Inside a Bohaus Sprint: A Small Regional Distributor

The situation

The client is an owner-led regional distributor of janitorial and packaging supplies, running one warehouse and a few delivery trucks. Two inside sales reps who take orders, a warehouse lead, a couple of pickers and drivers, a bookkeeper, and an owner who still handles the biggest accounts. QuickBooks Enterprise or an inventory system like Fishbowl holds items, pricing and stock. Orders arrive by email, PDF purchase order, text, phone and the occasional photo of a supply closet shelf.

The inside reps spend most of the day typing orders line by line. Mistakes become wrong deliveries and credits.

The company tried new software once before. A customer ordering portal was launched with a single email to customers and a lunch-hour demo for staff. Customers barely used it. Reps kept typing.

What the sprint finds

In Discover, we look at the failed portal as closely as the ordering workflow. The portal worked. The rollout did not. Nobody owned it. Reps were never shown how it would change their day. Customers got one email.

The workflow map shows the rules reps carry in their heads: which customers have contract pricing, which accept substitutions, which use their own item names, which need a PO number on every invoice.

In Diagnose, order entry ranks first. It happens all day, it drives errors and credits, and the item and customer data to improve it already sits in the system.

What it builds

In Build, we create order entry automation on top of the existing system. Orders arriving in the shared inbox, in any common format, are read and matched line by line to the item list using each customer's history and known item names. Contract pricing and substitution rules are applied. A draft order is created for review. Anything unclear, such as an unmatched item or an odd quantity, is flagged for a rep.

Released orders print to the warehouse pick queue and send the customer a confirmation.

Hand over

Hand over gets as much attention as the build.

Role-specific sessions. Inside reps learn on their own real orders from that week. The warehouse lead learns the pick queue changes. The bookkeeper learns how PO numbers and credits flow.

What to do when it is wrong. Every session covers spotting a bad match, correcting it so the customer's preference is remembered, and reporting a rule that needs fixing.

Why it matters. The owner explains the goal: fewer wrong deliveries and more time for reps to sell.

A short playbook. A few pages taped next to each rep's screen: daily steps, common fixes, who to ask.

Depth and ownership. Both reps are trained deeply. The senior rep owns the system.

Follow-up. Check-ins after the first week and the first month catch confusing steps and missing rules early.

What changes

Reps move from typing to checking. Orders reach the pick queue sooner. Wrong deliveries and credits become less common because every line is checked against history. Reps have time to call customers who have gone quiet. And this time, the old habit actually goes away, because the people using the system know how and why.

What this means for your business

Most technology projects that fail do not fail at the build. They fail at hand-over. Train each role on its real work, cover what to do when the system is wrong, write a short playbook, train more than one person and follow up.

A distributor trains inside reps on order review. A home care agency trains caregivers on visit notes. An auto shop trains service advisors on inspections.

The final phase of every Bohaus Sprint is dedicated to hand-over: training, a playbook, a KPI dashboard and a roadmap. Six weeks, fixed scope, one live system, and a team that knows how to run it.