NAVON
Industries · Manufacturing

Manufacturing operations, coordinated.

Requisitions, purchase orders, supplier coordination, three-way invoice match, and operational reporting across plants.

The shape of the operation

Coordination lives in four places. None of them talk.

A typical mid-market manufacturer runs on SAP, NetSuite, or Dynamics for the ERP, supplier portals and EDI for procurement traffic, Outlook for everything that does not fit the ERP, and a stack of spreadsheets for cost rollups, schedules, and exceptions. Every PO confirmation gets retyped. Every shortage gets logged twice. Cross-plant reports take a week to build.

The work the platform removes is not the work the ERP is supposed to do. It is the coordination between the ERP, the inbox, the supplier portals, and the spreadsheets. That is where production stalls, working capital leaks, and the COO loses sight of how the operation is actually running.

Tool landscape
Typical setup
How data moves

Requisition to pay, today.

Plant request to invoice payment. Five stages. Each one currently sits in a different system, owned by a different person, updated by hand. This is what we automate first.

  1. Stage 1
    Requisition
    Plant request raised
  2. Stage 2
    PO
    Released to supplier
  3. Stage 3
    Confirmation
    Supplier acknowledges
  4. Stage 4
    Receiving
    Goods checked in
  5. Stage 5
    Invoice
    Three-way match and pay
Where automation lands

Six workflows we automate first.

Identified by buyers, plant managers, AP, and the COO running the work today. Each one replaces something a person is doing manually. We build them as discrete engagements, in priority order.

Requisition intake

Plant requisitions raised by email, paper form, or shop floor. Navon classifies the category, validates against the budget, and opens the PO record in the ERP with the right cost center.

Replaces: Buyers keying requisitions by hand

Supplier confirmation tracking

PO acknowledgements and ship-date changes pulled from email and supplier portals, written back to the ERP. Late confirmations escalated to the buyer before they hold up production.

Replaces: Inbox sweeps and follow-up calls

Receiving discrepancy flag

Receiving counts compared to PO and packing list at the dock. Shorts, overs, and damages flagged with photos attached and routed to the buyer and the supplier in one ticket.

Replaces: Spreadsheet exception logs

Three-way invoice match

PO, receiving, and supplier invoice reconciled automatically. Clean matches release for payment. Mismatches surface to AP with the discrepancy isolated, not the whole invoice.

Replaces: Page-by-page AP review

Approval routing for spend thresholds

Requisitions and POs over thresholds routed to the right plant manager, finance lead, or executive. Authority limits respected automatically. Audit trail intact.

Replaces: Forwarded emails and signatures by hand

Cross-plant operational reporting

Production, spend, supplier performance, and OTIF rolled up across plants on a schedule. One dashboard the COO actually opens, not five exports being stitched together.

Replaces: Manual report consolidation
Where Navon fits

Advisory leads. Automations do the work. The platform hosts it.

For manufacturing specifically, here is what each practice line looks like.

Advisory

We start in the requisition queue.

Time with buyers, plant managers, AP, and the COO. Walk-throughs of the requisition-to-pay cycle, supplier exception handling, and how cross-plant reporting actually gets built. Written findings, phased plan, operator sign-off before anything gets built.

AI automations

Intake, match, escalate.

Requisition intake. Supplier confirmation pulled from email and portals. Receiving discrepancy flagging. Three-way invoice match. Approval routing for spend thresholds. Each one scoped discretely, sequenced by what unblocks the most production time first.

Platform

The layer underneath.

Requisitions, POs, supplier confirmations, receiving exceptions, invoices. All in one place with structured ownership. Pulls from and writes to SAP, NetSuite, Dynamics, supplier portals, and email. Your existing systems stay.

FAQ

Manufacturing-specific questions.

The operational questions manufacturing buyers ask before the first call.

How does this work with our ERP?

Navon sits alongside your ERP, not as a replacement. SAP, NetSuite, Dynamics, JDE, Infor — the platform pulls from and writes to whatever you run today. The automations remove the coordination work between the ERP, supplier portals, email, and spreadsheets that those systems were never designed to handle.

Does this touch shop floor or MES data?

Not by default. The first phase of work focuses on the office side: requisitions, POs, supplier coordination, receiving, AP, and reporting. Shop floor and MES integration is a later scope when the operational case is clear and the systems are stable.

We have multiple plants. Does the platform handle that?

Yes. Cost centers, plant codes, and approval authority limits are configured per location. The platform respects the hierarchy you already use. Cross-plant rollups are built specifically because most ERPs make this hard.

What about EDI traffic with our suppliers?

EDI integration is part of the deployment scope when relevant. Most mid-market manufacturers have a mix of EDI, email, and supplier portal interactions. The automations handle all three formats and normalize them into a single record per PO.

What does the first engagement usually look like?

An operational audit. We spend time with buyers, plant managers, AP, and the COO. Walk through the requisition-to-pay flow, supplier exception handling, and how cross-plant reporting actually gets built today. Written findings, phased plan, sign-off. Usually two to three weeks.

Ready to see this inside your operation?

Start with a conversation. We walk through how your operation runs today and where the gaps are worth fixing first.

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