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How a distributor automated 9,000 hours of back-office work with AI.
Finance, HR and operations teams were spending their days copying data from one system to another. Skillfi's fractional CIO mapped every manual process, picked the ones worth automating and launched AI agents with people approving every important step. It's how our fractional CIO service works: technology that makes the whole business run better.
Skilled people working as human copy-and-paste.
The company distributes industrial parts from five warehouses, running on nine systems that didn't talk to each other: an ERP, a CRM, payroll, an HR system, a warehouse system and several spreadsheets.
Finance keyed supplier invoices by hand. HR typed new-hire details into four systems. Operations copied order changes between the CRM and the warehouse system. Errors caused late payments, payroll mistakes and wrong shipments, and every team kept asking for more headcount. Leadership wanted to use AI, but had no plan and worried about letting it touch financial data.
We were hiring accountants and HR people, then asking them to spend half their day typing.
CFO, client
Automate what's worth it, keep people in charge of what matters.
Our fractional CIO started with the work, not the technology, then chose where AI agents would pay back fastest and safely. Teams learned to work alongside the agents through our Claude workshops.
Every manual process measured
60 processes across finance, HR and operations mapped, timed and scored on hours saved, error risk and how easy they were to automate.
Eight AI agents for the biggest wins
Agents that read invoices, update records across systems, check data and prepare work, connected to the existing systems instead of replacing them.
People approve what matters
Human approval for payments and pay changes, clear limits on what each agent can do, full audit logs and a weekly exceptions review.
6 months, step by step
From copy-and-paste work to AI agents with human oversight. Here's how the engagement unfolded.
- Month 160 processes
Process discovery
Workshops with every team to map, time and score their manual processes.
- Month 1–2Top 8 chosen
Business case & guardrails
Top 8 processes chosen, savings estimated and rules set for data access, approvals and audit trails.
- Month 2–32 agents live
Finance agents
Invoice processing and payment matching agents built, tested and run alongside the team first.
- Month 3–48 agents live
HR & operations agents
New-hire setup, order updates, stock checks and supplier follow-ups automated across systems.
- Month 5140 people trained
Team training
Every affected team trained to review agent work, handle exceptions and suggest new automations.
- Month 6Board approved
Results & roadmap
Savings measured and a two-year automation roadmap presented to the board.
Agents across the back office
Eight agents working across finance, HR and operations, with clear limits and a person approving anything that matters.
Invoices to payment
- Invoices read & coded
- Payments matched
- Approval before paying
People data in sync
- New hires set up once
- Changes flow to payroll
- Pay changes approved
Orders & suppliers
- Order changes synced
- Stock checks
- Supplier follow-ups
Safe by design
- Limits on every agent
- Full audit logs
- Weekly exceptions review
Six months after kickoff
Time to process a supplier invoice
Across 3,000 supplier invoices a month.
Our teams now review work instead of typing it. We saved $1.8M without a single layoff, and every payment still gets a human sign-off.
CFO, clientAre your teams copying data between systems?
Our fractional CIO will map your manual work, choose where AI agents pay back fastest and launch them safely with your people in control. Want your teams confident working with AI? Add a Claude workshop.
- A manual process map & business case
- AI agents for your biggest wins
- Guardrails, approvals & audit logs
- An automation roadmap
30 minutes. No obligation.
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