AI Agents for Distributors

Recover 2-5% gross margin

We use AI to help wholesale distributors increase margin two ways: catch the pricing leaks and automate order to cash operations.

Live — Order Processing
Just now
Incoming PO — Henderson Electric
3/4" Copper Fitting (COP-750)× 200
3/4" Ball Valve (BV-200)× 50
1/2" PEX Tubing 100ft (PEX-100)× 30
SKUs matched
Pricing validated
Inventory confirmed
Sales order created
Acknowledgment sent
Total time1m 47s
Quote Guard — Intervention
Just now
Quote #4821 — Riverside Electric
RepR. Williams
Discount applied8%
Category average4.1%
Customer history12/14 accepted at full price

Hold at 4% or less

This discount would give away $2,340 unnecessarily. Riverside accepts most quotes without negotiation.

Override at 8%Adjust to 4%
Margin saved$0
2-5%
Margin recovered
85%
Orders auto-processed
<1%
Pricing error rate
14 days
To go live
The Problem

Your margin is leaking from
both sides.

Costs are too high. Revenue isn't fully protected. Here's where the money goes.

Cost side

Operations eating your margin

Manual order entry

15-20 min per order, 100-200x/day. 4+ people full-time.

SKU lookups

Customers use their part numbers. Half the day is cross-referencing.

Phone tag

Price discrepancies, availability questions, "let me get back to you."

Error rework

Wrong picks, credit memos, re-ships. 5-8% error rate at $50-$200 each.

$300K+
per year in operational cost
Revenue side

Pricing leaks you can't see

Over-discounting

Reps giving 8% when 4% would close the deal. Habitual, invisible.

Stale agreements

Vendor costs went up 6%. Your customer prices didn't. Margin underwater.

Wasted promotions

80% of promo volume from customers who'd buy at full price anyway.

Drift

Discounting creeps up 1% per quarter. Nobody notices until year-end.

2-5%
of gross margin leaked through pricing

For a $100M distributor at 25% gross margin, that's $3.5M+ per year walking out the door. Half from bloated operations. Half from pricing nobody's watching.

Lever 1: Cut Costs

The entire order-to-cashcycle. Automated.

We plug into your existing ERP and handle the entire cycle. Sage, NetSuite, SAP B1, Epicor. No new software. No rip-and-replace.

PO / Order

The core automation. Where most distributors start.

01

PO Intake: Every Channel

Email, EDI, portal, fax-to-email, or phone call. Any format: PDF, spreadsheet, EDI 850s, even voice. Phone orders are transcribed live, line items extracted, and the order created before the call ends.

02

Line Item Parsing

Every line item gets extracted: SKU, quantity, unit of measure, requested ship date. Messy, handwritten, or weird formats? Handled.

03

SKU Matching

Maps customer part numbers, aliases, UPCs, and manufacturer numbers to your internal SKUs. New alias? Flagged once, learned permanently.

04

Pricing Validation

Every line checked against contract, volume, promo, and matrix pricing. Mismatches flagged with full context. Never silently processed.

05

Availability Check

Real-time inventory check before the order hits your warehouse. Backorders flagged, substitutes suggested, split shipments recommended.

06

Sales Order Creation

Validated order created in your ERP automatically. Same system, same fields, same workflow. Nothing changes downstream.

07

Order Acknowledgment

Automatic confirmation to the customer: pricing, availability, ship date. Minutes, not hours.

08

Exception Routing

Unresolvable items routed to the right person with full context. Specific flags with recommended actions, not generic alerts.

85% of orders auto-processed. Under 1% error rate.
Phone Agent

Customer calls in an order?
It's already in your ERP.

The system joins your rep's call as a silent listener. It transcribes the conversation in real time, extracts every line item (SKU, quantity, pricing) and creates the order automatically. Your rep hangs up the phone and the sales order is already waiting for approval.

No note-taking. No post-call data entry. No "let me key that in and call you back."

Live call — transcribing
Customer:

"I need 200 units of the 3/4-inch copper fittings, and 50 of the ball valves — the ones we got last time."

Rep:

"Got it. Same ship-to as last order?"

Customer:

"Yeah, warehouse on 5th Street."

Auto-generated order
COP-750 · 3/4" Copper Fitting× 200
BV-200 · 3/4" Ball Valve× 50
Ship-to: Warehouse — 5th StReady for approval
Lever 2: Protect Revenue

Four agents. Always on.
Always protecting margin.

While the pipeline processes orders, four always-on agents watch every quote, every agreement, and every promotion to catch margin leaks before they happen.

