Bringing AI-Powered Customer Service to an On-Premise ERP Environment
The customer partnered with iNextLabs to deploy EngageAI, securely connecting conversational AI with an on-premise ERP to deliver real-time order tracking 24/7.
About the Customer
The customer is one of Singapore’s leading integrated makers of quality solutions across product identification, facility and safety signage, plaques, trophies and customized products.
With a large portfolio of products and customers, the company handles a significant volume of enquiries throughout the customer journey — including one of the most common questions: “What is the status of my order?”
The company wanted to make these interactions faster and more convenient for customers without adding to the workload of its service team.
The Challenge: Customer Answers Were Locked Inside the ERP
Many customer enquiries required information that could not be answered from a standard FAQ or knowledge base.
Order status, in particular, had to be retrieved from the company’s ERP system, which was hosted within its on-premise environment.
This created an interesting technical challenge. The AI Agent needed to understand a customer’s question, identify the relevant order, securely retrieve real-time information from an ERP residing behind the company’s network, and provide an appropriate response to the customer.
At the same time, the solution needed to ensure that internal systems were not unnecessarily exposed to the internet and that customers could only access information relevant to their own orders.
The Solution: EngageAI Connected to the Enterprise
The customer partnered with iNextLabs to deploy EngageAI, creating an intelligent customer-facing agent capable of handling enquiries and securely interacting with the company’s business systems.
EngageAI provides the conversational intelligence layer — understanding what customers are asking, identifying their intent and determining when enterprise data is required to answer the question.
For order-related enquiries, EngageAI securely connects with the company’s on-premise environment to retrieve the relevant information from its ERP.
This enables the AI Agent to move beyond answering static FAQs:
Customer asks a question → EngageAI understands the request → Securely retrieves the relevant ERP information → Responds with the latest order status.
The result is an AI Agent that is connected not just to knowledge, but also to the operational systems where the answers actually reside.
Solving the On-Premise Integration Challenge
A key aspect of the project was bridging cloud-based AI with an on-premise enterprise system.
Rather than moving the ERP or its underlying data to the cloud simply to enable AI, the architecture was designed to allow EngageAI to interact securely with the existing environment.
This approach enabled the company to preserve its existing technology investments while introducing modern Generative AI capabilities on top of them.
It also demonstrated an important principle for enterprise AI adoption: businesses do not necessarily have to replace their existing systems to benefit from AI. AI can securely work with the systems they already have.
Benefits Realized
24/7 access to order information: Customers can obtain answers to common enquiries, including order-status questions, without always depending on a customer service representative.
Reduced repetitive enquiries: Routine order-status requests can be handled by the AI Agent, allowing employees to spend more time on enquiries that require human attention.
Real-time answers from enterprise systems: Instead of providing generic responses, EngageAI can retrieve relevant information from the ERP to provide more useful and contextual answers.
AI without replacing existing systems: The company could introduce Generative AI while continuing to use its existing on-premise ERP and infrastructure.
Better customer experience: Customers receive faster answers through a conversational interface rather than waiting for employees to manually check internal systems.
An Award-Winning Enterprise AI Implementation
The implementation has received multiple industry awards and recognition, highlighting the practical business value and technical innovation behind the solution.
What makes the implementation particularly significant is that it goes beyond a conventional chatbot.
The AI Agent combines conversational AI, enterprise knowledge and secure integration with an on-premise ERP to perform a real customer-service function.
It demonstrates how Generative AI can become part of day-to-day business operations connecting customers with information that previously required employees to manually retrieve from internal systems.
From Answering Questions to Getting Work Done
The journey demonstrates the evolution from traditional chatbots to AI Agents connected to enterprise systems.
By connecting EngageAI with its existing ERP environment, the company transformed a repetitive customer-service process into an intelligent, automated experience.
The AI Agent doesn’t just know about the business. It can securely reach into the business systems, find the information the customer needs, and help deliver the answer.
