How Koninklijke Dekker modernized its order intake with AI automation
Koninklijke Dekker no longer processes orders manually, with AI reading PDFs, Excel files, and emails automatically.
Clean, structured data allows the team to respond to customers more quickly and keep work moving.
Automation reduces interpretation mistakes that previously caused delays or rework.
Koninklijke Dekker has been a trusted name in the Dutch timber world for more than 140 years. Operating in a traditional, detail-heavy industry, the company is committed to delivering high-quality, customer-specific products and staying competitive for the next century.
“We’re constantly looking for ways to ensure we can last another 100 years and further improve our service and quality.” – Mart, Continuous Improvement Team, Koninklijke Dekker
Mart is responsible for bridging the business, process, and technology and is always looking for practical improvements that help the organisation work smarter. In his free time, he had already been exploring AI tools, so when a specific problem surfaced in the internal sales department, he immediately saw an opportunity.
We sat down with Mart at Koninklijke Dekker’s headquarters to capture their story on video and to show how a 140-year-old company is embracing AI in a very practical way. Watch the full video below:
Manual order intake was slowing the team down
Koninklijke Dekker produces doors, mouldings, profiles, and a wide range of timber products — many of them tailor-made for their customers. That means every order coming in looks a little different.
Because of this, the internal sales team spent a significant part of the day parsing Excel sheets, PDFs and plain text emails from customers.
“The problem is, you have a lot of Excel sheets, PDFs, or just text emails coming in with an order. This requires a lot of interpretation from our internal sales team.”
What should be a smooth, repeatable process had become a bottleneck. Employees were stuck manually reviewing every detail instead of helping customers faster or focusing on higher-value tasks.
Automating order intake without changing the customer experience
Koninklijke Dekker partnered with Lleverage to explore how AI automation could streamline order intake. The goal was simple: reduce the manual work involved in understanding and entering orders, without forcing customers to change how they submit them.
Because Lleverage handles both the platform and the managed services, Mart’s team didn’t have to figure it all out themselves. Together, we mapped out the order intake process, tested automation on real incoming orders, and built workflows that could read and interpret order details from any format.
The automated intake flow now:
- Reads PDFs, spreadsheets, and email bodies
- Extracts order lines and customer-specific details
- Sends clean, structured data directly into the right internal systems
- Flags unclear items for quick human review
The internal sales team stays in control and no longer needs to manually decipher every incoming order.
Built for international operations
Dekker processes high volumes of orders from customers with varying formats, terminology, and specifications.
Lleverage’s AI adapts to customer-specific language and ordering habits, making the solution suitable for businesses serving international and multi-market customer bases without increasing operational complexity.
Integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Lleverage’s AI agent is directly integrated with Dekker’s ERP, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
Once an order is extracted and validated, the system automatically checks products, availability, and pricing before creating the order in Business Central. Only low-confidence exceptions are flagged for human review, ensuring speed without losing control.
This does three critical things:
- Names the ERP clearly (no ambiguity)
- Confirms this is the system of record
- Reassures ops teams that humans stay in the loop
A smoother process, fewer errors and more time for customers
Even in a traditional market, Dekker now handles order intake with far more speed and accuracy.
The internal sales team is no longer bogged down by repetitive data entry and customer response times have improved. The company has also reduced the risk of manual interpretation errors, which previously led to rework or back-and-forth with customers.
Most importantly, the change supports Dekker’s long-term vision: staying competitive for the next century by working smarter, not harder.
As Mart puts it, connecting “the business, the process and the technology” is exactly what keeps a 140-year-old company moving forward.
Enterprise-grade security & data protection
Dekker’s order data is processed within Lleverage’s secure European infrastructure. Customer data remains in Europe by default, is GDPR-compliant, and is never stored or used to train third-party AI models.
Looking ahead: More processes to automate, more time to improve
This project is just the beginning. Dekker’s team now sees clear potential to automate other time-consuming back-office processes, from admin workflows to logistics coordination.
By starting with order intake, the company has created a scalable foundation that supports growth, protects service standards and prepares the organisation for the next generation.
