A brass components distributor got its order entry — and its days — back
How GenFit turned all-day manual order entry into a few quick minutes per order — and kept a human in the loop the whole way.
The Company
GenFit is an industrial distributor of brass fittings, nylon air brake tubing, and related accessories for the automotive aftermarket. Their customers range from truck and trailer manufacturers to small OEM builders and independent repair shops — anyone who needs to fix or build a trailer or get a broken-down truck back on the road.
Operating out of an 8,000-square-foot facility with a small crew, GenFit runs on Epicor Prophet 21 as their ERP. Efficiency isn't a nice-to-have; it's the whole game.
The Challenge
A single order entry person handled all incoming orders — most of them arriving as PDFs or emails. It worked, until the manual keying started crowding out everything more valuable. As Norbert O'Brien, VP of Operations, put it:
“The biggest issue we had was we were utilizing a highly qualified person who knew a lot about our product line in a very manual data entry role and it was keeping her from being able to do more valuable tasks.”
That person was Michele Nichols, who has 40 years of experience in order entry across interior design and industrial distribution — exactly the kind of person you want on customers and relationships, not keying line items from PDFs all day.
The Decision
Norbert's main skepticism was practical: could the system actually read PDFs that came in all different formats? What moved them forward was Ordermatic itself — and the team building it.
“We met the Ordermatic founders and we were really impressed with what they were building, and we just thought it was a great fit for our team — being a very small team, we have to have somebody who's hands-on and willing to work with us.”
Getting Started
GenFit went from initial implementation to using Ordermatic for every order in about six months — their first project of this kind.
“We didn't have very much expectation on how it was going to work. It was our first project like this and so we didn't really know what to expect. But, we were very happy with how the process went.”
The Results
The day-to-day changed quickly. Order entry stopped being an all-day grind, and Michele got her time back for the work that actually moves the business.
“My day has changed by the amount of time it now takes to enter an order… It's a very smooth running system and it's very accurate and quick.”
That freed-up time has compounded into real business growth:
“We are seeing very strong growth because of that… we are having a lot better success with our current customers and finding new customers because of it.”
GenFit, by the numbers.
See the numbers behind the story.
Hours recovered, time per order, labor capacity recovered, and order value processed — the full teardown of what changed at GenFit, plus a free ROI calculator to run the same math on your own ERP.
What Made the Difference
Michele has worked through every era of order entry — she started at a time when the computer was a telefax machine. Her concern about automation is the one most operators share: what happens when it goes wrong, and who do you call? Ordermatic's answer is to keep a human in the loop.
“That's what I like about Ordermatic. You're still with the human. You're still able to talk to someone. It is run by AI, but yet there's still someone there that is monitoring it.”
“Trust the process, trust Ordermatic.”
“It's a very low cost, high reward way to improve your business.”
“I wish we could have done it sooner.”
See what this looks like on your ERP.
We'll map GenFit's results to your order volume, formats, and system — Prophet 21, NetSuite, SAP, or the ERP you already run — and show you the rhythm on real orders.
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