email body. The ERP showed the order. It did nothing to close it.

With 200+ suppliers, the volume made this unmanageable by hand. Every supplier formatted things their own way, so there was no template to key off. A planner had to open each message, find the confirmation, and decide whether it matched.

“We were not short on data. We were short on the hours it took to reconcile what suppliers sent back against what we ordered.” — Head of Procurement, Arena