IDP Case Study: Agribologna Automates 130,000 Agri-Food Documents a Year with AI
Around 130,000 documents a year automated: delivery notes, customer orders, adjustments and invoices, posted into the AS400 (IBM i) ERP with customer and item codes checked against the AS400.
Key figures
- Documents/year
- 130K
- Processing time
- -60%
- Accuracy with Claude
- 99.8%
Case sheet
Status:In production
- Customer
- Agribologna
- Sector
- Agri-food, fruit and vegetable cooperative
- Based in
- Emilia-Romagna, Italy
- Process automated
- Posting sales and procurement cycle documents into the ERP
- Documents
- Inbound and outbound delivery notes (DDT)
- Customer orders (email, PDF, portal)
- Price and quantity adjustments
- Vehicle and equipment rental invoices
- Logistics and transport service invoices
- Capture channel
- Email, scanners and supplier portals
- Connected systems
- AS400 (IBM i)
- Data Alchemy solutions
- Volumes
- Over 130,000 documents a year
- Key results
- 60% less processing time
- 99.8% data extraction accuracy with Claude
- Automatic reconciliation of delivery notes, orders and invoices
- Customer codes checked against the AS400 starting from the company name; line item codes checked with external fields
Why Agribologna Chose IDP Software for Document Automation
Agri-food companies like Agribologna handle high volumes of transport documents (DDT/delivery notes), customer orders, supplier invoices and price lists every day — documents that traditionally require hours of manual data entry into the ERP. Manual processing of these documents leads to:
- ▶Data entry time that takes resources away from strategic activities
- ▶Transcription errors on item codes, quantities and prices
- ▶Delays in accounting registration and reconciliation
- ▶Integration difficulties with existing ERP systems
Data Alchemy's Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solution addresses these challenges with end-to-end automation that integrates with the ERP systems most used in Italy, such as SAP, Zucchetti, TeamSystem and AS400 (IBM i).
The challenge
Agribologna, a leading fruit and vegetable cooperative in Emilia-Romagna, handles over 130,000 documents per year across its sales and procurement cycles: inbound and outbound DDT shipping documents, customer orders, price and quantity adjustments, equipment rental invoices, and logistics service invoices. Manual entry into their ERP required a dedicated team and caused recurring errors on item codes, quantities, and order references.
The solution
Data Alchemy automatically captures all documents — from email, scanners, and supplier portals — and extracts structured data with AI. The system identifies the document type, maps fields to the ERP, and runs automatic validation on every line by cross-referencing item master data, price lists, and existing orders. Adjustments are reconciled against the original DDTs, while rental and service invoices are matched to active contracts through automatic invoice reconciliation. Where a purchase order and a delivery note exist, the platform performs automatic three-way matching (invoice / purchase order / DDT), flagging only the documents that fail a check for human review — everything else is posted to the ERP automatically.
Documents processed
“Data Alchemy has transformed the way we manage documents. What used to take hours of manual data entry now happens automatically, with an accuracy that surpasses human performance. Our team can finally focus on value-added activities.”
— CIO, Agribologna
Results in numbers
After deploying Data Alchemy's IDP platform, Agribologna achieved measurable, ERP-integrated outcomes across the procurement and sales cycle:
- 130,000+ documents per year processed automatically (DDTs, orders, invoices, adjustments)
- 60% reduction in document processing time
- 99.8% data extraction accuracy with Claude across handwritten, scanned and digital documents
- Customer codes checked against the AS400 starting from the company name (remote validation); line item codes checked with external fields
- Direct integration with the ERP, with no manual export/import
How Agribologna Went Live in 5 Working Days
Unlike traditional OCR projects that require weeks of template design, the Agribologna deployment required no document templates at all. The rollout followed four steps:
- 01
Day 1 — Document capture setup
A dedicated business mailbox was connected to Data Alchemy, so inbound DDTs, customer orders and supplier invoices arriving by email are captured automatically. Scanner and supplier-portal sources were added to the same intake queue.
- 02
Days 2–3 — ERP integration
Data Alchemy was connected to Agribologna's AS400 ERP. Remote validation checks customer codes starting from the company name read on the document, while external fields work on the document lines, mainly on the item codes. No manual export/import was required.
- 03
Day 4 — Validation rules
Every extracted line is checked in real time against the ERP: item codes must exist in the master data, prices must match the active price list, and quantities are reconciled against the referenced order or original DDT. Documents that fail a check are routed to a human review queue instead of being posted with errors.
- 04
Day 5 — Operator training and go-live
The administration and logistics teams were trained on the review queue. From day one, documents that pass validation are posted to the ERP without human intervention.
A rollout like this starts from the licence that fits your needs — Basic, Business or Enterprise — plus pay-as-you-go credits, with a quote on request. Compare the licences.
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