A major distributor of speciality chemicals and ingredients, serving diverse industries across a national market, modernized its operations by replacing decades of manual, paper-based processes with fully automated digital workflows and real-time analytics.

The Challenge: A Paper-Based System Creating Major Operational Bottlenecks

For years, this distributor managed its complex chemical supply chain using an entirely manual process. Every shipment order, from the initial supplier purchase order through customs permits and shipping delays to final delivery, was tracked in a physical paper file. With more than 900 orders active at once, the office was flooded with files constantly circulating between departments.

“Everything was done on printed papers that we put into a file for every single order,” explained the organization’s digital transformation lead. Each file remained open for weeks or months, accumulating handwritten updates, missing information, and inconsistent documentation.

This created several compounding issues:

• Staff manually wrote completion dates on paper files
• Information frequently disappeared as files moved between teams
• 2–3 people were dedicated full-time to manually retyping paper data into spreadsheets
• KPI reporting was delayed, incomplete, and often inaccurate
• Approvals that should take 48 hours frequently took much longer
• Email chains for customer onboarding and credit approvals resulted in confusion and missing data

“In real time, we couldn’t tell which orders were falling behind. And when filling in data later, you had to guess dates, which skewed the reality of day-to-day performance.”

The organization lacked visibility, accuracy, accountability, and speed—leading to missed deadlines, slower customer response times, and a growing administrative burden.

The Solution: Digital Workflows Integrated with Real-Time Power BI Reporting

Beginning in mid-2024, the distributor partnered with Process Street to completely digitize their operations. Within weeks, the team had converted all paper files into structured, automated workflows, with Power BI providing live operational dashboards.

900 Paper Files Became Automated Workflows

Each workflow now captures every step of the supply chain process:

• Supplier purchase orders
• International shipping and customs
• Permits and local regulations
• Credit checks and approvals
• Delivery to end customers

Workflows automatically route tasks to the right people, collect metadata, and ensure each step is completed correctly, with a full audit trail.

“This flow encompasses everything that could happen. It organizes the information, sends communication to the right people, and streamlines every scenario.”

Real-Time Visibility Through Power BI

Data syncs from Process Street into Power BI twice daily giving teams:

• A clear view of which orders are on track
• Alerts for overdue or at-risk orders
• Live KPI reporting
• Accurate time measurements for approvals and processing

“We can now monitor in real time which ones are approaching deadlines and which are overdue. With 900+ files, this helps the team prioritize what needs attention immediately.”

Rolled Out Across Four Critical Processes

The new system now powers:

• Supplier purchase order tracking
• Sales-to-finance credit approval workflows
• Customer onboarding
• Credit note issuing and approvals

Every process includes defined KPIs, automated approvals, and full traceability.

The Results: Major Efficiency Gains and Accurate, Real-Time Operations

The impact was immediate and significant:

• Eliminated 2–3 full-time roles previously required solely for manual data entry
• Converted 900+ active files into digital workflows with zero information loss
• Reduced key order processing steps from 2+ days to under 48 hours
• Cut customer onboarding time from 2 days to 1 day
• Achieved 100% data accuracy through automated timestamping
• Enabled real-time KPI dashboards refreshed twice daily
• Increased throughput without expanding the team

“We don’t have people capturing data manually anymore. Those roles have been reassigned. With the same number of staff, we can now process far more, and do it faster.”

Data-Driven Continuous Improvement

By analyzing workflow data, the team can now pinpoint delays, channel-specific issues, and recurring bottlenecks: “It helps us deep dive into where problems occur and implement improvement initiatives based on solid data.”

A Streamlined Credit Note Process

One of the most celebrated improvements came from the automated credit note workflow: “Previously, the salesperson had to send details to each approver in the chain manually. Now, you just select the type of credit, fill in a few details, and the workflow handles the rest. The correct approvals and required documentation are triggered automatically.”

A Clear, Audit-Ready Compliance Trail

Email-based auditing is no longer a challenge: “For audits, scrolling through emails was nearly impossible. Now, we can instantly show when something was done, by whom, and what the status is.”

From Paper Chaos to Data-Driven Supply Chain Excellence

This chemical distributor’s shift from manual files to automated workflows and analytics has fundamentally transformed its operations. By eliminating paper, centralizing processes, and enabling real-time insights, the organization has achieved:

• Higher efficiency
• Greater processing capacity
• Better decision-making
• Stronger compliance
• A scalable operational foundation for future growth

The company plans to expand its digital workflow system across additional departments in the next year, continuing the journey toward complete operational optimization.

Note: Our solution is powered by AWS and uses these AWS services: Amazon Bedrock, Lambda, SQS, API Gateway, S3, CloudFront, Elastic Beanstalk, WAF, ELB, RDS Multi-AZ, EC2 and ElastiCache for Redis. Process Street serves as the intelligent orchestration layer, where AWS AI services power the advanced reasoning and data processing that turns policies into workflows, and then enables workflow automations, intelligent document processing, and reasoning. Specifically, ProcessStreet’s GenAI capabilities are used to ensure that customers’ policies align with their workflows and that change governance mechanisms control how tasks are updated to achieve compliance in an automated manner. This creates a closed-loop system where AI directly triggers and guides actionable workflows.

The post From 900 Paper Files to $180K Savings: A Supply Chain Breakthrough first appeared on Process Street | Compliance Operations Platform.