How does a distributor built on spreadsheets and one person's memory move to a single operating core?

Business: B2B industrial supplies distributor, Cape Town, South Africa

Size: 13 staff

Primary service: Operational Control and Visibility

Secondary services: Workflow Redesign and Automation, Cash Flow Recovery

Engagement mode: Design and Implement

Status: In Flight

A B2B industrial supplies distributor in South Africa had grown on spreadsheets, several disconnected systems, and one person's judgement. GrowthPains is installing a single operating core so quotes, customers, inventory and pricing sit in one place, and the owner is no longer the only route through a decision.

What was the problem?

The founder put the starting point plainly: quoting, sales, and delivery. What was in the way:

• Quotes took too long, with no quick way to see what a customer had ordered before, and repeat orders ran the same slow manual route as new ones.

• The accounting system could only hold one price list, so complex customer pricing was a workaround and transport was recalculated by hand on nearly every quote.

• Online shopping invoices were manually rekeyed in the accounting system.

• Sales leads arriving across channels were hard to capture and then track to a sale, and there was no way to revive old customers.

• The pricing decisions that mattered all sat with the founder. Two weeks away and quoting, banking, and marketing stalled.

• No written procedures, and more than ten spreadsheets plugging gaps, each going stale.

What did we find?

• Enquiries from five sources had nowhere central to land, so leads slipped and no one could see the end-to-end pipeline.

• Customer records were created in several systems at once, with no authoritative version to trust.

• Credit status and past pricing were invisible at the moment a quote was being prepared.

• Nearly every decision depended on the owner, the single largest constraint on the business growing.

What did we do?

• Documented the sales processes with a named owner agreed for each, and retired a redundant software subscription, saving money each month that would have grown more costly as the business grows.

• Installed one operating core system to replace the scattered tools and spreadsheets, keeping the accounting system as the financial ledger and the online store as the storefront.

• Stood up a single sales pipeline that captures every enquiry and tracks it from first contact to paid, with one customer record consolidated from the separate systems: 772 customers and 2,757 leads.

• Built a clear pricing structure by customer type, with credit status visible at the point of quoting.

What is in place so far?

The engagement is in delivery, so revenue results and all outcomes are not in yet. Already live: the team works one pipeline they were trained on by us, one customer record replaces the scattered copies, and a prioritised list of 30 findings (6 of them critical) is agreed and being worked through.

This case study is anonymised. If you would like to hear more about the business behind it, get in touch.

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