Does this replace our ERP?

No. The ERP keeps the item master, inventory, and financials. We build the operational layer around it—the quote desk, the replenishment app, the exception queues—that the ERP was never designed to handle well.

Can a system like this handle our SKU count and cross-references?

Yes. High SKU counts and large cross-reference tables are a data problem, not a UI problem, and they are well understood. The design work goes into making lookup fast and unambiguous for the person at the counter, not into coping with volume.

Our contract pricing rules are messy. Can software even model them?

Usually, yes—and the exercise of writing the rules down is itself valuable. Where a rule genuinely requires judgment, the system prices what it can and routes the exception to a person with full context, instead of forcing the rep to hunt for context manually.

What about our VMI customers on consignment?

Consignment, customer-owned, and standard min/max programs each have different inventory and billing triggers. The replenishment workflow is modeled per agreement type, so the branch sees one queue while the ERP receives the right transaction for each program.

Industrial & MRO Distribution

Internal systems for industrial distributors.

Industrial distribution runs on volume and detail. A mid-size MRO house may carry 80,000 active SKUs and cross-reference ten times that many OEM part numbers. Pricing lives in contract matrices that vary by customer, product family, and quantity break. And the customers you most want to keep expect you inside their stockroom—counting bins, managing min/max levels, and owning replenishment through VMI and vending programs.

The ERP holds the item master and posts the invoices. But the work that decides whether a quote goes out today or Thursday—checking a contract price, finding a supersession, confirming a mill lead time—happens in inboxes, tribal knowledge, and spreadsheets. That in-between work is what Praxyt builds for.

Where industrial distributors lose time and margin

Quote packages that stall at the pricing desk

A contractor sends a 140-line bill of material. Half the lines need contract price verification, a quarter need cost lookups, and a few need a manufacturer quote. The package sits until someone with the right knowledge clears it—while the customer collects competing bids. See how this plays out on our page about manual quote approvals.

Contract pricing that lives in someone's head

Customer-specific pricing is spread across the ERP price matrix, expired spreadsheets, and email commitments from a rep who left two years ago. Order entry quotes from memory, and margin leaks show up months later in a report nobody tied back to a cause.

VMI replenishment run off clipboards

Stockroom reps count bins on paper, key counts into a spreadsheet back at the branch, and someone rebuilds a replenishment order by hand. Missed bins become stockouts; over-counts become returns. The program you sold as a service becomes a cost center.

Cross-references locked up with senior reps

A customer reads an OEM part number off a nameplate. Whether you win the order depends on how fast someone maps it to your stock item, a supersession, or an equivalent. If that knowledge only exists in two veterans' heads, every new rep is a bottleneck and every vacation is a risk.

Special orders that vanish into the supply chain

Non-stock items go to a manufacturer with a six-week lead time, and visibility ends there. The customer calls for updates; the buyer chases the vendor by email; the promise date in the ERP quietly stops meaning anything.

Emergency orders with no expediting discipline

A plant-down order at 4:40 p.m. should trigger a different path—freight quotes, approval, cutoff checks. Instead it triggers a group chat. Sometimes it ships. Sometimes it doesn't, and nobody can reconstruct why.

Example Systems

What we build for industrial distributors

Systems sized to the workflow, not the org chart. A few examples of what an operational layer looks like in an MRO environment:

Quote desk with contract price validation
Incoming BOMs are parsed, matched to stock and cross-reference items, priced against the contract matrix, and flagged by exception: lines below margin floor, missing costs, or items needing a vendor quote. Reps work a queue of decisions instead of a pile of PDFs.
VMI replenishment app
Stockroom reps scan bins on a phone or handheld, counts compare against min/max in real time, and a draft replenishment order is ready before the rep leaves the site. Usage history feeds suggested min/max adjustments per customer location.
Cross-reference and supersession search
One search across your item master, OEM numbers, competitor crosses, and supersession chains—including the institutional knowledge captured from your senior reps before it retires with them.
Special order tracker
Every non-stock PO gets a tracked lifecycle: vendor acknowledgment, confirmed ship date, in-transit, received, delivered. Customers get proactive updates; buyers get an overdue list instead of a surprise.

Illustrative Workflow

Sample workflow: VMI stockroom replenishment

An illustrative example of how a replenishment visit can flow when the counting, ordering, and confirmation steps are one connected system instead of three separate chores.

Illustrative workflow, not a client system. The real version is shaped around your replenishment agreements and your ERP.

Integration notes for MRO environments

We build alongside the systems you already run. In industrial distribution that typically means:

Your ERP stays the system of record—whether that is Epicor Prophet 21, Infor Distribution, SAP Business One, NetSuite, or a legacy green screen. We read item, pricing, and order data out and write confirmed transactions back.
Pricing and cross-reference data from manufacturer feeds, industry data pools, and your own spreadsheets—normalized so the quote desk sees one version of the truth.
E-commerce and punchout catalogs stay in sync, so a contract price changed once is the price everywhere.
EDI and customer portals for the accounts that order that way, with exceptions routed to people instead of failing silently.

Diagnostic questions worth asking

How many quotes this week waited more than a day because someone had to verify a price or find a cost?
If your two most experienced counter reps left next quarter, which part numbers would become unfindable?
What does one VMI replenishment visit actually cost you today, from bin count to posted order?
How many special orders are past their original promise date right now—and who knows it?
When margin erodes on a contract account, how long before anyone can trace it to the line that caused it?

Questions industrial distributors ask

: No. The ERP keeps the item master, inventory, and financials. We build the operational layer around it—the quote desk, the replenishment app, the exception queues—that the ERP was never designed to handle well.
: Yes. High SKU counts and large cross-reference tables are a data problem, not a UI problem, and they are well understood. The design work goes into making lookup fast and unambiguous for the person at the counter, not into coping with volume.
: Usually, yes—and the exercise of writing the rules down is itself valuable. Where a rule genuinely requires judgment, the system prices what it can and routes the exception to a person with full context, instead of forcing the rep to hunt for context manually.
: Consignment, customer-owned, and standard min/max programs each have different inventory and billing triggers. The replenishment workflow is modeled per agreement type, so the branch sees one queue while the ERP receives the right transaction for each program.

Keep exploring

Your quote desk and your VMI program should not run on memory and clipboards.

Tell us where quotes stall or where replenishment breaks down. We will help you find the workflow worth fixing first.

Book a Workflow Review Explore Common Operational Problems