How a $5B agricultural manufacturer automated complex order changes in six weeks
A $5B agricultural inputs manufacturer sells fertilizer and crop nutrients to some of the largest farms in North America. Its biggest customers manage tens of thousands of acres across multiple states, with dozens of farms, storage locations and delivery points.
Those orders change constantly. Rain can push an application window back a week. Crop conditions change how much fertilizer a farm needs. Acreage shifts between crops. Agronomists revise their recommendations. Government programs and commodity prices change planting decisions. An order for 1,000 tons placed months earlier might need to arrive in different quantities, on different dates, at three different locations.
The challenge
The manufacturer's customer care team of 100 sat in the middle of every change. A customer might email asking to move 200 tons from one farm to another, postpone a second delivery and leave the rest of the order as is.
Executing that one request meant coordinating across the customer, the ERP, the warehouse, the freight provider and the sales team. Representatives spent thousands of hours a year finding the right orders, checking what had already shipped, confirming inventory and freight, updating each system and getting back to the customer.
In peak season, the team was underwater. Changes took hours or days. Information was rekeyed by hand, and mistakes were expensive. Product went to the wrong location or in the wrong quantity. Trucks arrived after orders had changed. Customers rejected deliveries they could no longer store, which meant returns, redelivery costs and frustrated growers.
In agriculture, late can mean worthless. If fertilizer arrives after the application window closes, delivering it correctly a week later may no longer help the farmer.
What we built
Preconfigured's deployment team embedded with customer care, sales and operations to automate the order change workflow end to end.
Within six weeks, the first agentic system was in production. Built on Preconfigured's commercial engine, it works across Salesforce, the ERP, and warehouse and transportation systems. It reads customer emails and cases, understands the requested change, finds the affected orders and shipments, and checks inventory, freight and delivery constraints.
The agent then prepares the complete change for the representative: what needs to move, which systems need updating, any exceptions that need approval, and the reply to the customer. Once approved, the change runs across every system automatically.
The customer care team no longer coordinates the change. They supervise it.
What changed
- First solution live in 6 weeks
- 30% less manual work for customer care
- Order changes completed in minutes instead of hours
- 62% fewer order change errors and avoidable redeliveries
- Further savings from fewer returns, expedited shipments and freight corrections
The impact went beyond labor savings. The team gained capacity when it mattered most, in peak season. Customers got faster answers. And fewer mistakes turned into costly problems downstream.
What's next
With order changes automated, the manufacturer is extending the same system to customer order service.
Large growers can ask what's arriving across their locations, which deliveries are confirmed, or whether an order can be moved. The agent pulls the answer from Salesforce, the ERP and transportation systems. When the customer asks for a change, the same workflow prepares it for execution.
The goal is simple. Customers describe what they need once, and the manufacturer handles everything else.