Conexiom Launches Relay to Automate Unstructured Order Data for Manufacturers
The new AI-native tool targets the 'black box' problem by allowing users to audit and edit the rules governing order and invoice automation.
Conexiom has launched Conexiom Relay, an AI-native platform designed to automate the order and invoice life cycles for manufacturers and distributors. The tool aims to eliminate manual data entry by converting unstructured communications into ERP-ready data.
Relay differs from traditional automation tools that require clean PDF files. Instead, it processes unstructured data from a variety of sources, including email threads, spreadsheets, text messages, images, and handwritten notes. To ensure operational control, the product features an "Intelligence Console," which provides transparency into AI-driven decisions to move away from opaque "black box" models. According to company data, the platform reports accuracy levels above 95% and is compatible with 40 different ERP systems. The underlying AI was trained using 15 years of transaction history.
The Crisis of Tribal Knowledge
Many distributors and manufacturers currently rely on customer service representatives (CSRs) to manually interpret raw communications and enter them into corporate systems. This reliance on human intervention has become a strategic vulnerability due to a "silver tsunami" of retiring experienced staff. As these veterans leave the workforce, companies risk losing the "tribal knowledge" required to interpret complex, non-standardized orders. Additionally, the risks associated with ERP modernization often make it difficult for companies to implement rigid automation that cannot handle the messiness of real-world communication.
Moving Beyond Faith-Based AI
In the supply chain, errors in pricing, customer accounts, or order quantities have immediate negative impacts on billing and fulfillment. Because of these stakes, Conexiom is positioning Relay as a "defensible" asset rather than a tool based on faith. By using the Intelligence Console and a Playbook, humans can see and edit the specific rules the AI follows.
"AI is not created equal. Transparency is key," said Michel Feaster, CEO of Conexiom. Bryan DeGraw, Principal of The Hackett Group, noted that making these rules visible and editable is the critical difference between automation a company can defend and automation it simply accepts on faith.
Scaling Supply Chain Automation
Conexiom is introducing Relay from a position of significant scale, already processing more than 1.5 billion line items annually for a customer base of over 600 companies. The launch signals a broader shift toward AI that can handle the "last mile" of unstructured data without requiring customers to change how they communicate with their partners.
Industry observers will now be watching to see if this transparent approach to AI reduces the implementation time for ERP-integrated automation and whether it can effectively capture the institutional knowledge of a retiring workforce before that data is lost.