Automating Labor-Intensive Co-op Management to Replace Manual Excel Spreadsheets

Computer market research was able to start off the process just by asking all the questions. What are our pain points? Where are we struggling? What do we need to do better? And then they basically worked with us to give us the solution we needed. They were open to any suggestions that I had. They simply listened and did their best to accommodate. My name is Joanne Moss. I am the Director of Marketing here at Standard Electric Supply Company, and I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I reached out to Del at CMR, Computer Market Research, because I needed to find a better way to do co-op. Previously, to use his tool, I had to handle the co-op manually. It was a pain in the butt. I had to do it with Excel spreadsheets. I had to log every single entry. I had to chase invoices and supply all this extra documentation. And so I was really looking for a way that would help me be more efficient, less time-consuming, make it easier just to do all the processing, basically take a labor-intensive duty and make it much more efficient. Handling co-op from a distributor perspective. In the electrical industry, there's never been a solution that's really across the board provided for us. It's always been incredibly manual. And so it is ripe for modernization, I would say. Working with Dale and his team at Computer Market Research, I found them to be incredibly customer-centric. They listened to me, they asked me questions, and they adapted. They personalize, they customize. That's the sort of partner that I'm always looking to work with. Somebody who's going to consider what is unique about our situation, take what they have already in place and then customize it for us and make it seem like it's a pleasure to accommodate us and our requests. I think what surprised me the most about working with computer market research was just the organizational structure. And what I mean by that is that the president of Del was as involved with making sure that I got a product that I liked that Standard Electric could use, as was the project manager on the team. And when we got into a certain headache with regard to how things were coded, he just connected me directly with the person who was doing the coding. You get decisions made pretty immediately and responsibly. I just started my new year by putting all the programs. that I had for 2026, all of the marketing tactics that we have. And without me even asking, I wasn't even expecting them to do it. Dale was like, yeah, send me the overall list of your new tactics, me all the information. We'll get it all set up for you so that you don't even have to do that. That really surprised me. I was expecting to have to do all the initial setup and data entry myself for the new year and they just took care of it. If anyone is considering working with computer market research, I would say, There's really no reason to hesitate in establishing a partnership with them because, first of all, we all know the pain that is involved with co-op management. So, just having a solution of 50 % of the way there and then their customer service, their ability to adapt, their flexibility, and their willingness to listen and customize. I think that is what separates any technology type of company separates them from the rest.