Every quote, every time

Quote Guard

Every outbound quote gets a margin check before it leaves. The agent flags unnecessary discounts, catches stale pricing, and suggests optimal rates based on customer history and peer benchmarks.

  • Flags unnecessary discounts: "This customer accepted 12 of 14 quotes at full price this year"
  • Catches pricing errors: "This quote uses a stale agreement rate. Current margin: 6%, below your 15% floor"
  • Suggests optimal pricing: "Similar customers buy at 4% discount. This rep applied 11%"
Quote #4821Intervention

Customer: Riverside Electric

Discount applied: 8%

Category avg: 4.1%

Hold at 4% or less

Riverside Electric accepted 12 of 14 quotes without negotiation. This discount would give away $2,340 unnecessarily.

Override & send at 8%Adjust to 4% & send
Continuous

Agreement Watch

Monitors every active pricing agreement against current costs. The moment a vendor price increase makes an agreement underwater, you know.

Cost pass-through

Southwire raised prices 6%. 14 customer agreements still at old rates.

Margin at risk: $94K/yr

Volume shortfall

Metro Contractors at 58% of volume commitment. Getting tier pricing without the volume.

Overpayment: $23K/yr

Live tracking

Promo Monitor

Tracks promotion performance in real time. Separates incremental lift from organic demand so you can kill underperformers early.

Q1 Wire PromotionWeek 2 of 4
Promo revenue

$104K

Organic baseline

$81K

True incremental

$23K

Margin cost

-$18K

78% of purchases are from repeat buyers. Recommend narrowing to new customers or ending early.

Pattern detection

Drift Detector

Spots rep-level discounting drift as it develops. If a rep's behavior shifts gradually, the agent catches it early and alerts sales leadership before it becomes a costly habit.

Drift Alert — R. Williams30-day trend
Avg discount
4.2%7.1%
Quotes affected38 of 40
Team average4.8%
Est. margin impact-$47K/yr

Start with a free margin analysis. We review 12 months of your data, show you exactly where margin is leaking, and the agent stays on to make sure it stops.

Built Different

Not another automation tool.
A system that understands.

Any format. No templates.

Emails, PDFs, spreadsheets, EDI, faxes, phone calls, photos of handwritten POs. The system reads what your customers actually send. No setup templates. No field mapping. No "please submit orders in this specific format."

Gets smarter every day.

Every correction your team makes trains the system instantly. New customer alias? Learned. Pricing exception approved? Remembered. The more you use it, the fewer exceptions you see. Most teams hit 95%+ automation within 4 weeks.

Understands, not just matches.

Most automation breaks the moment a format changes. This system understands intent. "The same copper fittings we got last time" maps to the right SKU, the right quantity, the right price. Context, not just keywords.

The Real Cost

Your payroll scales with revenue.
It shouldn't.

Order desk payroll$55K–$70K per person fully loaded. 1 person per 50-80 orders/day.
OvertimePeak season, month-end, covering call-outs. 10-15% on top of base payroll.
Training & turnover3-6 months to train. 25-30% annual turnover. $15K-$25K per departure.
Error costs$50-$200 per error in rework, credits, re-ships. At 5% error rate × 200 orders/day = $500-$2,000/day.
AR & collectionsAverage DSO in distribution is 45-55 days. Every day of DSO = working capital trapped in receivables. At $10M revenue, 10 fewer DSO days = $274K freed.
Opportunity costYour best people buried in data entry and chasing payments instead of growing the business.

The question isn't whether you can afford to automate. It's whether you can afford another year of scaling headcount linearly with volume.

How It Works

Live in 14 days.
No disruption. No new software.

1
Day 1

Operations Review

We watch how orders actually flow, not how the process doc says they should. We map the real workflow and spot the biggest time sinks.

2
Days 2–10

Build & Connect

Configure for your ERP, pricing structures, part number mappings, exception rules. We layer on top of what you already run.

3
Days 11–14

Parallel Run

System runs alongside your team. Every order processed by both. You compare results. Nothing goes autonomous until you say so.

4
Day 14+

Go Live

System takes over. We monitor daily, improve monthly. Your team shifts to exceptions only. Weekly reports on hours saved.

You don't manage it. You don't maintain it. You just see the results.

Before & After

What changes in 30 days.

PO arrives by email

Someone opens it, reads it, starts keying

Picked up, parsed, processing in seconds

Customer calls in an order

Rep takes notes, keys it in after the call

Transcribed and entered during the call

Customer part numbers

Manual lookup in a spreadsheet or memory

Auto-mapped, new aliases learned

Pricing validation

"Let me check the contract..."

