Canals on April 1 announced a new set of capabilities designed to create what it calls an end-to-end “Operating AI” platform for wholesale distributors, expanding automation across customer service and back-office workflows.

The Miami-based company said the new offerings extend its AI-driven automation across sales, customer service, accounting, purchasing and receiving functions, with the goal of reducing manual work and enabling faster, more accurate responses to customers.

MDM Amplify Podcast: AI’s Customer Service Impacts, and How to Choose the Right Tech Partner – featuring Canals Co-Founder and CTO Erez Arnon

The launch reflects increasing demand for speed and visibility in distributor-customer interactions, which now span not only orders and quotes but also product inquiries, order status and billing questions.

New functionality includes:

• AI PO-to-Receipt Tracking: Automatically reads supplier documents such as acknowledgements, shipping notices and packing slips to update ERP systems, with reported time savings of up to 80% for purchasing and receiving teams.
• AI Accounts Receivable: Matches payments to invoices, applies them automatically and flags discrepancies, with early users achieving up to 99% match accuracy.
• AI Inquiry Handling: Generates suggested responses to customer questions by pulling relevant data from ERP and other systems.
• Ask Canals Chatbot: Provides cited answers to product, availability and policy questions to reduce manual search time.
• Live Voice: Enables AI-powered order entry from spoken interactions by transcribing and converting conversations into structured line items in real time.

Canals said the expanded platform is intended to automate repetitive tasks across workflows that support customer interactions, helping distributors improve service consistency while freeing employees for higher-value work.

“In wholesale distribution, winning business has always come down to operational execution,” said CEO Michael Delgado, adding that AI now enables automation of “tedious, repetitive parts” of those processes across departments.

The company positions the offering as a unified AI layer that connects front- and back-office operations, with more than 100 distributors currently using its platform.