Why Kenyan procurement teams spend hours retyping orders
Across Kenya, procurement teams are spending a surprising amount of time doing a surprisingly analog task: retyping customer orders. Instead of flowing through structured workflows, many orders still arrive as WhatsApp messages, scanned PDFs, or even handwritten notes—leaving staff to manually transcribe details into enterprise systems.
The result is a hidden drag on productivity. Fragmented order formats slow down operations, introduce avoidable errors, and make it harder to maintain a single source of truth. “This fragmented process created inefficiencies across entire supply chains, leading to delays, costly mistakes and disconnected systems,” said Alexander Odhiambo, chief executive of Solutech Limited.
ERP investments, offline workflows
Many Kenyan companies have invested in enterprise resource planning platforms—SAP, Odoo, Sage and others—hoping to standardize and speed up procurement. But on-the-ground reality often looks different. Orders continue to flow through whatever channel is quickest for the buyer, while the ERP becomes a destination for manual data entry rather than the origin of automated workflows.
For distributors serving supermarkets and retail outlets, this mismatch is acute. A single purchase order can arrive via multiple channels over the same day, all in different formats that must be decoded by a human before anything moves forward.
- Morning: a photo of a handwritten order sent on WhatsApp
- Noon: a scanned PDF emailed from a back-office printer
- Afternoon: a paper note handed over by a driver
Each of these requires a staff member to interpret product codes, quantities, and delivery instructions, then key everything into the company’s systems. Multiply that by dozens or hundreds of orders, and the hours add up quickly.
Why informal channels persist
The coexistence of formal software and informal practices reflects the realities of African markets. Head offices may operate sophisticated systems, but buyers at stores and depots often prioritize speed and convenience over process purity. WhatsApp is ubiquitous, cameras are always at hand, and paper still works when networks don’t. The path of least resistance for the buyer becomes the path of most friction for the supplier.
AI automation is narrowing the gap
In response, a new class of automation tools is emerging to dissolve the format problem. Using computer vision, natural language processing and integrations with ERPs, these systems can read purchase orders from photos, scans, PDFs, emails and chat messages, then push structured data directly into company databases—no retyping required.
“Today, we have automation tools that are helping organisations to move from manual reactions to intelligent operations,” Odhiambo noted. According to him, companies deploying such technology report that AI can process orders in seconds with accuracy rates approaching 99 percent—dramatically faster than manual transcription and with fewer errors.
What changes for procurement teams
When order capture is automated, teams shift from data entry to higher-value tasks: validating exceptions, resolving discrepancies with customers, and improving supplier relationships. Cycle times shrink, out-of-stocks are reduced, and audit trails improve as every order is digitized at the source.
Adoption, however, requires care. Organisations need to consider integration with their ERPs, handle data privacy and access controls, and set up human-in-the-loop reviews for edge cases. Clear user training—especially for frontline staff who send orders—can further reduce ambiguity and improve automation accuracy.
The bottom line
Retyping orders is an avoidable tax on Kenyan supply chains. As long as buyers keep using fast, informal channels, suppliers will need a way to convert messy inputs into clean, machine-readable data. AI-powered automation offers a pragmatic bridge: it meets customers where they are while giving businesses the structured workflows their ERPs were built for. For teams drowning in WhatsApp photos and scanned PDFs, the payoff is simple—fewer errors, faster fulfillment, and hours reclaimed every week.
