In most manufacturing companies, creating a purchase order is not the difficult part. The ERP takes care of that perfectly well. The real work begins when the purchase order reaches the supplier. A delivery date needs to be confirmed. A quantity changes. One line will be late, another can ship earlier. A purchaser needs an answer before tomorrow’s production meeting. Somewhere in the middle of all this, an email arrives.
Then another.
Soon, a process that started as structured data in the ERP has turned into a trail of messages, attachments, confirmations and changes spread across individual inboxes. Someone in procurement has to make sense of it all, decide what matters, and manually bring the relevant information back into the ERP. Multiply that by hundreds of suppliers and thousands of purchase order lines, and something rather strange happens: highly sophisticated manufacturing companies end up relying on people to manually connect two parts of a process that are already digital.
The purchase order is digital. The collaboration around it often isn’t.
And that is the problem purchase order collaboration and integration should actually solve. Not by replacing the ERP, but by extending the digital process beyond it — to the suppliers, confirmations, changes and everyday conversations that make a purchase order actually happen.
At Jakamo, this is not a theoretical integration model. Manufacturing companies have connected Jakamo to different ERP environments and moved significant parts of their supplier-facing purchase order processes away from email and into a shared, structured workflow.
The ERP remains at the heart of the internal process. What changes is everything that happens around it.
Your ERP Is Doing Its Job
ERP systems are very good at what they were designed to do. They manage internal business data and processes: purchase orders, materials, inventory, production, finance and master data.
But a purchase order is also a promise between two companies. Once it is sent to a supplier, the process becomes interactive.
Can the supplier meet the requested date? Does the supplier confirm the full quantity? Has one line changed? Is there a question about the order? What happens when a confirmed delivery date changes three days later?
These are not simply data-management questions. They are collaboration questions.
In many manufacturing companies, email becomes the bridge between the supplier and the ERP. The purchaser receives information, decides what it means, updates the ERP and communicates the next step. When this happens across hundreds of suppliers and thousands of purchase order lines, the purchaser effectively becomes a human integration layer.
That is where the hidden workload starts.
Jakamo’s research with manufacturing companies has shown just how much time this manual layer can consume. In a typical manufacturing company, an operative purchaser may spend approximately 50% of their working time on non-value-added tasks such as comparing purchase orders with supplier confirmations, entering confirmations into the ERP, following up on late confirmations and deliveries, handling order-related documents, and searching for information scattered across multiple inboxes.
In other words, the purchaser is not only purchasing. A significant part of the working day can be spent manually keeping the supplier, the purchase order and the ERP synchronized.
The opportunity is therefore not simply to automate data transfer. It is to remove routine work that does not require a purchaser’s expertise, so that purchasing teams can spend more time on supplier collaboration, quality management, sourcing, bidding, negotiation and supply chain development.
The Missing Layer Between ERP and Suppliers
A modern purchase order process should not force a company to choose between its ERP and supplier collaboration. They serve different purposes.
The ERP remains the internal system of record. Jakamo provides the shared collaboration layer between the buying company and its suppliers.
In a typical integrated setup, purchase order information can move from the customer’s ERP to Jakamo, where the supplier receives and works with the order. Supplier confirmations and relevant changes can then become part of a structured process instead of arriving as disconnected emails that someone has to interpret manually.
This distinction matters because many procurement teams do not need another internal purchasing system. They need a better way to extend their existing process beyond the company boundary.
Jakamo is designed around that boundary: the point where internal ERP data becomes external supplier collaboration.
Crimppi provides a practical example. Previously, purchase orders were sent to suppliers as PDF attachments via email, while confirmations and changes were managed manually. With Jakamo, the order and confirmation process is automated: orders are sent through the platform, suppliers confirm them, and buyers are notified when something changes.
Instead of purchase order information being scattered across individual inboxes, both the customer and supplier work with the same shared data. Purchase orders, confirmations and changes are transparent and traceable. If a purchaser is absent, a colleague can step in without having to reconstruct the status of an order from someone else’s email history.
For Crimppi, this has also meant freeing purchasing resources for work such as competitive sourcing, supplier relationship development and customer response management.
“Taking Jakamo into use has been the biggest leap forward since we implemented our ERP system – especially for procurement. We’ve only been using the platform for a few months, but the benefits are clear,” says Anne Mäki, Purchasing Engineer at Crimppi.
