The Challenge
With 20+ years in chemical distribution, Tony had seen legacy software complexity firsthand. He created a 100+ page training manual documenting every possible scenario for his team. Customer service staff took six months to become proficient, and even then, order entry was a 15-20 minute process fraught with potential errors that created downstream cleanup work.
"Support from our previous vendor is basically zero, and if you do get support from them, they charge you out the wazoo. So we spent lots of times troubleshooting our own side of things."
Order Processing
From 15-20 minutes to 1 minute with 100% accuracy
Staff Training
From 6 months to 1 week for full proficiency
Document Management
Digital file cabinet eliminates physical filing entirely
The Transformation
"The time that it takes to enter an order right now, an order can be put in now in one minute with 100% accuracy. One minute. And it can go in with the confidence that the order was put in correctly."
Customer Service Operations
ShelfCycle's intuitive design eliminated the need for Tony's extensive 100+ page training manual. Products are color-coded and custom-matched to each customer, making it virtually impossible to select the wrong item. The system does the thinking so the team can focus on customers.
"If they can't get it in a week, you need a new employee. If they're not 100% good at this in one week, they're just not capable of doing the job correctly. I'm just being honest with you."
Financial Management
Month-end close used to be a nightmare. Unbuilt liabilities, inventory variances, balance sheet reconciliations. The legacy system generated errors that required hours of forensic accounting to untangle. With ShelfCycle, Tony has had clean balance reports for months straight. Real-time dashboards replaced hours of manual report generation. The team can now see aging receivables and payables at a glance, drill down to invoice level with one click, and generate customer communications in 10 seconds.
"You can look at your screen and say, 'Hey, here's what it is,' versus printing that 20-page report and peeling through it. You can go down to ABC account, see exactly which invoices are past due and how many days, and literally checkmark those and send them to the salesman or directly to the customer."
Impact & Results
From 15-20 minutes to 1 minute per order
From 6 months to 1 week for full proficiency
Generate invoices and statements instantly
Simplified Everything
The complexity that required a 100+ page training manual simply disappeared. Tony's team now operates with confidence, speed, and accuracy that was impossible with their previous system. Cash flow improved as AR processes became automated and proactive.
"All of that just ultimately just disappears altogether. So that was a huge change for us. The value in that in itself and bringing cash in on time versus somebody having to physically go out there and pull that AR report and wonder whether this was collected. It's very much automated and that cleans up so much so quickly."
Built for Real Business
The true test came when Tony's son Logan, a salesman at CDS, traveled to Vietnam for almost a month. New customers placed their first orders while he was completely out of pocket. In the old system, this would have been chaos. With ShelfCycle, customer service could see every note, every pricing quote, every delivery instruction Logan had entered. Orders went out correctly without a single phone call to Vietnam.
"If you're familiar with TurboTax, they make it set up so anybody can do it, they pull you through screens, that makes it nice and easy. ShelfCycle shares that simplicity."
Document Management Revolution
Every BOL, COA, invoice, and certification lives in a digital file cabinet on each order. No more physical files, no more searching through folders, and no more costly print supplies.
"We used to have a packet for every order, and we used to file them away. Now anything that you want is right here at your hand, just a few clicks away. We're saving hundreds of dollars in toner now."
The Bottom Line
Tony describes the mental shift required: going from years of complexity to elegant simplicity felt almost suspicious at first. But once the team embraced the change, there was no looking back.
"You wake up one day and you've had the flu for two weeks. And then all of a sudden the flu is gone. You're like, man, I feel great. Something's going wrong because it's too easy now. That's kind of what it's like switching from our old system to ShelfCycle."
"You literally have to unscrew your complex head from dealing with our previous system and the complexities of it to be like, 'this is basically that simple.' And you ask yourself, 'Why did I ever deal with that?'"
Looking Forward
CDS continues to work with ShelfCycle to optimize workflows and add custom features. The responsive development team builds what customers need and continuously improves the platform based on real feedback.
"They're looking at it in different ways to make workflow easier. They go out there and they build that report for you so it's out there the way that you need it. They've built everything that we've asked them to build."
"They can sit there and look at it and pull the exact same thing up so they can talk you through and figure it out. You're getting video conference live support on fixing something that may be causing you some grief."
