Month: November 2020

Route Accounting Solutions

eoStar Welcomes Chief Operating Officer, John Ross

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On Monday, November 23rd, we welcomed John Ross to the eoStar executive team. John will serve as the Chief Operating Officer.

John is an accomplished executive with a proven track record in building high performing, capable organizations who are empowered to deliver complete, highly scalable solutions concurrently across multiple domains with a high degree of quality, agility, resilience, and reliability. John understands the fundamentals of wholesale distribution, having spent over 14 years with Andrews Distributing. As the EVP of Technology, John was responsible for all aspects of digital innovation, resulting in over 300% revenue growth. John lead the creation of two custom software packages focused on sales enablement and was responsible for developing a Project Management Office and Risk Management Program that reduced the risk profile of the enterprise by over 75%.

As the Chief Operating Officer, John will serve as a key contributor to the leadership team, reporting to Jim Clishem, CEO. He will assist in the company’s growth, structure, and direction in both operational and strategic matters. John will lead and manage eoStar’s Product, Program Management, Software Engineering, Customer Success, Professional Services, and Software Quality Assurance teams. John will also be responsible for overseeing eoStar’s feature and efficiency enhancements to continually improve the client experience and assist in building and maintaining key strategic product and service partnerships to further advance value-based eoStar platform capabilities.

“John is a seasoned and trusted leader who consistently delivers results. He is uniquely qualified to drive strategic prioritization and accountability within eoStar. John has a proven record of building strong, profitable organizations, developing innovative solutions that maximize results, and is recognized as an established industry thought leader. He is an outstanding addition to our team. This is an exciting time for us and for our clients. I believe that John will make tremendous contributions to our company that will really move the needle,” said Jim Clishem, Chief Executive Officer.

Route Accounting Solutions

Professional Services: More than Just Software

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eoStar’s route accounting and warehouse management solutions have helped many clients take their distribution businesses to the next level. These software solutions increase business efficiency, accuracy, and customer satisfaction. However, eoStar is more than just a software company. We also offer several professional services so your company can make the most of its distribution potential.  

Our Professional Services 

eoStar offers five professional services for distribution companies: 

  • Implementation 
  • 27/7 technical support 
  • Software upgrade assistance and database performance tune-up 
  • Product utilization assessment 
  • Product training 

Implementation is a four-step rollout strategy for companies that want to make changes without missing deadlines, going over budget, or compromising company security. We’ll design and build your software according to your company’s specific needs. 

With 24/7 technical support, our team can help you with even the most complex technical difficulties. eoStar has team members available to help at any time, so no matter when you need support, you can rest assured that we’re on your side. 

We offer software upgrade assistance to keep your system running at peak performance, and with a product utilization assessment, we can help you find ways to make the most of your software usage and take your company’s efficiency up a notch. 

Finally, with our product training service, we offer on-the-job training, Q and A sessions, new hire product onboarding, and more. This training is vital to company performance, employee retention, and other important success measurements. 

Software and Beyond 

All of these professional services work in conjunction with eoStar’s software products. Whether you choose from our existing software production options or let our team design your software from scratch, we can help you take advantage of all that your software has to offer. 

Businesses need more than excellent software to grow and thrive. With professional services like ours, not only can you maximize your software benefits, you can also keep all of your services running effectively. We’ll help you stay on top of your game so that you can stay ahead of the competition. 

The Benefits of eoStar’s Professional Services 

eoStar’s professional services can take a lot of the stress out of running a business. At eoStar, we’re committed to putting our clients and their businesses first. We’ve designed our professional services to meet all of your most pressing business software needs.

Want to Learn More? Contact eoStar 

Want to learn more about eoStar’s professional services? Contact us now with your questions. Our team members would be happy to talk to you about your options. 

Route Accounting Solutions

Matt Conflitti, Transforming Data Into Insights

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Software companies produce a lot of data. In fact, most American businesses produce data constantly. But what do they do with that data? Well, most don’t do anything at all. That’s too bad, because data can do a lot for the businesses that know how to use it. 

That’s where data science comes in. Data science is all about gathering and using knowledge. Data scientists mine data, gather insights from that data, and then apply those insights to create growth and efficiency. 

To get some more insight into data science, we talked to Matt Conflitti, who works as a data scientist here at eoStar. 

How It Started 

eoStar didn’t always have a data science team. Matt started working for eoStar just over two years ago. 

Like a lot of other data scientists, Matt took a winding road to get into the field. That’s because data science encompasses a lot of knowledge. Matt noted that although data science has gained some more clear-cut definitions recently, it still contains overlapping skill sets. For example, “data science and machine learning engineering are kind of interchangeable today,” Matt explained. 

