Synthomer: Understanding customers better and processing orders faster and more accurately with agentic AI
Improving order accuracy while people stay in control
At Synthomer plc, customer orders arrive in a steady stream of emails and PDFs that once required manual interpretation and entry. Now, the specialty chemicals supplier is using AI agents on SAP Business Technology Platform with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and the SAP Fiori user experience to help improve sales order accuracy as employees validate recommendations before orders are processed.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Chemicals | London, United Kingdom | 3,700 employees | NTT DATA Business Solutions UK Ltd |
Group Vice President, Information Technology, Synthomer plc
Managing complex customer requirements across a global network
With a long history of innovation in specialty chemicals, Synthomer plc operates across a complex global business environment shaped by diverse products, customer requirements, and order types. This complexity extended into the order intake process, where customer orders often arrived in inconsistent, unstructured formats, such as emails and multipage PDFs with multiple line items. Employees had to interpret product descriptions, identify the correct customer and ship-to details, and manually enter data into core business systems, which was a time-consuming and at times, complex process.
Synthomer wanted to explore how machine learning, generative AI, and emerging agentic AI approaches could transform unstructured inputs and manual workflows into more-guided processes with automation, recommendations, and human-in-the-loop validation at the right touchpoints. This could enable Synthomer to move faster and unlock deeper, more timely business insight.
Catalyzing a guided order-processing flow with agentic AI
Synthomer is addressing its challenges by piloting AI-supported capabilities tailored to how work moves across different parts of the business. Instead of relying on fixed automation or manual intervention, the company introduced AI agents that interpret inputs, determine next steps, and execute actions across systems with human validation at key points of decision-making.
In collaboration with NTT DATA Business Solutions UK Ltd, Synthomer gained the deep SAP expertise and guidance necessary to rapidly deliver scalable automation and innovation. Together, they are identifying and deploying practical, high-value AI use cases that can help improve operational efficiency, reduce manual effort, and unlock faster business outcomes. The initiative uses a methodology based on the human-centered approach applied by SAP AppHaus, alongside accelerators including generative AI tools, to shape and scale initiatives around Synthomer’s investment in SAP solutions.
For customer service teams, the initiative focuses on improving how sales orders are created from unstructured inputs. Using SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, workflows begin with incoming emails and attachments. Then, the SAP Document AI solution, part of SAP BTP, extracts line-level data from those sources and converts these unstructured inputs into structured, processable information.
AI agents then apply business context by using the material catalog and historical order data to interpret product descriptions, resolve unit-of-measure differences, match materials, and propose customer and ship-to details. These proposals are presented in an interface based on the SAP Fiori user experience, where users can review and adjust values before approving sales order creation and trigger downstream workflows.
Scaling speed, consistency, and control across operations
Synthomer’s use of agentic AI is expected to change the speed and quality of work across the process based on the outcomes of this pilot.
Take, for example, the order intake workflow for customer orders. Beta tests with data from multiple product lines and customers demonstrate a first-time material match rate of 98%, giving customer service representatives (CSRs) stronger proposals at the start of the process. The agentic system reduced the time spent searching, cross-checking, and manually entering data by helping CSRs interpret unstructured purchase orders, resolve unit-of-measure differences, and prioritize suggestions based on customer-specific historical orders. This approach can make order entry faster, more consistent, and less dependent on individual experience.
This shift may also change how employees work. Instead of keying in each field manually, employees can review and validate proposed values through a simplified approval step. This capability reduces manual keystrokes, lowers the risk of avoidable entry errors, and creates a more repeatable process across the team. In addition, confidence in AI-assisted outputs can improve, as accuracy is baselined and monitored against production data and verified historical outcomes.
These improvements align with the company’s broader business vision: to improve operational speed while maintaining focus on the customer. Orders can move forward with greater accuracy, and employees can spend more time using judgment where it matters most.
Expanding agentic workflows for scalable, production-ready operations
Using SAP Business Technology Platform, the Joule solution, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, Synthomer plans to expand how AI agents support order intake and related processes. As more transactions are processed, the system will build on a growing history of approved matches to improve accuracy, increase the use of direct-match automation, and strengthen business rules. Ongoing refinement of customer data-matching logic and unit-of-measure handling will help the system manage a wider range of real-world order variations.
Looking ahead, Synthomer plans to extend this approach beyond document intake to other high-volume operational processes. By combining process data, agentic AI capabilities, and human-in-the-loop validation, the company aims to create workflows that are easier for employees to manage, more consistent for customers, and better aligned with real-time business needs. Over time, this approach will support faster response to customer requests, reduced manual effort, and more-consistent decision-making across the organization.
Want to know more about Synthomer?
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Featured partner
NTT DATA Business Solutions UK Ltd combines expertise with an innovation-led approach to extend agentic AI capabilities in SAP solutions. Using SAP Business Technology Platform and the Joule solution, NTT DATA designs custom AI agents and workflows that interpret data, apply contextual reasoning, and trigger actions across the order-to-close process.
NTT DATA collaborates with SAP AppHaus to focus on helping organizations move beyond isolated AI experiments and accelerate the adoption of scalable, business-driven AI embedded into Cloud ERP environments.