The Story

Villa & House's operations team is three people running order processing and claims resolution across Acumatica ERP, Outlook, Notepad, a Calculator app, and dozens of copy-paste cycles per hour. They are good at their jobs -- the work gets done, customers get served, claims get filed. But the infrastructure underneath them is almost entirely manual.

Beng Atencio transcribes orders from batch PDFs into Acumatica by hand. Thirty-four copy-paste operations per order. Two hundred sixty-seven per day. She keeps a personal spreadsheet called "Beng Cheat Sheet" open at all times because the ERP is missing configuration data she needs -- she references it 48 times per workday.

JP Maquilang is the only person who can do both orders and claims. He runs EPACS Monday through Wednesday and claims Thursday through Friday with zero day-level exceptions. He tracks order batches in numbered Notepad files (*2 RZ through *18 RZ) because there is no batch tracking in the system. His machine had an 8-week stability crisis starting November 2025 that caused 30 documented session restarts.

Eric Pamintuan handles claims exclusively. 42.5% of his keystrokes are Ctrl+V. He maintains two Notepad files -- TEMPLATES.txt for customer response templates (225 accesses in 30 days) and a carrier claim log (695 accesses in 30 days). He decoded and runs a 10-step claims lifecycle with zero AI tool usage across 6 months.

The team has zero redundancy. Beng cannot handle claims. Eric cannot handle orders. If JP leaves, the two remaining specialists have no cross-functional bridge.

Key Numbers

• Team analyzed: 3 people over 6 months (Oct 2025 -- Apr 2026). Beng Atencio (Order Processing), JP Maquilang (Orders + Claims), Eric Pamintuan (Claims).
• Data sources: 2.3M+ activity records across session logs, app/web tracking, keystroke captures, idle time monitoring, worklogs, and daily reports.
• Total automatable time identified: ~175-230 hours/month across the team -- equivalent to approximately 1.0-1.4 full-time employees.
• Estimated full automation cost: ~$15-50/month in AI compute (primarily email drafting and PDF parsing).
• Automation opportunities identified: 16 across 3 team members. 12 at HIGH confidence, 4 at MEDIUM.
• Tools prototyped: 3 working HTML applications built from decoded workflow data, ready for review.

Context switches per day: 1-2 (only the initial task transition). This is not multitasking -- it is serial specialization by day of week.

Beng's order processing generates 3,819 copy events and 4,175 paste events in 30 days. JP adds another 3,158 copies and 3,242 pastes across 19 days (projected: ~5,000+/month). Eric contributes 1,780 paste events in 30 days. The combined team performs approximately 13,000+ copy-paste operations per month.

This is not a productivity problem -- it is an infrastructure problem. The team copies data between systems because the systems are not connected. Acumatica does not talk to RepZio. Batch order PDFs do not feed into the ERP. Customer response templates live in a Notepad file. Carrier claim data lives in a different Notepad file.

Data source: Keystroke granular captures (30-day and 19-day windows). Copy = Ctrl+C events. Paste = Ctrl+V events. Counted per-application to determine directional data flow.

"Beng Cheat Sheet.xlsx" is accessed 1,527 times in 30 days. It is her most-visited Chrome tab after email. She switches to it 807 times before entering Sales Orders and 157 times before creating Shipments. That is 48 lookups per workday -- roughly once every 10 minutes.

This file is a workaround. It contains reference data that should live in Acumatica's configuration tables: order type codes, customer shortcuts, shipping rate tables, carrier routing rules. Its existence means either the ERP was never fully configured, or configuration drifted over time as the business changed.

Recommendation: Audit the Cheat Sheet contents. Every item in it represents a missing or misconfigured ERP field. Migrating this data into Acumatica would eliminate 5.2 hours/month of reference lookups and reduce the risk of Beng being the only person who knows these codes.

Across the team, Notepad functions as a parallel information system:

• Beng: 15.3 hours over 6 months. Scratch clipboard for copy-paste intermediary, meeting notes, order tracking shorthand.
• JP: 23.7 hours over 6 months. Numbered batch tracking files (*2 RZ through *18 RZ), ZPL label editing (7.9 hours on one label file), carrier communication notes.
• Eric: TEMPLATES.txt (225 accesses/30 days, 1.08 hours) and Consolidated Furniture Carriers log (695 accesses/30 days, 3.39 hours). These are the two most critical "tools" in the claims workflow after Acumatica itself.

Combined: 43.5 hours of Notepad usage over 6 months. This is not casual note-taking. These are structured, recurring workflows that the ERP does not support.

