“We’ve reclaimed our relevance . . . It’s a system we truly can’t imagine being without.”

Archaic and complex ERP makes for slow orders

Perrone & Sons, a specialty Italian foods distributor headquartered in New Orleans, takes hundreds of orders per day, often in-person and over the phone. The relationship-focused DSR team likes being there for their customers at the time of purchase. The problem, however, was that it took ages to input into the distributor’s complex ERP system. Rusty Perrone, VP of Sales and Co-Owner, says that “My team would tell me all the time about our sales order entry and how long it took. Getting orders into our system was a huge issue.”.

These long transaction cycles, created by a poor order input process, were drains on the DSRs. They were spending too long doing order admin work, rather than taking care of their customers and finding new ones.

Says Rusty: “I want my sales team to be able to make money they can’t make anywhere else. I want to keep them with us for a long time. So I wanted to make this better for them.”

Rusty set out to create an app that would make the ordering process better for both customers and DSRs. He didn’t want Perrone & Sons to fall behind on customer experience, especially in relation to “the large guys”, who were rolling out their own apps.

Pepper/ERP integration done in weeks, not months

“We’re a small business trying to do whatever we can to stay relevant. But we have to ask lots of hard questions, like should we buy another delivery truck to get customers products faster, or invest in an app? When we realized Pepper was billed on a per-customer basis, and that we wouldn’t have to wait until we could invest a huge amount, we gave it the green light.”

Perrone & Sons adopted Pepper, working with Pepper to build out the right custom integrations for their complex ERP, and began equipping DSRs and customers with the new app.

One notable enhancement driven by Pepper was the improvement in product details available through the app. Customers had long requested more comprehensive product information, including photos and nutrition details. Rusty Perrone worked closely with Pepper to integrate manufacturer and USDA databases, increasing product details coverage from 35% to 88%. “Photos and nutrition facts really got our customers’ attention, but we didn’t have it for everything. I brought it up to Pepper and within a week of that conversation, we started seeing that new product data come through,” Perrone notes.

Major ordering efficiency gains, DSRs with more time to focus on growth, and a customer ordering platform they love to use.

With an easy-to-use mobile app for inputting orders, DSRs at Perrone & Sons quickly found themselves shifting multiple hours per week away from facilitating transactions, and toward new business development.

“My team notices they’re spending less time with the transaction, and more time trying to grow the business. It’s much easier to input orders, and a huge benefit to the sales team.”

Customers don’t have to wait for their sales reps to explore the catalog and place orders either. The app offers the entire catalog at their fingertips with complete ordering functionality.

“It used to be that customers would call you, you’d have to pull over the car, pull out the computer, and search through the database to see if we had something. Now customers can just go straight to their phone and search for things themselves.”

Since introducing the app, 5.2% of cases ordered are not from customer order guides, showing that customers shop around and add new items to orders. And 63% of customers who order from the app keep ordering from the app long-term.

Two years later, Perrone & Sons defended its leadership and relevance in the region with a powerful ordering app that makes life better for both DSRs and customers. Order-taking goes much faster, there’s more time for selling—and customer relationships are stronger than ever.

“We’ve reclaimed our relevance and are better equipped to serve our customers and grow our company. It’s a system we truly can’t imagine being without."