Get Started with Flow

Pick a time that works — we'll show you how Flow fits your distribution business.

The AI Transformation of Your Distribution Business, Led by Your Own Fractional Chief AI Officer Every Process Rebuilt, Every Person Trained, in Ninety Days

Book a Call → See What Changes ↓

What Actually Changes in Your Business

Not a strategy deck. These are the specific jobs your people do every week, and what each one looks like when we are done.

The work todayThe work after

Rebate and SPA claims get chased in a spreadsheet, and money gets left behind.

AI reads every vendor statement and claim response, matches it back to the invoices that earned it, and hands a person only the exceptions. What you are owed comes back as a worklist with dollars on it, not as a feeling that something is missing.

A quote request lands in an inbox and sits there until someone has an hour.

The email is read, the attachment parsed, the items matched to your catalog and priced on the customer's own contract. A draft quote is waiting when your inside seller opens the thread.

Nobody can say which quotes became orders, or why the rest did not.

Quote-to-order is measured by branch, customer, vendor and seller. The follow-ups write themselves and land on the right person's screen each morning.

Margin leaks a point at a time and nobody sees it until the month closes.

Every price exception, expired contract, stale cost and off-agreement line is surfaced while you can still do something about it, with the dollars attached to each one.

Vendor reviews take two weeks of spreadsheet work per supplier.

The vendor pack builds itself from your data: their year, your growth, fill rate, rebate attainment, and the asks in both directions. Two weeks becomes an afternoon.

Purchasing runs on min-max settings nobody has revisited in years.

Forward demand comes off your own history, by branch and by item, with dead stock, stockouts and transfers called out. You buy on what the data says, not on what the setting said in 2019.

Your best counter person's knowledge lives in their head, and new hires take a year.

How your business actually works gets written down as AI procedures anyone can run. A new hire runs the same play the veteran runs, on day three.

Every idea for software dies at "we would have to pay someone to build it."

Your team describes what they want in plain English and it is live that afternoon. Build them for your own people, for your branches, or for the contractors you serve.

People tried ChatGPT, got a mixed result, and quietly stopped.

Every role gets named workflows, written down, in production, with a person accountable for each. Adoption is measured, not hoped for.

Your Fractional Chief AI Officer

Most fractional AI officers hand you a governance framework and a roadmap. This one hands you working software, and he has already seen what a vendor rebate file looks like.

Ryan Nokes

Ryan Nokes

Fractional Chief AI Officer

  • Built AI for the world's largest banks. As a principal at The Stemmler Group he has advised global banking institutions on AI strategy and built the software that ran it, in an industry where a wrong answer is a regulatory event.
  • Chief executive of Data Crunch for over a decade. He was running production machine learning and analytics for enterprises years before anyone called it AI, across retail, manufacturing, healthcare and financial services.
  • A founder of Flow. He helped build the platform, so nothing here is a generic recommendation. He knows what your data looks like and how your business operates because he helped found Flow.
  • He builds, he does not just advise. The deliverable is working software and working processes inside your business, not a roadmap you are left to execute alone.

What he actually does for you

  • Sits inside your business and watches how the work really runs
  • Audits every process and ranks them by hours and dollars
  • Picks the ones that matter and builds them with your team
  • Trains your people to build the next ones without him
  • Sets the rules for what AI touches and what a human signs
  • Reports monthly on what changed and what it was worth

Every Role Gets Their Own AI, Not Just Leadership

Transformation fails when it lands on two people at the top. Everyone in the business walks away with workflows built for the job they actually do.

Outside sales

  • The call list for this week, ranked by what is at stake
  • Accounts sliding backwards, flagged before the month closes
  • Call notes turned into tasks and follow-ups automatically
  • A brief on every account before you walk in

Inside sales and the counter

  • Quote requests read out of email, drafted and priced
  • Takeoffs and schedules turned into a line-item quote
  • Competitor parts crossed to what you stock in seconds
  • Quotes chased on a schedule, not when someone remembers

Customer service and the order desk

  • Order status answered from the record, not from chasing
  • Acknowledgements and ship dates read out of vendor email
  • Every inbound sorted, drafted and waiting for approval
  • What is late and who has to be told, every morning

Purchasing and inventory

  • Forward demand from your own history, by branch and item
  • Dead and excess stock, and where it should be transferred
  • What to buy this week, from whom, at what break
  • Vendor lead times and fill rate measured, not assumed

Pricing, contracts and rebates

  • Every rebate and SPA claim matched to the invoices behind it
  • Ship-and-debit credits reconciled against what was promised
  • Contracts that expired, and the orders still priced on them
  • Cost updates applied before they eat a month of margin

Warehouse and operations

  • Receiving exceptions and short shipments caught on arrival
  • Pick, pack and delivery load balanced across the day
  • Returns and vendor credits chased to closure
  • Freight and delivery cost measured per order and customer

Marketing and eCommerce

  • Customers who buy the category from you and not the line
  • Product data, images and specs kept current on the webstore
  • Campaign copy and vendor co-op packages drafted
  • What every campaign actually moved, in dollars

Owners and branch leadership

  • Every branch on dashboards, refreshed, not rebuilt
  • Which customers and vendors make money, and which cost you
  • Who is producing and who is stuck, by the numbers
  • A monthly read on what the AI work is returning

Then We Build What No Platform Ships With

Every distributor has work no product will ever ship with: your processes, your vendors, your branches, your quirks. We stand up Claude across your business, wire it to your data, and teach your people to build on it themselves.

