Article · 20 June 2026
Automation in B2B trade: not a chatbot — purchasing and quotes
Where AI in distribution actually takes cost out: forecast, replenishment, quotes from contract history. And where a human stays.
A chatbot on a B2B site rarely moves margin. Stockouts do. So does a wrong lead time in a quote, and a salesperson retyping 2019 PDF terms. If you deploy AI in distribution, wire it where the money already sits: purchasing, stock, quoting.
Three use cases with ROI
Demand forecast. Not “we will see the future”. A PO proposal with a rationale the buyer can reject. KPIs: A-class stockouts and C-class surplus.
Replenishment across sites. Transfers instead of buying from scratch. A model without ERP inventory is useless here.
Quotes from contract history. Price lists, discounts, logistics exceptions. A draft for the salesperson — not an email to the customer straight from the model.
What not to automate first
New SKUs with no history. Strategic negotiations. Accounts with handwritten addenda that never hit the system. That is an exception queue, not a prompt.
Integration is the product
Comarch, SAP, BaseLinker, a custom Magento — without a write-back to the source you have a report. Reports do not remove hours. A document someone approves in a tool they already use does.
Start with one sales channel and one warehouse. Scale is the reward for custodianship, not for the kick-off.