Fortaco demonstrates what the same principle can mean at a larger operational scale. Before Jakamo, purchase orders, confirmations and supplier communication generated hundreds of emails, even though around 80% of purchase orders were confirmed by suppliers exactly as requested and required no further action.
After integrating the process with Jakamo, those routine confirmations no longer require the same manual handling. Suppliers confirm orders through Jakamo, relevant data is transferred to the ERP, and purchasers can focus their attention on changes and exceptions.
The results show the operational impact: supplier confirmations became three times faster, 80% of purchase order confirmations are handled automatically, and Fortaco can increase purchasing activity without increasing purchasing resources.
The important change is therefore not simply ERP integration. It is that routine transactions can flow automatically while purchasers focus their attention on the situations that actually require human judgment.
Real Example: Fortaco – From Email-Driven Purchasing to Automated PO Collaboration
Fortaco provides a more recent example of what ERP-connected purchase order collaboration can achieve at manufacturing scale.
Before Jakamo, operative purchasing relied heavily on email for purchase orders, confirmations and supplier communication. Around 80% of purchase orders were confirmed by suppliers exactly as requested and required no further action. Yet those routine confirmations still arrived in purchasers’ inboxes and had to be processed as part of the daily workload.
“It was always depressing to open my inbox in the morning and see hundreds of messages. Important emails could easily get lost in the flow,” says Janne Leppinen, Purchaser at Fortaco.
The problem was not the ERP itself. The workload existed around it. Purchasers were doing manual double work between email and ERP, while order-related information was tied to individual employees and their inboxes.
With Jakamo, the order and confirmation process changed fundamentally. Purchase orders are sent through the platform, suppliers confirm them, and the relevant data is automatically transferred to the ERP. Instead of processing every routine confirmation, purchasers can focus their attention on orders where something has changed and action is actually required.
The operational results are significant. Supplier confirmations are now three times faster, and 80% of purchase order confirmations can be handled automatically without manual action from the purchaser. The ERP stays up to date with order-delivery-related information, while changed orders are easier to identify and manage.
The impact also extends beyond process efficiency. Fortaco reports that purchasing activity can increase without increasing purchasing resources, while purchasers have more time for strategic supply chain management.
“Jakamo has eliminated repetitive email exchanges and freed up time for more value-adding work, like supply chain management,” says Mikko Oksanen, Purchasing Manager at Fortaco.
This is an important distinction when evaluating purchase order integration. The value does not come simply from connecting two systems. It comes from reducing the amount of routine information that people have to manually transfer, check and manage between those systems.
And automation alone is not enough. Suppliers have to actually use the process for the integration to create value at scale. That makes supplier adoption an essential part of successful purchase order integration — not a separate implementation issue.
Integration Should Make Daily Work Simpler, Not Add Another System to Manage
A common concern with any procurement technology project is understandable: are we solving one problem by adding another tool? That is the wrong outcome.
The user should not have to manually copy the same information between the ERP, a collaboration platform and email. The purpose of integration is to preserve the ERP’s role while removing repetitive supplier-facing work around it.
For the buying organization, this means the existing ERP can continue to handle the internal purchase order process. Jakamo handles the shared interaction with suppliers in a structured environment. For suppliers, the collaboration model must be simple enough to adopt across companies with very different systems, resources and levels of digital maturity.
This is why connectivity alone is not enough. The technical integration, supplier onboarding and daily user experience all affect whether the process creates value.
Jakamo uses well-documented APIs to connect with customers’ internal systems. Jakamo has been integrated with ERP environments including Epicor, IFS, Lean System, Lemonsoft, Microsoft Business Central, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and SAP.
Because the APIs and integration documentation are already well established, building the connection is typically a relatively lightweight part of the implementation. Depending on the customer’s ERP environment and requirements, integration projects are generally measured in weeks rather than months.
But the business objective behind the technology is much simpler: information should move between the ERP, Jakamo and the supplier without procurement teams having to manually rebuild the process every time something changes.
What Happens When a Purchase Order Changes?