◆

Claude, deployed across the firm

Set up properly, connected to your ERP and your data, with access rules that make sense across branches.

  • Your data reachable in plain English
  • Email, files and calendar in scope
  • Rules for what AI may touch
▤

Your processes, written as AI procedures

The way you run a bid, a vendor review or a rebate claim, captured so anyone in any branch can run it.

  • One procedure per recurring job
  • Runs the same way every time
  • New hires inherit the veteran's play
▣

Apps your team builds themselves

Deploy them where the data already is, or anywhere else you want them to live.

  • Describe it, review it, ship it
  • Internal tools and contractor-facing ones
  • No developer, no quote, no queue
◷

Work that happens without anyone starting it

The recurring jobs run on a schedule and land as a draft or a task, ready for a person to approve.

  • Overnight buy list and transfer suggestions
  • Follow-ups you owe today
  • Inbox triaged before you open it
◎

Every vendor relationship, instrumented

What you sold for each line, what it earned you, rebate attainment and fill rate, ready before the review.

  • The vendor pack builds itself
  • Asks in both directions, priced
  • Branded for your buying group or your company
◈

Guardrails, so this survives contact with reality

What is automatic, what needs a human signature, what never leaves the building. Written down and agreed.

  • Approval points on anything customer-facing or price-changing
  • Your data stays in your tenancy
  • A named owner for every workflow

It Starts With Your Entire Business on Dashboards

Month one is The Distributor Business Review, included. We load twenty-four months of your data and hand back the full picture, because you cannot transform work you cannot see.

  • 48 live dashboards across every part of the business, in your own tenancy
  • 200+ business questions answered and 600+ metrics computed on your data
  • A dashboard set for every vendor you carry, ready for the line review
  • A set for every branch, every role and every named person, ordered by what they must do today
  • A map of where your data is broken, every defect graded and priced
  • A master matching file, every customer, branch, item and vendor name reconciled, yours forever
  • A reusable upload template for every vendor format you receive
  • Two hours with our chief analytics officer, walking every finding on your live data
See every dashboard in the suite →

Why the review comes first

24 moof sales, purchasing, inventory, quotes, pricing and claims loaded
28data integrity checks run across all of it
600+metrics computed before a single workflow is designed
0cleaning you do first. Send files as they are

You cannot automate a process you have not measured. The review tells us where your hours, your margin and your working capital actually go, so the first workflows we build are the ones worth the most. It also means your data is already loaded and modelled, which makes going live a decision rather than a migration project.

How It Runs

Phased, so you see something working early and nothing depends on a big-bang cutover.

1

We Watch How Your Business Actually Works

Time with every role and every branch, not just the owners. What each person does all day, where the hours go, which jobs everybody dreads. In parallel you send your data in whatever shape it is in.

Weeks 1–2
2

Your Whole Business Comes Back on Dashboards

The Distributor Business Review, included. Twenty-four months loaded, 48 dashboards built, every data defect found and priced, and two hours with your leadership walking the findings.

Month 1
3

We Agree the Plan and Rank It by Money

Every process scored on hours, margin dollars and risk. You approve the order of work. Nothing gets built because it is fashionable.

Month 1
4

The First Workflows Go Live in Production

Flow's AI turned on and configured on your data, plus Claude stood up across the business with your processes written as procedures. Real work, real people, measured adoption.

Month 2
5

Your People Learn to Build Without Us

Hands-on sessions by role. By the end your team writes its own procedures and ships its own apps. That is the point. A capability that leaves when we do is not a transformation.

Month 2 onward
6

Monthly, It Compounds

Standing time with your Chief AI Officer, the next workflows built, and a written read on what changed and what it was worth.

Ongoing

Why This Takes Ninety Days and Not Three Years

Because most of what a distributor needs is already built. Flow is the premier sales operations platform for the industrial supply chain, built for reps, manufacturers and distributors, and every capability below already exists in it. You are not paying anyone to build them. You are paying for somebody senior to set them up on your data and get your people actually using them.

