Guide
Getting email and attachments ready for your ERP or CRM
Your ERP or CRM is where important information should end up. It is not where that information begins. Orders, quote requests, supplier changes, invoices, complaints and specification updates arrive first as email — in each sender’s own words, often across a long thread, frequently with a document attached. Before a record can be created or updated, somebody has to work out what changed.
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Definition
The work before a record exists
A customer asks to amend an order. The message references an earlier conversation, adds a new delivery date and includes a revised document. Five questions stand between that email and a clean entry in your system.
- What is the full context of this thread, not just the last message in it?
- What has changed since the earlier agreement, and does the change stand?
- Which details in the attachment actually matter here?
- Which internal category does this belong to, and who takes it next?
- What needs confirming with the customer or a colleague before anything is recorded?
The problem
Email is unstructured by design
That flexibility is the point: customers and suppliers can explain, ask, correct and attach whatever they need. It is also why the receiving team does the structuring. The same order can reach you three different ways in one week.
Everyone identifies the same thing differently
One sender quotes a clean reference number. Another describes the order by product and delivery week. A third attaches the updated quantities and never mentions them in the message body. None of them is wrong, and all three land in the same inbox.
The thread carries the version history
What was agreed, what was revised, and what is still open are distributed across days of replies. The system of record only becomes valuable once somebody has resolved that into a current position.
Languages change mid-conversation
An international thread can move between the customer, a colleague and a logistics partner without warning. Understanding it should not depend on who happens to be in that day.
What it takes
Four steps from inbox to action
Kerna does this part inside Gmail and Microsoft Outlook, where the information arrived — so the handover into your existing process starts from something clear.
1. Understand the full conversation
A thread can hold an original request, a clarification, a revised price, an amended quantity and a final question, separated by weeks. Kerna summarises it at three depths and across 45 languages, so you can see where the conversation stands and check it against the thread before acting. That matters most when a colleague is covering an account, back from leave, or stepping into a conversation they did not start.
2. Sort it by the work it represents
Operational teams do not need another notion of "important". They need to know whether this is a quote request, an order change, an invoice, a customer issue or a supplier update. Kerna sorts into the categories you choose — the built-in set, your own, or one built for your industry — so what belongs together is visible, and the distinctions that matter commercially survive.
3. Extract the detail from attached documents
Attachments hold the usable data: references, dates, quantities, prices, line items. Kerna reads PDF, DOC and XLS and returns them as named fields, exported to Sheets or Docs in Gmail, Excel, Word or CSV in Outlook. Whoever updates the record works from a table they can check against the document, rather than reading the file twice.
4. Prepare the next message
Once the situation is clear a response is usually needed: a confirmation, a clarification, a note to a supplier. Kerna drafts it in the tone and intent you pick, in any of 45 languages. You apply the commercial judgement and send it — Kerna does not send mail itself.
Kerna
What your team hands on, and what they still do
Kerna prepares the information before it reaches your system. It is not a replacement for your ERP, CRM or operating process, it does not connect to them, and it does not ask you to change either one.
- Your ERP, CRM, spreadsheet or workflow stays the system of record and the place the next operational step happens.
- Kerna turns an unstructured message and its attachments into a thread summary, a meaningful category, usable document fields and, where it helps, a prepared reply.
- The person taking the next step inherits that, instead of a fifteen-message thread and a PDF.
- There is no separate console and no mailbox migration. Kerna runs inside the Gmail or Outlook you already have, and acts on a message when you ask it to.
- Content is processed to answer that request: the application runs on Cloud Run in Belgium with Firestore in Poland, personal data is redacted before anything reaches the model, and nothing is retained afterwards.
Questions
Questions people ask
- Does Kerna replace an ERP or CRM?
- No. Kerna handles the earlier stage — making operational email and attachments understandable and usable before the information enters the system or process you already run.
- Can Kerna help with order changes and supplier updates?
- Yes. That is the case it was built for: summarise the relevant thread, categorise the message, extract the fields from the attached document and prepare a reply for review.
- What happens after Kerna extracts information from an attachment?
- It exports to Sheets or Docs in Gmail and Excel, Word or CSV in Outlook. Your team checks the table and moves it forward through whatever you already use — an ERP, a CRM, a spreadsheet or an internal workflow.
- Does Kerna send emails automatically?
- No. Kerna prepares drafts for the user to review and send, and does not send mail itself. The final decision and the outgoing message stay with you.
- Is this only relevant to large businesses with complex systems?
- No. The pattern appears wherever important external work arrives by email. Small teams often feel it more, because the same person handles the thread, the document and the reply.
- How long does it take to set up?
- Kerna installs from the Google Workspace Marketplace or Microsoft AppSource in a couple of minutes and appears in the sidebar of the inbox you already use. There is no mailbox migration and no integration project, and Starter is €0 and includes every feature, with a token allowance to run the steps above on real mail.
Accuracy starts before the record does
When work arrives by email, accuracy is not only about typing the right number. It starts earlier: noticing that a number changed, knowing which version is current, and seeing the context around the request. A customer should not have to repeat themselves because an internal handover meant reconstructing a long thread from scratch. Install Kerna on the inbox the work already lands in, and let your system of record receive something that has already been understood.