This is where the difference between a digital purchase order and digital purchase order collaboration becomes easiest to see. Imagine that a supplier has confirmed an order, but later realizes that one item will be delivered a week late. In an email-based process, the supplier sends a message. The purchaser has to notice it, identify the correct purchase order and line, understand the impact, update the relevant system and possibly inform production or other colleagues. If the information changes again, another message starts another round of manual work.
In a collaborative process, the change becomes part of the purchase order workflow itself:
In a typical Jakamo process, when a supplier changes a previously confirmed delivery date or quantity, the purchaser receives a notification in the ERP or by email. The order moves to Waiting for Customer’s Action, making it immediately clear that the supplier’s change requires a decision from the buyer.
The purchaser can then accept the change, in which case the order returns to Confirmed status. Alternatively, the purchaser can propose a new delivery date or quantity. The order then moves to Waiting for Supplier Confirmation, and the supplier receives a notification through Jakamo.
Throughout the process, both parties share a real-time view of the order status. Instead of a change disappearing into an individual inbox, both the customer and supplier can see where the order stands and which party needs to act next.
In some customer environments, predefined tolerance limits can allow a changed confirmation to pass directly into the ERP without manual approval. This is technically possible depending on the capabilities of the ERP, but it is a relatively rare configuration. In most cases, a supplier-initiated change requires the purchaser’s approval.
This sounds like a small operational difference. Across thousands of order lines, it becomes a major productivity and visibility difference. More importantly, exceptions become visible as exceptions. Procurement can spend less time processing routine confirmations and more time dealing with the orders that actually require attention.
Why Supplier Adoption Is Part of ERP Integration
Traditional integration discussions often focus on systems: APIs, data formats, interfaces and master data. Those things matter. But purchase order collaboration crosses company boundaries, which means the process only works when suppliers participate.
This is one of the reasons Jakamo treats onboarding as part of the solution rather than an afterthought. Fortaco provides a strong example. Implementation began in early June, and full-scale use was launched by September — exactly as planned. Despite the rollout taking place during the peak summer vacation period, the onboarding stayed on track.
“We were positively surprised by how easy and fast the implementation was. Even the technical aspects were simple to understand, and the entire process was clearly well-designed by Jakamo. It was obvious this wasn’t their first rollout!” says Mikko Oksanen, Purchasing Manager at Fortaco.
With Jakamo’s onboarding support, the rollout included integration, data setup, and training for both Fortaco employees and suppliers. The result was rapid adoption of the actual purchasing process. Just two weeks after go-live, approximately 80% of Fortaco’s annual purchase order lines were already being transferred via Jakamo.
That is a more meaningful measure than simply counting how many supplier accounts have been created. It shows how much of the actual operational purchasing flow has moved into the collaborative process. mFor manufacturers with large supplier bases, this changes the integration question from “Can our ERP connect to the platform?” to “Can we move enough of our supplier network into the process to change how procurement actually works?”
That is a much more important question.
When Does a Separate Purchase Order Collaboration Layer Make Sense?
Not every company needs a dedicated collaboration platform around its ERP. If purchase order volumes are low, the supplier base is small and changes are rare, email may remain manageable.
The case becomes stronger when a manufacturer has a large or international supplier network, high purchase order volume, frequent confirmations and changes, significant manual ERP updating, poor visibility into supplier responses, or procurement professionals spending too much time chasing routine information. It becomes particularly relevant when the company’s own operational performance depends heavily on supplier performance.
Another signal is that the ERP process looks digital internally but becomes manual as soon as it crosses the company boundary. In that situation, replacing the ERP is usually not the logical first question. A better question is whether the collaboration around the ERP can be redesigned.
ERP as the System of Record. Jakamo as the Collaboration Layer.
The most useful way to think about purchase order integration is not as an IT project between two systems. It is as a redesign of how information moves between companies. The ERP continues doing what it does well: managing the company’s internal purchase order data and processes.
Jakamo extends that process to the supplier network, creating a shared environment for purchase orders, confirmations, changes, documents and interaction. That removes the need for email to act as the unofficial operating system between suppliers and procurement.
The result is not simply a more automated purchase order. It is a purchase order process in which the buying company and supplier can work from the same structured flow while the ERP remains at the core of the customer’s internal operations. For manufacturers already investing heavily in ERP, that distinction is critical. Modernising supplier collaboration does not have to mean replacing the systems that already work.
It means connecting them to the people and companies they were never designed to manage alone.
