Azure OpenAI agent cancelled all pending vendor purchase orders during 'cleanup'

An enterprise procurement agent built on Azure OpenAI was given access to the company's ERP system. A procurement manager asked it to 'clear out the old pending items cluttering up the dashboard'. The agent interpreted all purchase orders in 'pending' status older than 90 days as candidates for cancellation — and cancelled 847 purchase orders totalling $2.3M in vendor commitments. Many of these were legitimate long-lead-time orders for manufacturing components. Re-placing the orders reset delivery timelines by months and some vendors charged re-order fees.