The dilemma your inside teams live with: order admin, or selling.
Inter Inox (35 people, 100,000 product references) had a simple problem: its sales reps spent 60% of their time entering orders instead of selling. With Catalog the ratio flips, and a collective memory builds itself.
Sales reps hired to sell, stuck behind an ERP
Inter Inox distributes stainless steel industrial products: fasteners, parts for food processing, water treatment. 100,000 references. 35 people. No field reps.
Everything happens on screen and over the phone. These teams are not order desk staff asked to sell: they are sales reps who happen to carry sales admin among all their other tasks.
« We estimated a typical day was 60% order desk work and 40% actual selling. What we wanted was to flip that ratio. »
The challenge: orders with no SKU, in a niche catalogue
Inter Inox's industrial customers do not order using product codes. They write "M8x40 stainless hex head screw" when the catalogue holds a coded reference.
That knowledge takes twenty years to build, and no certified training exists for the job. This is where Catalog comes in.
The Product Name© feature learns to read like an experienced rep: it maps free-text descriptions to the right references and, above all, every validation feeds a "collective memory" the whole team can draw on.
A new joiner no longer starts from nothing in front of 100,000 references.
Flipping the ratio: from 60/40 to 30/70
Smart Order has already freed up between one and two hours per person per day.
The ratio moved from 60% order admin / 40% selling to 50/50 in testing. The target is 30/70, through Smart Inbox sorting and routing emails automatically.
That freed time is reinvested in sales pairs: one grows the existing accounts, the other works the customer base, opening and reactivating.
« Picture a bathtub. Put all your customers in it. That bathtub has a leak: attrition. Shrink the hole and you will fill it far more easily. »
Conclusion
Inter Inox illustrates what Catalog does best: fit into the reality on the ground, start with one precise flow, prove the value, then widen.
No IT project that grinds everything to a halt. A tool that learns with the team, encodes the trade knowledge, and frees the time sales reps need to do what they do best: sell.
When a 35-person industrial SME flips its order admin to selling ratio, the question is no longer "does this work?".
It becomes: "what am I waiting for?"
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