Should Your Next Hire Be an AI Agent?

Most manufacturers are facing the same hiring and labor challenges. Open positions stay vacant for months, while experienced employees spend too much time covering administrative work. Recruiting takes longer, training requires time from people who are already busy, and even after finding the right person, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay.

But the work doesn’t stop. Purchase orders still need to be entered, overdue invoices still need to be followed up on, and supplier confirmations still need to be tracked. When administrative positions can’t be filled, those responsibilities are often absorbed by customer service, accounting, sales and operations teams, leaving less time for the work those employees were actually hired to do.

The obvious solution is to hire another employee. But what if the work doesn’t actually require another team member?

Advances in AI are giving manufacturers another option to consider. Instead of hiring another employee to perform routine, process-driven work, some businesses are beginning to explore whether an AI agent could handle those responsibilities instead.

AI agents aren’t designed to replace experienced employees. They’re designed to take over repetitive administrative tasks, follow established business rules and complete work consistently, allowing your team to focus on customer relationships, problem-solving and the decisions that require expertise and experience.

The Hiring Challenge Goes Beyond Labor Shortages

Finding skilled employees has become increasingly difficult for many manufacturers, but recruiting isn’t the only challenge.

Hiring also comes with costs that extend well beyond your payroll. Recruiting, onboarding and training require time from experienced employees who are already stretched thin. Businesses often hire to support peak demand, but when production slows, payroll remains the same.

That’s one reason why it’s worth asking whether repetitive administrative work really necessitates another employee. If a task follows established processes, happens hundreds of times each week and doesn’t require significant expertise, does hiring another staff member always make the most sense?

Not Every Task Needs a Person

Let’s be clear on one thing: none of this means AI can replace skilled manufacturing employees.

Far from it.

Engineering decisions still require engineering expertise. Customer relationships still depend on people. Production problems still require experience and judgment.

At the same time, most manufacturers have routine administrative work that’s performed the same way every day and that takes valuable time away from employees whose expertise is better used elsewhere.

Order entry is a good example. Every purchase order follows roughly the same process. Someone receives the email, opens the attachment, checks the customer, verifies part numbers and quantities, enters the information into the ERP system and reviews anything that looks unusual. It’s essential work, but much of it follows established processes, making it a good candidate for an AI agent.

Think About AI the Way You Think About Hiring

The way businesses think about AI is beginning to change.

Most manufacturers have typically approached AI the same way they’ve approached every other software purchase — they look at it as another tool employees can use. AI agents require a different mindset. Instead of buying another piece of software, think of hiring a new employee. Every AI agent has a specific job to perform.

Before hiring someone, you define the job, identify the skills required and decide how success will be measured. The same approach applies to AI agents. Rather than starting with the technology, begin by defining one clearly defined role and the specific tasks it needs to perform. Once you’ve done that, you can set up an AI agent to do the job.

Like any employee, an AI agent needs the right information to do its job. It needs clear instructions, access to relevant business information and an understanding of the rules that govern its work. It should also be measured against clear performance expectations.

Thinking about AI this way helps keep projects focused, makes success easier to measure and provides a solid foundation before expanding into additional processes.

What Does an AI Agent Actually Do?

Let’s go back to order entry to see an example of the type of work an AI agent can perform.

When a customer emails a purchase order, the AI agent automatically retrieves the attachment, identifies the customer and extracts information such as part numbers, quantities, pricing and requested delivery dates. It then validates that information against the ERP system and, if everything matches the company’s business rules, creates the sales order automatically.

When something falls outside those rules — a pricing discrepancy, missing information or an unexpected delivery date, for example — the order is flagged for review before it’s processed.

That’s an important distinction. AI agents aren’t designed to eliminate people from the process. They’re designed to eliminate the routine manual work while leaving employees responsible for decisions that require experience, customer knowledge or business judgment.

Modern AI systems are also becoming much more transparent. Rather than acting as a “black box,” they can explain why a decision was made and provide confidence scores so employees know exactly what requires review.

What Kind of Results Are Manufacturers Seeing With AI Agents?

As with any technology, results depend on the process being automated and how it’s implemented. However, early uses of AI-powered order entry have produced encouraging results.

In one manufacturing business, purchase order processing has been reduced from approximately 12 minutes to 90 seconds, with roughly 80% of purchase orders completed without human intervention. Because information is transferred directly from the customer’s purchase order into the ERP system, manual transcription errors are also eliminated.

The biggest benefit, however, isn’t simply processing orders faster.

Every purchase order completed by an AI agent is one less repetitive administrative task your customer service team or sales staff needs to handle manually. Instead of spending hours entering data, employees can focus on supporting customers, solving problems and managing exceptions that genuinely require their attention.

Where Else Can AI Agents Help?

Order entry is only one example of the types of routine manual processes that can benefit from AI automation.

Accounts receivable is another area where manufacturers are beginning to see meaningful results. Following up on overdue invoices is essential, but it’s also repetitive work that often gets pushed aside when accounting teams become busy with other priorities.

An AI agent can continuously monitor outstanding receivables, prioritize overdue accounts, draft personalized collection emails, track customer responses and remind staff when additional follow-up is needed. If a customer disputes an invoice or requests special payment arrangements, the issue is automatically escalated to an employee.

In other words, the AI handles the routine follow-up while people focus on the conversations that require experience and judgment.

Early customer deployments have reported improvements, including reduced Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), fewer manual collection activities, and several hours of administrative work returned to accounting staff each week.

Order entry and collections are only two examples. Manufacturing processes that share these same characteristics are often good candidates for AI automation, including:

• Time card validation
• Accounts payable invoice matching
• Purchase order follow-up with suppliers
• Turnover documentation packages
• Other repetitive administrative workflows based on established processes

Although the processes are different, the objective remains the same: reduce manual administrative work so employees can spend more time on activities that create value for the business.

Don’t Try to Automate Too Much, Too Quickly

A practical approach is to begin with a single, well-defined task rather than an entire department. That makes it easier to measure results, refine the process and build confidence before expanding into other areas of your business.

As a general rule, the best candidates for AI automation share several characteristics. The work is repetitive, follows established business rules, occurs frequently and relies on information that’s already available within the business.

Processes that depend heavily on negotiation, creativity or complex decision-making are generally less suitable. Likewise, tasks performed only occasionally often don’t provide enough value to justify automation.

Starting small allows manufacturers to learn what works while delivering measurable improvements much sooner than attempting to automate everything at once. Once an AI agent is successfully performing its role, manufacturers can evaluate whether other routine tasks are also good candidates for automation.

Questions to Ask Before Choosing an AI Agent

• Is the work repetitive?
• Does it follow established business rules?
• Does it happen frequently?
• Is the information already available digitally?
• Can success be measured?

A Different Way to Think About Hiring

Manufacturers will always need skilled employees. Engineering decisions, customer relationships, production planning and problem-solving all depend on people with experience, expertise and sound judgment.

What is changing is the way manufacturers think about hiring for repetitive administrative work.

Instead of automatically assuming every growing workload requires another employee, manufacturers now have another option to consider. For routine, rule-based processes, an AI agent may be able to handle much of the day-to-day work while employees focus on the responsibilities that make the greatest use of their skills.

That doesn’t change the importance of people. If anything, it makes their expertise even more valuable.

The next time a repetitive administrative task begins consuming too much time, the question may no longer be, “Who should we hire?” Instead, it may be, “Is this a job that an AI agent could do?”

For the right kinds of work, AI agents aren’t just another piece of software. They’re a new way to think about getting work done. Watch our webinar: What If Your Next Hire Is an App to learn more.