Salespeople are hired to build relationships, develop product expertise and win business. But for many distributors, entering orders consumes a substantial portion of their day.

That disconnect helped inspire Michael Delgado to co-found Canals — and it anchors his conversation with MDM Executive Editor Mike Hockett on the latest MDM Amplify Podcast.

Miami-based Canals provides an AI-powered workflow automation suite for wholesale distributors and their partners in the industrial and construction supply chain. Its software integrates with ERP systems to handle tasks across sales, customer service, finance, purchasing and receiving, including sales order entry, accounts payable, cash application and purchase order acknowledgment tracking.

The company raised $35 million in Series A funding led by Base10 Partners in May to accelerate product development. During the interview, Delgado says its sales order entry product serves more than 140 distributors.

Delgado traces the company’s origins to observing his wife’s distribution business and talking with operators about their biggest bottlenecks. Those conversations revealed how much time employees spent moving information from customer requests into business systems.

The episode explores what automating that work actually involves. Delgado walks through how Canals extracts actionable information from emails and attachments, matches customer descriptions to products in a distributor’s ERP and prepares quotes or orders. He also explains how ambiguous requests are flagged for employees to review.

Existing technology can obscure the remaining opportunity, he notes. An executive may know the company uses EDI without realizing how many transactions still require manual processing.

The discussion connects those operational details to business results. Delgado shares electrical and industrial distributor Turtle’s experience, reporting that its quote-to-order conversion rate increased from about 20% to 57% for quotes processed through Canals. He attributes the improvement to faster, more accurate customer responses.

Other themes include using recovered capacity to pursue sales opportunities, clear backlogs and manage retirements while preserving institutional knowledge. Hockett and Delgado also discuss employee involvement, data privacy and safeguards around margins or unusual order quantities.

For leaders deciding where to begin, Delgado emphasizes identifying business goals and observing where employees spend their time.

“You don’t want AI or technology to be a solution looking for a problem,” he says.

Listen to the episode above for the full conversation on identifying automation opportunities and putting the resulting capacity to work.