Pilot discovery plan — email-order desk

Information-gathering plan for the REQ-014 pilot: the department that reads email orders, creates SoftOne ERP orders, matches products on the supplier B2B system, and follows up with the customer until completion. Goal: within ~2 weeks of the CEO call, know enough to write the pilot scope, success criteria, and technical design — or say clearly what blocks it.

What we must learn (information targets)

#	Target	Why it matters	Source
1	Which department owns the flow — name, headcount, manager, a champion	Pilot owner + interviewees	CEO call
2	Volume & shape of order intake — orders/day, emails per order, formats (free text, PDF/PO attachments, Excel, images), languages, customer segments	Sizes the extraction problem and the KPI baseline	CEO call → dept interviews → mailbox sample
3	The as-is process end-to-end — every step, handoff, exception path from email arrival to “completed”	Process map (SIPOC + swimlane) is the design substrate	Dept interviews + desk-side observation
4	SoftOne specifics — version/edition, Web Services/API availability & licensing, order-entry screens/fields used, customer & product master data quality	Gates the automated order-creation leg (also HANDOFF pending: verify SoftOne Web Services)	IT interview + SoftOne partner if needed
5	Supplier B2B system(s) — which vendor(s), portal vs API/EDI, product-code mapping today (supplier code ↔ SoftOne code), account/credential model	Gates the product-matching leg; may be the hardest integration	CEO call (identify) → IT/dept (verify)
6	Follow-up practice — what “follow up until completed” means concretely: statuses tracked, who chases whom, channels, SLAs, what customers expect	Defines the agent’s autonomy boundaries	Dept interviews
7	Baseline KPIs — time per order, orders/person/day, error/rework rate, follow-up latency, order-to-completion lead time	Without a baseline the pilot can’t prove anything	1-week measurement + mailbox/SoftOne history
8	Sample data — 20–50 representative order emails (with attachments), matching SoftOne orders, B2B match examples, incl. ugly/exception cases	Feeds extraction prototyping before any integration exists	Dept, after NDA/data-handling agreement
9	Constraints — data handling (customer PII), mailbox access approval, pilot users’ availability, no-go areas, budget/timeline expectations	Shapes what we may build and by when	CEO call
10	Success definition — what result makes the CEO extend beyond the pilot	The actual acceptance criterion	CEO call

Phases

Phase 0 — CEO clarification call — ✅ DONE (2026-07-06)

• Instrument: questionnaire-pilot-order-desk.md — administered as a guided conversation, recorded with Fathom; transcript in raw/, distilled into the interview note per ADR-003/ADR-012.
• Outputs achieved: pilot department identified (cylinders team, 3 people, champion Fotini); volumes and the three sub-processes captured; supplier-B2B assumption corrected — suppliers are email-only, ~3 customer platforms instead; constraints (no budget figure, urgent, no stated red lines) and success definition (one platform, morning worklist, time-to-close) captured; IT contact identified (Evangelia — intro pending); sample-data set (20–50 order emails + SoftOne orders) requested.
• REQ-014 moved captured → validated in the same change. Phase 1 starts when the team-details email + Evangelia intro arrive.

Phase 1 — Department deep dive (week 1 after the call)

• Interviews: department manager (60–90 min, questionnaire-department-heads.md as base) + 2–3 order-desk operators (questionnaire-process-owners.md per key process).
• Desk-side observation: sit with an operator for half a day; time 5–10 real orders end-to-end. Observation beats self-reporting for baselines.
• Map the process: SIPOC + swimlane (Mermaid), one file, destined for 05-Processes/ (first real content — create the folder then).
• Collect the sample set (target #8) under the agreed data-handling terms.

Phase 2 — Systems & access verification (parallel, week 1–2)

• IT interview (questionnaire-technical-it.md §SoftOne + mailbox sections): SoftOne Web Services confirmed working (test call), M365 mailbox access model (shared mailbox? Graph API consent?), supplier B2B access demonstrated live.
• Deliverable: a technical feasibility note per leg (email intake / SoftOne write / B2B match / outbound follow-up) with a red–amber–green rating and what’s missing for each.

Phase 3 — Synthesis & pilot scoping (week 2)

• Baseline KPI sheet from Phase 1 measurements.
• Pilot scope proposal: which legs are automated in the pilot vs deferred, autonomy boundaries (draft-vs-send), success thresholds, timeline, pilot team.
• Scored entry in the AI use-case pipeline; go/no-go review with the CEO.

Risks / open questions

• SoftOne Web Services: stated available on the call — still verify with a live test call (licensing/version unclear); program-level gate (see HANDOFF).
• Supplier B2B may be portal-only — resolved (call, 2026-07-06): suppliers have no systems at all, email-only RFQs. The matching leg becomes email drafting/parsing; the customer-platform leg (~3 platforms, login-based) is the new integration unknown — names/access to capture in Phase 2.
• The pilot predates the on-prem platform — decide pilot infrastructure explicitly (cloud interim vs waiting for hardware); needs an ADR when decided.
• Reconfirm the client email domain — resolved (call, 2026-07-06): Prime Products attendees joined on @primeltd.com (Fathom labels); the Cloudflare Access allow policy already matches. Website remains primeproducts.gr.

Related

• REQ-014 — the pilot requirement
• questionnaire-pilot-order-desk.md — the CEO call instrument
• requirement-analysis-framework.md — general discovery method this plan specializes
• customer-service department plan — likely owning department (to confirm)