How Eastern Industrial Supplies Is Saving Time and Selling More

Business Growth that Requires Transformation

In the last two decades, Eastern Industrial Supplies has seen tremendous growth, expanding to 21 locations throughout the Southeast and growing sales by over 650%. 

On the sales team, that growth has translated to more emails, phone calls, RFQs, and inquiries, all requiring a speedy and accurate response. Team members regularly manually entered hundreds of line items on bids, spending an hour or more for longer or more complex orders. Some orders–especially those that came in last-minute–even went unanswered, leaving money on the table. 

Leadership considered hiring two additional people just to support data entry for quotes and orders. Josh Page, IT Director at Eastern Industrial, had a different suggestion. “There’s got to be a technical solution that handles this,” he told executive leadership. 

Then, Josh saw a Canals demonstration at an Eclipse user conference, where another distributor on Eclipse offered an unprompted endorsement. "We've already done this. It's a no-brainer," they told him. That peer validation from someone running the same ERP carried significant weight.

“When you hear from somebody actually running Eclipse that [Canals] works, that matters."

"Eclipse is a UniVerse database. It’s unique and hard to work with," Josh said. "Nine times out of ten, vendors say they've done Eclipse and then you get into it and they haven't. So when you hear from somebody actually running Eclipse that it works, that matters."

Core Challenges

• Labor-intensive quoting strained bandwidth: Sales reps were regularly creating quotes with hundreds of items line-by-line, leaving leadership wondering if they should hire additional staff to manage data entry
• Opportunities left on the table: With so much time dedicated to manual order entry, sales reps had no choice but to forfeit potential jobs there simply wasn’t enough time to reply to
• A hard ERP to integrate: Eclipse's architecture had defeated previous automation attempts, making proven integration essential

From Conference Endorsement to Quick Go-Live

Josh came back from the conference, did his research, and moved forward with automating sales order entry with Canals. The implementation story that followed was unlike anything his team had experienced.

"Implementation took less than two days," he said. "I knew APIs, so when they asked for something I gave it to them immediately. Normally you're babysitting vendors. I've never had to do that with Canals."

“Normally you're babysitting vendors. I've never had to do that with Canals."

Canals' familiarity with Eclipse made all the difference. The ERP's quirks, including data relationships that don't behave the way other systems do, required no explanation. "[Canals] understands it. They just get it and it's done," Josh said. "I've never had to explain to them what they actually need from me. That's important."

With implementation complete, Josh organized a rollout starting with the ten reps quoting the most line items. From the start, Canals accurately read incoming customer requests and matched them to the right products in Eastern Industrial’s catalog. 

Adoption spread quickly through word of mouth. “I took it to those first ten guys and said, ‘Let me know what you think.’ Then we had other people proactively come to us asking to use Canals, so it took off quickly.”

“We had people proactively come to us asking to use Canals.”

Minimal training was needed thanks to Canals’ intuitive user interface and responsive chat support. "My first thing I say to everybody is: start with the Canals chat. If they can't answer your question, come to me. It rarely gets to me."

For Josh, support isn't a nice-to-have–it's the factor that determines whether a technology relationship actually works. After years of managing vendors who needed to be educated on the systems they claimed to support, Canals was a different experience.

"There's nothing worse than asking for something and then having to explain to them what they actually need from you," he said. "I've never had to do that with Canals. That, for me, is important. I want somebody helping me–teaching me what I don't know–not the other way around."

“Support is probably the best part of the Canals experience."

Each time something came up, whether it was setting up single sign-on or managing Eclipse-specific data matching, the Canals team moved quickly and without hand-holding. "Support is probably the best part of this, from my point of view," Josh said. 

Key Benefits

• Under two days to go live using Canals’ pre-built integration with the Eclipse ERP–the Canals team already understood Eclipse’s quirks without needing educating
• Organic adoption happened quickly as word spread about the tool’s ease of use and time savings
• Canals' support chat handles day-to-day questions so issues are rarely escalated to Josh

Quoting More, Stressing Less

Eastern Industrial's sales team quickly started seeing what Canals could do for them.

Logan Stroud, an Inside Sales Account Manager, says Canals has become a platform he uses every day, from smaller tickets to complex 100+ line item orders. He loves the time the tool gives back to him.

“A 200-line item quote that you're having to manually key in, I would say you're looking at an hour and fifteen minutes, maybe more," Logan explained. "In Canals, it’s 20 minutes if it's all standard items." That's a roughly 75% reduction in time spent entering the bread-and-butter quotes that make up the bulk of the team's volume, enabling them to get back to customers much sooner.

Faster responses have translated directly into more business. “That's how I've won a couple jobs, because I've gotten the quote back to them before anybody else," explained Logan. "If a customer calls and says, 'How fast can you get it back?' I can promise him a reply in 30 minutes. If I'm the first one [to reply] and it takes another distributor twice or three times as long, it gives me that much more of an opportunity to win that job.”

Looking at line items sold suggests that customers are taking notice. Two months after a customer’s first order is processed through Canals, the average number of line items they’re ordering per month has increased 28% on average.

"Canals is like a cheat code. It opens me up to the other side of the sales world. Rather than just being an order entry person, I’m following up on quotes, making sure that we're competitive in the market, exploring new product lines, or any other number of things that add value for my customers."

Josh is pleased with the progress he’s seen, too. Originally, leadership had assumed the solution to their bandwidth issues was to hire more people. Josh proved that a tech solution could do the same, and more. “For Canals to prove its worth, it would have to at least meet what two humans could do. We’ve gotten there, so I feel the product has paid for itself.”

When asked what his reaction would be if Canals were taken away, Logan didn't hesitate: "I'd cry.” It all comes back to the value Canals enables him and the rest of the team to provide to their customers. “The amount of time that we can save with Canals is crazy. And the fact that we're able to beat the due dates of when quotes are due–because it's so easy to use–is incredible.”

Business Impact

• Faster, accurate quoting: With Canals, the team is securing business by returning quotes before due dates and competitors, sometimes by days
• Responding to more quotes: With more time freed up by faster quoting, reps can get back to more requests for quotes, even those that come in last minute
• More sales: Two months after having their first order processed through Canals, customers were ordering 28% more line items than before
• Proven ROI: Just by alleviating the need for two additional hires, the product has paid for itself

A Product that Proves Better with Time

One feature Logan particularly appreciates is the way Canals learns over time. Canals recognizes his customers' patterns–how they format requests, which items they order regularly, and what substitutions make sense. For him, reviewing a completed quote has become a quick double-check rather than a line-by-line audit.

Another Inside Sales Account Manager, Daniel Guthery, agrees. He appreciates the way Canals saves him time and effort, especially on larger orders, and loves that “the more you use it, the better it gets at selecting the right product. It's an easy tool to use.”

“The more you use it, the better it gets at selecting the right product.”‍

“When there are the same products or items on the list multiple times, Canals automatically autofills those items based on the first selection,” explains Daniel. Less clicks means faster replies and more business won. 

Advice for Other Distributors

Josh's recommendation to peers is unambiguous. "Yes, I'm absolutely recommending Canals," he said. "The support is great. Implementation is so easy. Where other solutions take three to six months to implement, we turned this on and were running full speed."

Learn more about how Eastern Industrial is using Canals for Accounts Payable.