Both Beng and Eric compose customer-facing emails by typing recurring phrases from memory or copying from Notepad templates. Eric's TEMPLATES.txt was accessed 225 times in 30 days. Beng types the same confirmation phrases repeatedly: "Thank you. The order has been forward[ed]..." and "Please confirm if I can proceed."

Neither team member uses AI tools for email composition. Eric has zero AI tool usage across 6 months. Beng accessed ChatGPT exactly once with 4 events. JP used it on 3 days with 13 events. All customer responses are composed manually.

Opportunity: Template-based responses alone (Eric's TEMPLATES.txt replacement) represent 29.3 hours/month. Adding Beng's email templates adds another 3-5 hours/month. AI-assisted drafting with resolution-type selection could reduce this further while maintaining the team's professional tone.

The team's daily start-of-day and end-of-day reports are a compliance checkbox, not an operational intelligence source.

Beng's Reports (103 EODs)

• Headline: "Done [weekday]!" -- 87.4% of entries
• Win description: "Same" -- 99.0% of entries
• Feeling score: 3 -- 100.0% of entries (zero variation across 6 months)
• Need help: "No" -- 100.0% of entries
• Newsworthy: "None" -- 100.0% of entries

The ONLY variable data point is the Orders Entered count.

Eric's Reports (107 EODs) -- The Exception

Eric's reports are genuinely informative. 84 of 107 EODs contain substantive content. He references specific colleague coordination, carrier negotiations, case closures, and client interactions. His feeling score varies (3: 69%, 2: 28%, 1: 3%). He is the only team member to rate a "1." His reports are the primary source of operational narrative for the claims function.

JP's Reports (103 EODs)

51% headline: "BAU." Never reports needing help. Zero escalations across 6 months. Feeling score fixed at 3 for 88% of entries.

Team-wide: Zero "need help" flags across 313 total EOD reports. This is either a genuinely self-sufficient team or a system that nobody trusts to use honestly.

Both JP and Eric file carrier claims. The process involves manually assembling data from multiple Acumatica screens (Cases, Sales Orders, Shipments, Customers, Stock Items) into either Notepad text files or web-based claim forms. JP uses Eclaims (1.22 hours, 233 events) and PDF forms (Zenith, TFX). Eric uses his Notepad carrier log as the primary staging area.

Combined carrier claim filing time: JP ~8-12 hours/month + Eric ~15.1 hours/month = approximately 23-27 hours/month of manual claim data assembly. The underlying data already exists in Acumatica. It is being manually re-assembled because there is no consolidated view.

Carriers decoded from the data: FedEx, Zenith Global Logistics, Brooks Furniture Express, CPU (Customer Pick-Up), TFX (ShipTFX), BlueTruck Logistics, J.B. Hunt, Accokeek Express, Western Logistics, BFX.

Immediate Actions (This Week)

1. Review the three prototype tools with each team member. Get feedback on whether the decoded workflows match their reality.
2. Audit Beng's Cheat Sheet. Have her walk through the contents. Identify which items are missing ERP configuration vs. personal preference shortcuts.
3. Audit Eric's TEMPLATES.txt. Extract the full template library. This becomes the foundation for automated email drafting.
4. Address JP's PC stability. The 8-week crash crisis created 30 documented session restarts. If the hardware issue persists, it needs resolution before any workflow improvements.

Short-Term (2-4 Weeks)

1. Acumatica configuration: Migrate Cheat Sheet data into ERP shipping rate tables, customer defaults, and order type configurations.
2. Template system: Deploy Eric's decoded email templates within Acumatica's email activity screen.
3. Batch tracking: Replace JP's Notepad files with a structured batch tracking view in Acumatica or as a standalone tool.

Medium-Term (1-3 Months)

1. RepZio API integration: Direct order feed from RepZio into Acumatica. Eliminates PDF transcription for the highest-volume order source.
2. Carrier claim assembly: Acumatica generic inquiry that consolidates case + order + shipment + customer data for one-click claim generation.
3. Cross-training program: Begin cross-training Beng on basic claims and Eric on basic order processing. This is the most important structural improvement -- reduce the single-point-of-failure risk.

Revenue Opportunities

• Faster claims resolution: 96.5 automatable hours/month in Eric's workflow translates to faster customer response times, which correlates with customer retention in furniture claims.
• Reduced data entry errors: 34 copy-paste operations per order creates error surface. Each mistyped address, wrong item code, or missed shipping calculation has a cost. Automated data flow eliminates transcription errors entirely.
• Capacity for growth: 175-230 recoverable hours/month is approximately 1.0-1.4 FTEs of capacity. This team can absorb significant order volume growth without adding headcount.