Auto-validated. Mismatches flagged instantly

Availability

Discovered at pick stage. Too late

Checked before order creation

Order entry

15-20 min manual keying per order

Created automatically in under 2 min

Acknowledgment

"I'll get back to you" (hours/next day)

Auto-sent within minutes

Error rate

5-8%, caught downstream

Under 1%, caught before warehouse

Order desk focus

80% data entry, 20% service

15% exceptions, 85% real work

Invoicing

Manual invoice generation from shipped orders

Auto-generated, matched, and sent

Collections

AR team calling and emailing manually

Automated follow-up, payments auto-applied

Volume grows 30%

Post a job listing, wait 3 months

System handles it. No new hire.

Who This Is For

Built for distributors.
Nobody else.

We don't build automation for "businesses." We automate order processing for wholesale distributors. That's all we do.

  • $10M–$500M in revenue, and order volume has outgrown your team
  • 20+ hours/week re-keying POs into your ERP by hand
  • Back-office payroll keeps growing but margin per order stays flat
  • Customers use their own part numbers. Half the day is SKU lookups
  • Pricing errors costing you credits, disputes, and customer trust
  • AR aging keeps climbing and your team can't chase invoices fast enough
  • Running Sage, NetSuite, SAP B1, or Epicor. Not looking to replace it
  • You're about to hire another order clerk
Electrical

Wire, conduit, fittings, panels, lighting

HVAC & Plumbing

Pipe, valves, compressors, refrigerant, fixtures

Industrial & MRO

Fasteners, bearings, safety, abrasives, tools

Food & Beverage

Dry goods, frozen, dairy, packaging, disposables

Building Materials

Lumber, drywall, roofing, insulation, concrete

Jan-San & Packaging

Cleaning, paper, liners, dispensers, PPE

Auto Parts

OEM, aftermarket, fluids, filters, accessories

Specialty & Niche

Medical supplies, pool/spa, ag, pet, safety

We work with 5 new distributors per quarter. If this sounds like your operation, let's talk before the spots fill.

Results

Distributors we've done this for.

Regional Electrical Distributor

$45M Revenue · 3 Warehouses
$280K/year
total annual savings
85% orders auto-processed
Error rate: 6% → 0.8%
3,000+ aliases mapped
25% volume spike absorbed, zero hires

"My team isn't doing data entry anymore. They're actually talking to customers. And when our volume spiked in Q4, I didn't have to scramble to hire temps."

VP of Operations

National HVAC Parts Distributor

$120M Revenue · 8 Locations
$750K/year
payroll savings + sourcing gains
Order time: 18 min → 3 min
Order desk: 8 → 3 people
94% AP invoices auto-processed
2 new locations, zero back-office hires

"The 5 people we moved into account management generated more revenue in their first quarter than we saved on payroll."

COO

Specialty Food & Beverage Distributor

$22M Revenue · 1 Warehouse
$4M
new revenue from reinvested time
Owner reclaimed 25+ hrs/week
Same-day processing (was next-day)
Zero stockouts in 90 days
$65K hire delayed indefinitely

"I spent last quarter selling. Revenue is up 18%. That doesn't happen if I'm sitting at a desk copying line items into QuickBooks."

Owner / CEO
Pricing

Costs less than your
lowest-paid order clerk.

Replaces the mechanical work of 3-6 people for a fraction of one salary. Doesn't call in sick, doesn't need training, doesn't quit after 8 months.

Core

Order Processing

$2,500/month

  • Full order processing automation (9-step pipeline)
  • PO intake (email, EDI, portal, fax, phone)
  • Phone & voice order processing
  • SKU matching with part number mapping
  • Pricing validation (contract, tier, promo, matrix)
  • Availability check and backorder flagging
  • Sales order creation in your ERP
  • Exception routing with full context
  • 24/7 operation + weekly reports

Best for distributors starting with the highest-impact workflow.

Get Started
Most Popular

Growth

Order-to-Cash + Margin Intelligence

$5,000/month

Everything in Core, plus:

  • Full order-to-cash pipeline (all 6 stages)
  • Margin intelligence: Quote Guard (real-time quote checks)
  • Margin intelligence: Agreement Watch (cost pass-through alerts)
  • Margin intelligence: Promo Monitor (live lift tracking)
  • Margin intelligence: Drift Detector (rep discounting patterns)
  • Quoting automation & sales intelligence
  • Invoicing, collections & cash application
  • Priority support & monthly optimization

Best for distributors ready to automate the full order-to-cash cycle.

