How Topa Bathroom Products automated +90% of its order intake with AI
of all incoming orders are now processed directly into Business Central by the AI agent, without any manual input.
Team members previously doing manual order entry now focus on after-sales support and service planning full-time.
Some customers receive their order confirmation within 30 seconds of sending in their order.
Topa Bathroom Products is a Dutch importer and wholesaler of bathroom products, serving approximately 700 customers across the Netherlands. With a lean team and a high volume of incoming orders arriving in every format imaginable — plain text emails, PDFs, CSVs and Excel sheets — the company's order intake process had become a real operational constraint.
Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director at Topa, has spent the last ten years building and improving the company's day-to-day operations. When it became clear that manual order entry was consuming a disproportionate share of the team's capacity, he started looking for a smarter solution.
We sat down with Bryan to hear how Topa went from nearly four full-time employees spending their days entering orders by hand to an AI agent that handles the vast majority of that work automatically — and what that change has meant for the business.
Nearly 4 FTEs, doing nothing but order entry
Topa receives orders from around 700 customers, each with their own preferred format and way of working. Before working with Lleverage, every single incoming order had to be read, interpreted, and manually entered into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central by a member of the team.
"We had four and a half people — about 3.8 full-time equivalents — sitting there all day long, manually entering every single order into our Business Central ERP." – Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director
This created a bottleneck that only grew with volume. Every exception — a missing commission number, an unknown article code, a partial order — required someone to stop and handle it manually. The team was spending its capacity on data entry instead of customer-facing work.
Finding the solution through a familiar story
Bryan discovered Lleverage through the Koninklijke Dekker customer story. The moment he started watching, he recognised the situation.
"Within the first 20 seconds, I thought: this is exactly what we're struggling with." – Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director
Topa's challenge mirrored Dekker's almost exactly: high order volumes, inconsistent formats, and a team spending far too much time on interpretation and manual entry. After reaching out to Lleverage, it quickly became clear that the team understood the problem in depth — and had already solved it before.
"I believe you're probably the best in the Netherlands when it comes to workflow automation." – Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director
An AI agent that reads every order, in every format
Together, Topa and Lleverage built an AI agent that monitors Topa's order inbox continuously. When an order arrives — whether it is a plain text email, a PDF, a CSV or an Excel file — the agent reads it, extracts the relevant information, and creates the sales order directly in Business Central via API.
The agent automatically extracts and processes:
- Customer details and delivery address
- Requested delivery week
- External document number
- All order line items
It also handles exception logic that would otherwise fall back to the team. When a commission number is missing, the agent drafts the appropriate response email. When an article code is unrecognised, it flags it for human review. Every processed email is automatically labelled as "AI Processed" in Outlook, keeping the inbox organised and the team in control without any extra effort.
A smooth implementation — and a trusted partner
The project moved quickly, and for Bryan, the quality of the working relationship mattered as much as the technology itself.
"Milos became like a buddy. I could reach out to him any time, and he'd respond within a couple of hours." – Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director
The Lleverage team adapted the agent to Topa's specific customer base and edge cases — every new rule or exception added to the agent's logic permanently, without any maintenance overhead for Topa.
"You actually delivered on everything. We thought we had so many complexities, but you can tell an agent anything and it remembers it. Forever." – Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director
+90% of orders processed automatically, in seconds
From the moment the agent went live, the impact was immediate. Today, over 90% of all incoming orders are processed directly into Business Central without any manual input. For some customers, the speed is striking: they receive their order confirmation within 30 seconds of sending their email.
"Some clients receive their order confirmation within 30 seconds." – Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director
The team members who previously spent their days on order entry have been fully redeployed into roles that make better use of their time. One team member — who previously spent around 20 hours a week on manual entry — now plans service mechanics full-time. Another has moved into an after-sales role, working directly with customers on more meaningful, higher-value work.
"It's like hiring an extra colleague — but this colleague is very smart, barely gets sick, and has very few emotions to manage." – Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director
Year-end backlog cleared by the end of Monday
One moment captures the scale of the change better than any statistic. At the end of every year, Topa typically faces a significant backlog when the office reopens after the holiday period — historically requiring up to two weeks of overtime to clear.
After going live with the AI agent, the team returned from the break to find everything already processed and up to date.
"By the end of Monday, we were completely caught up. The manager was blown away." – Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director
Enterprise-grade security & data protection
Topa's order data and customer communications are processed securely within Lleverage's European infrastructure. All data stays in Europe by default, is fully GDPR-compliant, and is never stored or used to train third-party AI models — giving the Topa team confidence that automation supports growth without compromising customer privacy.
A small investment with a significant return
Bryan is direct about the business case: the cost of the AI agent is a fraction of what it would cost to hire equivalent staff — and it delivers more consistency, more speed, and no sick days.
"A relatively small investment with a very significant return... and honestly, it's actually a very cheap option considering the value you get." – Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director
What started as an efficiency problem has become a competitive advantage. Topa can now handle growing order volumes without adding headcount, respond to customers faster than before, and give its team the space to focus on work that genuinely requires human attention.
Looking ahead
With the order intake agent live and delivering results, Topa is already exploring where else AI automation can make a difference. The foundation is solid: a proven Business Central integration, a reliable partner, and a team that has seen first-hand what automation can do.
For Bryan, the experience has fundamentally changed how the organisation thinks about complexity — and what is possible.
"You actually delivered on everything. We thought we had so many complexities, but you can tell an agent anything and it remembers it. Forever." – Bryan van Ingen, Operations Director
