fetra has successfully automated order entry with Workist's AI solution

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fetra Fechtel Transportgeräte manufactures trolleys, platform carts and hand carts. These products may look simple at first glance, but they can be ordered in countless variants: a different color, different tires, a modification here, a complete set there. Exactly this variety lands in inside sales every day as orders by email. For years, every one of these orders was entered into the ERP system by hand. That worked as long as the team was fully staffed. As soon as someone was out or order volume picked up, things got tight. With Workist, fetra has eliminated this bottleneck. Today, the Workist AI agent transfers orders into the ERP fully automatically.

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“Thanks to Workist, we were able to keep our staffing structure unchanged while the business grew. That alone made the solution worthwhile for us. On top of that, our error rate in order entry is significantly lower, and we can scale our processes efficiently as order volumes rise.” – Jan Völlering, Head of Marketing, fetra Transportgeräte

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From bottlenecks during order peaks to automated processing

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Sales at fetra followed a fixed rhythm: several times a year, order peaks hit and the team could no longer keep up with order entry because of the high demand. For years, the solution was the same. Sales pulled apprentices from other departments to work through the orders. For the apprentices, this meant interrupting their actual work. For sales, it meant constantly training new staff who only knew the process superficially. That did little for the error rate.

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The issue became truly urgent when a long-standing inside sales employee went on parental leave. A position that had built up years of experience was suddenly vacant. The classic response would have been to hire someone new and spend months onboarding them. But fetra chose the modern route and went all in on digitalization and automation. That is why it introduced Workist's agentic AI solution.

The solution: the Workist AI agent in inside sales

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The requirements for Workist were clearly defined: manual effort in order entry had to drop noticeably, and the error rate had to go down at the same time. The sales team was involved in the software rollout early on to address concerns before they arose. Today, incoming orders go straight to the Workist AI agent, which reads header and line-item data, matches customers and products, and transfers the finished order into the ERP system, Microsoft Dynamics Navision.

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The results

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The results fetra has achieved with Workist speak for themselves. The position of the colleague on parental leave did not need to be restaffed, because Workist now covers this workload. That alone adds up to a calculated savings potential of more than €50,000 per year. In the second quarter of 2026, fetra saved more than 40 working days through automation with Workist. In addition, apprentices no longer have to be pulled from other departments, and order peaks can be handled with ease.

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There is also an effect that is harder to measure in days: the error rate in order entry has dropped significantly. Where item numbers used to be mistyped or variants mixed up under time pressure, the AI agent now transfers the data into the ERP system without errors.

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“For us, it was never about replacing people. It was about freeing them from work nobody enjoys, so they can focus on the things that really make a difference for our customers,” says Jan Völlering, Head of Marketing at fetra Transportgeräte.