How Head-to-Head Testing Revealed the Right Order Entry Tool for Cregger

Matt joined the Cregger family business in 2008 and has served as CEO since 2018, continuing the company his father founded in 1978. Under his leadership, Cregger Company has grown to over 60 locations across seven states and expanded from HVAC and plumbing distribution into electrical. Matt describes their team as “entrepreneurial and innovative” people who are always looking for better ways to serve their customers.

A Measured Approach to AI Adoption

Cregger’s entrepreneurial and innovative sales reps brought their struggles with manual bottlenecks to leadership. They wanted to try a solution for order entry automation that would help them move faster with accuracy, and ultimately win more business.

Matt had heard of Canals from other distributors, including conversations with the CEO of Locke Supply Co. With multiple order entry solutions available in the market, Matt and the team decided on a formal evaluation process. They first narrowed down their search to three solutions, quickly eliminated one, and then decided to move forward with a rigorous head-to-head pilot of the remaining two solutions–including Canals–to choose the most performant option for their team.

From the demos, it was very difficult to figure out what the real differences between the platforms were, so we were fortunate that both granted us a proof-of-concept period. It became clear through that process that Canals was significantly ahead.

The pilot consisted of two “focus groups” of 15 to 20 inside sales reps. Each group used a different order entry platform, and a project manager collected feedback throughout the proof of concept to determine the winner.

Core Challenges

• Sales reps still manually entering every purchase order line-by-line into the ERP requested order entry technology that could enable them to be more efficient and effective in their work
• Even the most experienced staff had no way of knowing every last thing the company sold, and both reps and leadership saw the opportunity cost of not using a tool that could make that information actionable
• Multiple vendors put on good demos, but it was difficult to understand the real differences between platforms from a controlled demo environment

A Fast Implementation and Easy-to-Learn Platform

Implementation moved fast–Cregger went from Canals’ kickoff email to live platform usage in ten days. Technical setup was a low-lift with Canals’ pre-built Eclipse integration. Canals’ intuitive user interface also made it easy for sales reps to pick up Canals quickly. The day after their first training session, Cregger’s sales reps were already using Canals to process orders.

One of Canals’ big advantages was that we had people using it within a few days, and it was actually effective for them.

That speed of adoption was a significant point of contrast for the teams piloting the two order entry tools. While the Canals implementation was quick and user adoption immediate, it took longer for the other platform to get up and running.

“That was definitely a really big differentiator with Canals,” said Matt. “There was a very long implementation timeline on other solutions. And even after that implementation was done, the product was still worse than what Canals was doing out of the box on day one." Where Canals was achieving 70% matching accuracy out of the box, the other platform was achieving a 25% or less matching rate.

Key Benefits

• Pre-built integration: Canals’ Eclipse integration meant Cregger users were able to start using the product within a matter of days
• Ease of use: The day after the first training session, sales reps were already using Canals to enter orders
• Out-of-the-box accuracy: Even before Canals started learning and improving accuracy through real-world usage, immediate 70% product matching accuracy gave sales reps confidence in the tool
• Robust tech: Canals could handle files with thousands of rows, whereas the other tool evaluated would freeze up and crash

Superior Matching Rates and Incremental Sales Opportunities

Once the data from the focus groups came in, the choice was clear. Canals was matching unstructured customer requests to the correct product at a meaningfully higher rate than the competing solution–with 2.8 times more accuracy–and that gap kept widening after go-live as Canals “learned” from continued sales rep usage. During the testing period, Canals’ accuracy grew from 70% to over 90%.

While the highly accurate product matching delivered on the team’s main goal to respond to customers faster, they were also pleasantly surprised by how much visibility Canals gave them into their own expansive catalog.

Matt’s own testing revealed this benefit. By running large RFPs through Canals–some with thousands of line items–he found forgotten products in their catalog that could benefit their customers.

There were products in our system that I didn't even know we sold. We're a big organization, and no one person in our company knows every single thing we sell. So to discover a whole product category I didn’t know we dealt with that could help this customer was a huge benefit.

With the proof-of-concept complete, Cregger moved quickly to full company rollout. Now, reps across branches are using AI-powered order entry to quickly generate accurate quotes and orders, reply to their customers faster, and put the extra time to use going above and beyond for their customers.

Taking customer service to the next level has paid off in the form of additional sales. When looking at customers who have had an order processed through Canals, the average number of line items they’re ordering per month has increased an average of 18% after two months.

We certainly have users that have become very, very reliant on very adept to Canals and are running almost all their business the majority of their orders through Canals before it's going into the ERP.

Business Impact

• Speed to value: Fast technical implementation and quick user adoption proved platform ROI quickly
• A tool that learns: Canals’ matching accuracy grew quickly from 70% to greater than 90% as reps used the tool for their day-to-day work
• Incremental sales opportunities: Canals revealed catalog items and entire product categories that reps didn’t realize they could quote and sell
• Faster quoting translated to more sales: Two months after their first order is processed through Canals, customers are buying 18% more line items per month than before

Advice for Other Distributors

Asked what he'd tell a peer evaluating Canals—as Matt was when he asked Locke Supply’s CEO for input—Matt points straight to the metric that made the decision clear for Cregger: product matching accuracy.

“Demos are nice, but if you can't knock it out of the park on the product matching, the solution doesn't do much for you,” said Matt.

You can have the greatest interface in the world, but if it can't figure out what products the contractor is talking about, it doesn't bring any advantage. So far, that's where Canals is beating their competition.

On cost, Matt says the Canals premium is justified by its superior product. “The cost of Canals is worth it,” said Matt. “Any premium you pay there, you're going to get back, and more.”