✓
Rebate and claim reconciliation Vendor statements and claim responses read, matched and posted. What you are owed surfaced with dollars attached.
✓
Document AI Vendor invoices, purchase orders, quotes, price files and spec sheets read automatically, whatever format they arrive in.
✓
Workspaces Point AI at any ugly file and get upload-ready data. One template per vendor format, reusable forever.
✓
FlowMail Your mailbox sits beside the quote, the order and the customer. The email is part of the record, not a separate app.
✓
Quotes, orders and invoices The whole commercial chain in one place, with contract pricing, SPAs and submittals attached to the job.
✓
Jobs and project tracking Specification through bid through release, with who is quoting it, what you released and what you have won.
✓
Product crosses on your webstore Contractors cross competitor parts to what you stock themselves and submit the quote request.
✓
Takeoffs Drawings and schedules turned into a quotable list of parts without a person typing it.
✓
Warehouse, inventory and purchasing Stock by branch, buying, transfers and margin, with buy price against sell price line by line.
✓
FlowChat Ask your own data a question in plain English and get the answer, not a report request.
✓
Flow Apps Describe the tool you wish you had. It gets built and deployed inside Flow for your team.
✓
Dashboards and reports Dozens of prebuilt views across every corner of the business, plus any view you can describe.
✓
FlowConnect Work the actual quote or order with your vendor and your customer in one thread, even when they are not users.
✓
Flow Academy Your people keep learning after the engagement ends, so the capability stays in the building.

The gap in this industry was never the software. It is that nobody senior ever sat down with a distributor and rebuilt the work around what the software can already do. That is the whole engagement, and it is why it costs what it costs.

What It Costs

Priced on the size of your business and the scope you want, never on hours. One call tells you the number.

Quoted after one call.

Scoped on headcount, branch count and how much you want built. No hourly billing, no change orders for asking a question.

Part of it comes back.

A portion of the engagement fee is credited against your Flow subscription, so the work that proves the case also pays for the platform it runs on.

Book a Call →

  • A fractional Chief AI Officer embedded in your business, with standing monthly time
  • The Distributor Business Review included: 48 dashboards, 200+ questions, 600+ metrics on 24 months of your data
  • A full process audit across every role and every branch, ranked by hours and margin dollars
  • Flow's AI set up on your data: rebates and claims, document reading, quoting, crosses, takeoffs, email
  • Claude stood up across your business, connected to your data with rules that fit a distributor
  • Your processes written as AI procedures anyone on the team can run
  • Apps built and deployed in Flow or wherever you want them, with no per-app charge
  • Scheduled automations that hand your people drafts and worklists instead of blank screens
  • Role-by-role training so your team builds the next ones without us
  • A written AI policy: what is automatic, what a human signs, what never leaves the building
  • A monthly report on adoption, hours returned and what each workflow is worth
  • Flow Academy access so the capability keeps growing after the engagement
  • A portion credited against your Flow subscription

Book a Call

Pick a time that works. We will walk your situation branch by branch, scope the engagement, and tell you what the first ninety days would look like.

Questions People Ask

We tried AI already and it did not stick. Why is this different?

Because handing people a chatbot is not a transformation. What sticks is a specific job, rebuilt, with the tool wired into the data it needs, a person accountable for it, and adoption measured. We do that job by job, starting with the ones the review proves are worth the most.

Do we have to be on Flow to do this?

No. We will not pretend we do this for our health: at the end your data is loaded and modelled, and a portion of the fee credits against a subscription. But the audit, the dashboards, the procedures, the training and the apps are yours whether or not you buy the platform.

Our data is a mess and our vendors send garbage.

That is the normal condition of this industry, not a failing of yours. Forty vendors send forty formats, the item numbers do not match across branches, and half the rebate files are PDFs. We build a template per format, and the mess becomes one of the findings rather than a reason to wait.

Our people are not technical.

They do not need to be. The whole point of this generation of AI is that the instruction is English. The training is built around the job each person does, not around the tool, and the first thing every person builds is something that saves them time that week.

Is this training, or do you build things?

Both, in that order of importance. Working software and working processes are the deliverable. The training exists so you can keep building after we leave, which is the only version of this that actually pays off.

What does fractional actually mean in practice?

A named senior person with standing time in your business every month, reachable between sessions, who owns the outcome. Not a shared inbox, not a rotating analyst, and not a junior consultant reading from a deck someone else wrote.

Is this going to replace our people?

It replaces keying, chasing and re-typing. Distributors do not lose orders because they are short on data entry, they lose them because the quote went out two days late and nobody followed up. That is the work we are giving back to your people.

Who sees our data?

The people running your engagement and nobody else. Your data sits in your own tenancy. Nothing is pooled, benchmarked or shown to another distributor, and nothing leaves without you asking for it.

What happens when the engagement ends?

You keep everything: the dashboards, the matching file, the upload templates, the procedures, the apps and the policy. More importantly you keep people who know how to build the next one. If you want the standing time to continue it continues, but the design goal is that you do not need it to.

We run a few branches. Is this only for the big chains?

Independents usually get more out of it, because there is nobody on staff whose job is to think about this and every hour returned goes straight back to selling. Scope is set to your size.

We are not replacing our ERP. Does that matter?

No. Most of this sits alongside what you already run. We read from your system, build on top of it, and give your people better ways to work in it. Replacing anything is a separate decision you do not have to make to start.

Getting Started Is Easy

Book a call. We will walk your situation branch by branch, scope the engagement, and tell you what the first ninety days would look like.

Book a Call →