Docu-ORDER: How To Automate Daily Purchasing
Docu-ORDER is a one-stop digital platform for managing orders between buyers and suppliers.
A chain of cafés, restaurants, or canteens may work with dozens of suppliers every day while placing a large number of small orders. Under these conditions, traditional purchasing methods — phone calls and emails — gradually become a source of overwhelming manual work.
Orders have to be prepared and sent through different channels, information must be entered manually, and invoices received from suppliers need to be processed and entered into the accounting or ERP system. The more locations, canteens, cafés, or other business units involved in the process, the more difficult it becomes to manage and control.
This is exactly the challenge addressed by Docu-ORDER — an environment for placing orders with suppliers and receiving invoices, built on the docura.net platform.
Example: Daily Purchasing at Fristar SIA
Fristar SIA is a chain of canteens operating in Latvia. To support its daily operations, each location regularly orders food products from multiple suppliers.
When a company works with a large number of suppliers, daily purchasing involves a significant number of operations: selecting products, preparing and sending orders, receiving deliveries, checking them against the relevant documents, processing invoices, and transferring the data to the ERP system.
Docu-ORDER brings these operations together into a single digital process. Instead of placing some orders by phone, others by email, and then processing incoming documents separately, employees can work through one portal.
One Channel for Working with Suppliers
The main idea behind Docu-ORDER is simple: all purchase orders are placed through a single channel on the docura.net portal. Suppliers provide their product ranges and prices, after which the products become available to the buyer in an electronic catalogue. Each canteen selects the required items and places its order directly through the portal.
For regularly recurring purchases, standard orders can be saved. Employees do not have to create every order from scratch: they can use a previous order or a predefined template as a starting point and make the necessary changes. This is particularly convenient for food service businesses where a significant part of the product range is purchased on a regular basis.
More Than Just an Order: Invoice Processing
Once an order has been prepared, the supplier delivers the goods and sends an electronic invoice to the buyer. The buyer accepts the delivery and checks whether the goods received match the order and accompanying documents.
If the quantity and quality of the goods correspond to the order, the invoice is approved and transferred to the buyer’s ERP system without the need to enter the data manually again. If a discrepancy is identified during the receiving process, the buyer submits a claim to the supplier. Once the required changes have been agreed upon, the supplier sends a new, corrected invoice. In this way, the order, delivery, and invoice become parts of one consistent end-to-end process.
Additional AI Capabilities
Docu-ORDER can also be enhanced with AI-based tools. When an order is being prepared, the system can perform a comparative price analysis of products within the same category — for example, chicken breast, French fries, or other items.
AI can help identify the most cost-effective offer and recommend it for purchase by highlighting the relevant item. This provides the purchasing manager with additional information directly at the time the order is being prepared and makes it easier to compare available offers within a single workflow.
As a result, the portal can do more than simply support the operational process of placing orders — it can also assist with purchasing data analysis.
Docu-ORDER as a Single Channel for Working with Customers
A supplier can also initiate the implementation of the Docu-ORDER ordering portal. From a supplier’s or manufacturer’s perspective, the portal is particularly useful when a company receives a large number of small orders from many customers and wants to move them into a single standardized channel.
This approach has been implemented, for example, for Valio Eesti AS: school canteens can place their daily orders through the portal instead of sending orders by email or placing them over the phone.
EDI Operator Docura
Docura OÜ provides the technical solution, ongoing support, as well as a mass partner onboarding service. If you have any questions, please contact us at support@docura.net.