Get Started
No setup fees
No long-term contracts
14-day parallel run
Dedicated account manager

The guarantee: 30+ hours/week saved or you don't pay.

FAQ

Common questions.

Does this work with our ERP?
Sage 100/300/X3, NetSuite, SAP Business One, Epicor Prophet 21/Eclipse, Dynamics 365, Acumatica, QuickBooks, Distribution One, JobBOSS? Yes. We've connected to 15+ ERP systems. Running something else? Let's talk.
Our customers all use different part numbers. Can it handle that?
That's specifically what this is built for. Customer part numbers, aliases, UPCs, manufacturer numbers, all mapped to your internal SKUs. New alias? Flagged once, learned permanently.
Our pricing is complicated: contracts, volume tiers, promos, customer overrides. Can it validate all of that?
Yes. Every contract, every tier, every override, every promo. When a PO comes in at the wrong price, the system flags the specific discrepancy and routes it to the right person.
We get orders by email, EDI, and a customer portal. All three?
Yes. Email attachments (PDF, Excel, CSV), EDI 850s, web portal exports, fax-to-email. Different customers, different channels, different formats. All handled the same way.
How do you handle exceptions and edge cases?
We build your exception rules during setup. When the system hits something new, it flags it with full context. It doesn't guess. Over time, the exception rate drops as it learns your patterns.
Can my team still see everything in the ERP?
Every order, every action, every flag lives in your ERP exactly where it always has. Orders look the same whether the system entered them or a person did.
Is our data safe?
Your data stays in your systems. We connect via secure APIs, the same way your ERP vendor's integrations work. We don't store your customer data, pricing, or order history on our servers.
What if we want to stop?
You stop paying. Your ERP, data, processes: everything stays as-is. We're layered on top, not embedded inside. No lock-in, no exit penalty.
How is this different from our ERP vendor's automation?
They sell software features: more config screens for your team. We deliver outcomes. The full cycle runs autonomously. Your team doesn't configure, maintain, or monitor it. We do.
We tried automation before and it didn't work.
Probably because it was generic. We're built for distributors: three-way matching, customer part number aliases, matrix pricing, drop-ship POs, complex BOMs. We understand your actual workflow, not a theoretical one.
Can we start small and expand later?
That's what most distributors do. Start with order processing, see results, then expand to quoting, sales intelligence, inventory, vendor comms, collections, or AP. Integrations and data are already in place.
We're not a distributor. Does this work for manufacturers / 3PLs?
Yes. The core workflow (inbound orders parsed, validated, and entered into your system) is the same whether you're a distributor, manufacturer, 3PL, or any B2B operation processing high-volume orders. We adapt to your specific ERP, pricing rules, and product catalog.
How does the phone agent work?
It joins your rep's call as a silent listener. The customer never knows it's there. It transcribes in real time, extracts line items, matches SKUs, and creates the order. By the time your rep hangs up, the sales order is waiting for approval. Works with any phone system.
How accurate is the AI?
Accuracy starts around 80% on day one and reaches 95%+ within 3-4 weeks as the system learns your specific catalog, customer patterns, and pricing rules. Every correction your team makes trains the system instantly. No retraining, no waiting.
What's included in the free margin analysis?
We connect to your ERP (read-only), analyze 12 months of transaction data, and deliver a full report in 48 hours: total margin leakage estimate, your top 10 underwater agreements, rep discounting benchmarks, and quick-win renegotiation targets with dollar amounts. You keep the report regardless.
How is the margin agent different from pricing analytics in my ERP?
Your ERP shows you margin leaked last quarter. The margin agent catches it before it happens. It runs inline with your quoting process, flags unnecessary discounts in real time, monitors agreements against vendor cost changes, and alerts you when reps start drifting. Dashboards require someone to look at them. Agents act on their own.
Will this replace my team?
It replaces mechanical work, not people. Your best people move to revenue-generating roles. And the next time volume grows, you don't hire. The system scales with you.

See exactly where your
margin is leaking.

We analyze 12 months of your transaction data and deliver a full margin report in 48 hours. You'll see every underwater agreement, every over-discounting pattern, and every promotion that isn't pulling its weight.

Your free margin analysis includes:

  • Total margin leakage estimate (dollars at risk)
  • Top 10 underwater pricing agreements
  • Rep discounting benchmarks vs. team averages
  • Quick-win renegotiation targets with dollar amounts
  • 30-minute video walkthrough of findings

Then the margin agent stays on, watching every quote, agreement, and promotion. Continuously.

No commitment · Results in 48 hours · Keep the report even if you don't continue