Canals

This week the Canals team headed to Nashville in our Sunday best for #TUGConnects2026 hosted by TheUserGroup.org It was a pleasure hearing from Canals users (and soon-to-be Canals users) about their goals, their feedback, and how they're leveraging AI workflow automation to move faster and grow their bottom line. The User Group team always does a great job connecting Infor Distribution users with Infor Marketplace partners like Canals, and this year was no exception. Huge thank you to TUG for having us—see you at the next one!

The data center boom isn't stalling because of labor shortages. It's stalling because a sales rep is manually typing a PDF into an ERP. Nearly $700 billion is flowing into data center construction right now. By 2030, global spending will top $3 trillion. 65% of contractors expect the available dollar value of data center projects to increase in 2026 alone. Distributors are fielding double or triple their normal inbound sales order volume. Each request can run dozens or hundreds of line items, arriving as a PDF, a photo of a handwritten note, or a plain email. A sales rep reads it, interprets it, and types it in manually. That process takes hours. Sometimes days. For contractors, those hours mean stalled order confirmations, uncertain delivery timelines, and schedules put at risk. Materials run up to 70% of total project costs, so a delay in one fitting or valve can hold up an entire cooling system installation. Without real-time visibility into what's actually been ordered, shipped, and billed, contractors are making reactive decisions: paying premium prices to expedite orders after the damage is done. This is a problem ripe for solving with AI automation. Not by replacing people, but by replacing tedious tasks with automated workflows. Order acknowledgments get matched against purchase orders. Invoice data gets extracted and validated without manual entry. Your people have more time to do their actual jobs, not the painful admin work. The contractors finding ways to free their teams from administrative burden will be better positioned to win work, control costs, and deliver on time. Those who wait will find themselves playing catch-up in a market that has already moved on. What part of your procurement workflow is costing you the most time right now? Link to the full piece for Contractor magazine by Canals CEO and co-founder Michael Delgado is in the comments below.

What's the secret to "superpower your sales team"? Distribution industry veteran John Gunderson can tell you: Know the difference between a value-added task and a non-value-added task. For sales teams, a "non-value-added task" means chasing answers to the "Where's my stuff?" questions when they could be using that time on a "value-added task" like helping a customer with technical information on a specific product, or supporting a takeoff. Once you know the difference, it's clear what needs automating versus what requires a human touch. Learn how more distributors are empowering their salespeople to focus on their customers, move faster, and ultimately sell more in John's series for Industrial Supply Association: https://hubs.li/Q04f-Sp00

"Evaluate things that you can verify, and don't trust anything that you can't verify." In a podcast interview last month with Modern Distribution Management (MDM), Canals co-founder and CTO Erez Arnon advised distributors on how to choose the right AI tech partner. His #1 piece of advice? Be skeptical of curated demos. Nowadays anyone can put one together. Unless you see it working live with your data, it’s hard to be sure that the product works. Hear the full interview with the rest of Erez's advice here: https://hubs.li/Q04f-Shh0

In a recent webinar for Modern Distribution Management (MDM), Canals co-founder and CEO Michael Delgado broke down why hundreds of distributors are already adopting AI. " This is the front lines of how you interact with your customers, and how you can drive the most sales." The choice to automate manual workflows is exactly that, plain and simple. Today, your sales teams don't have enough time to reply to every quote opportunity. So much money are you leaving on the table by not using AI?

"Contractors don't have time to wait for me digging through catalogs." If you're wondering how AI has the power to help you quote faster without the learning curve, look no further than this example from Timothy Savage of Locke Supply Co. As an inside sales person, you can spend a lot of time chasing—chasing down answers for your customers, chasing down pricing or availability, chasing down shipping info—and all that is time you could be spending responding to more quotes, proactively nurturing relationships, and ultimately getting back to your customers faster. Listen to Tim's full 15 minute interview with Supply House Times now: https://hubs.li/Q04dfr-P0

Last week Canals CEO & co-founder Michael Delgado joined a panel discussion on best practices for the future of AI in distribution, where he discussed how distributors are already using AI to automate business-critical (but often manual and tedious) workflows. With emerging tech, distributors are able to work at the speed and accuracy their customers need to succeed. Thank you to Affiliated Distributors (AD) for hosting another successful event bringing together industry leaders dedicated to forging better ways of working for us all.

Most efficiency conversations in construction focus on robotics and prefab. At the same time, some of the biggest sources of inefficiency sit upstream, in the purchasing and accounting work that happens before materials ever reach the jobsite. A purchase order changes. A ship date is delayed. An invoice doesn't match what was delivered. If those discrepancies aren't caught in time, materials don't arrive and work stops. The administrative work that prevents delays is still largely manual, handled by back office teams managing a constant stream of updates, exceptions, and follow-ups. It’s a quiet operational risk—and one where AI is starting to make a real difference. Canals's own Kyle Costa breaks down how the practical application of AI in order tracking and accounts payable is helping teams keep up with growing workloads by capturing hard-won knowledge and turning it into repeatable, scalable workflows.

Last week spring weather finally made it to New York City, so our local Canals team members decided to make the most of the weather with a coworking day and happy hour! We care about doing the work right, and about the people doing it. Good to spend some time together over good food and better company in the sunshine 😎 Thanks to Jordan Jeffery Erez Arnon Zachary Salzbank Shiri Arnon Rob Glauz Chelsea Stone Reut Granot Shohet Jessica Gharabaghi Adam Steinberg for making it out!

The Global AI Awards has recognized Canals for our achievements in AI for Supply Chain & Logistics! 🎉 The awards celebrate the very best in AI with a focus on the companies developing and deploying groundbreaking AI solutions with real-world impact. We work hard to make a measurable difference for our customers, and it’s an honor to be recognized for the success we’ve seen so far. As the world demands more of critical industries like distribution, manufacturing, and construction, Canals is proud to build AI that moves the needle, enabling higher quality customer service and freeing teams up to focus on the strategic work only humans can do. Read the full press release here: https://lnkd.in/gpUdyxaE Learn more about the AI that keeps materials moving: https://www.canals.ai/