AI-readiness checklist for distributors

Eight things to know first

A two-week audit will measure all of this for you — but if you can answer most of these, you're ready to get a real number. The more "yes," the faster the wedge pays back.

• You can state your inbound order channel mix (phone / email / fax / EDI %).
• You know roughly how many minutes it takes to enter and review one order.
• You can name your ERP and version (P21, Eclipse, SX.e, NetSuite…).
• You have a sense of your item- and customer-master data quality (duplicates, nulls, stale prices).
• Someone owns order accuracy and could define a baseline error rate.
• An owner or CFO can decide on a paid audit without a committee.
• You can pull a 30-day sample of real inbound orders.
• You're framing this as capacity, not headcount cuts.