Matt started with a degree in Computer Science and Math from Grand Valley State University. After various software development jobs, he started working for the accounting firm KPMG. There, several of his projects involved machine learning and data science. He loved those projects and wished he could pursue more of them. 

Fortunately, Matt got a LinkedIn message inviting him to do just that at eoStar. Matt accepted, becoming the first member of eoStar’s data science team. 

Matt’s Work with Data Science 

At eoStar, Matt is laying the groundwork for a full data science platform. He’s working on a few different initiatives, including: 

  • Recommender systems — determining which products work best for our clients’ customers. 
  • Forecasting and demand planning — finding the best models for warehouse forecasting and inventory management. 
  • Clustering — creating rules by examining and applying different data characteristics. 

“I don’t want to be cliche and say I like them all,” said Matt when we asked about his favorite project, “but [because] I’m someone who loves the details of things…all of the projects have been great.” 

The Goal 

Data is valuable, Matt noted, but only if it gets used properly to produce usable insights. Again, not everyone uses their available data. 

At eoStar, we want to do things differently. Thanks to Matt and his team members, we do use our data, and we use it to make our clients’ lives easier. Matt’s work helps businesses transform their workflows in a positive way. This way, our clients can gain efficiency and higher customer satisfaction rates. 

Learn More about eoStar’s Work with Data 

Thanks to eoStar’s data science efforts, we can offer services that our competition cannot. Get in touch with us now to learn more about those services. We’d love to answer your questions about how our work can help you keep your business in its best shape. 

Route Accounting Solutions

So, What Exactly is a Data Scientist?

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What is a data scientist?

During our 2020 virtual user conference, one of our sessions went through  eoStar Analytics. During the session our very own data scientist talked about the future of data, analytics, and how to use information to make more informed decisions for your business. But there was one question on a lot of people’s minds, what is a data scientist?

The job is to the fulfill the formula of Problems + Data => Models + Insights. They are able to map expert knowledge and context into real-life solutions. An unofficial definition of a data scientist has become: someone who knows more about math and statistics than a computer scientist and more about computer science than a mathematician or statistician.

“A Data Scientist is a professional who extensively works with Big Data in order to derive valuable business insights from it. Over the course of a day, the Data Scientist (DS) has to assume many roles: a mathematician, an analyst, a computer scientist, and a trend spotter.” – IntelliPaat[1]

Data Science is a rapidly changing field, so anyone that takes on the role of data science needs to be able to keep up with the latest research and techniques. Due to the cloudiness of what exactly a data scientist is and does, there is an increasing overlap between data science and machine learning. Machine learning includes things like computer vision, speech recognition, neural networks, etc. The person that implements the models and insights data scientists come up with is traditionally called a Machine Learning Engineer (MLE), but this can be interchangeable with “Data Scientist” at a lot of organizations.

A typical workflow for a data scientist or machine learning engineer is as follows:

  1. Scoping
    1. Working closely with the product team, the DS will gather the requirements around a particular business problem and determine if a solution is possible given the available data.
  2. Research
    1. This process involves gathering the necessary datasets, cleaning them, and experimentation on the data. This is the phase where the DS really gets to understand the relationships within the data as well as outside of the data. Research also goes into figuring out which approach will be best to solve the problem.
  3. Modeling
    1. Once a few approaches are selected to explore, the DS fits the various models to the data and benchmarks are calculated to determine which system will work best in a real-life scenario. The goal of this phase is to converge on a single approach to deploy.
  4. Deployment
    1. Finally, the model or system is deployed and put into production so that it can be integrated into the existing software ecosystem.

As the beverage industry continues to evolve with new SKU’s, expanded product offerings, and tightening inventory, data and analytics are becoming more essential than before. At eoStar we are fortunate to have a team focused on turning your data into insights and helping you turn those insights into action. To learn more about how our products are using data and analytics to improve your business, talk to one of our sales experts.

[1] https://intellipaat.com/blog/what-is-a-data-scientist/

Route Accounting Solutions

Ryan Kroll: Business Support Specialist

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eoStar is more than just a software. Between route accounting, warehouse management, streamlined business processes, and much more, eoStar provides complete distributor support. As a matter of fact, eoStar increases pick accuracy, increases fulfillment speed, and helps its clients become more competitive overall. 

How does eoStar maintain its multifaceted business support, and how does it keep up with high industry demand? A big part of the answer comes from people like Ryan Kroll, who joined the team about three years ago. We spoke to Ryan recently to get his point of view on eoStar, how he joined the team, and some of his favorite things about working for the company. 

Joining the Team 

Ryan works as a business support specialist, making sure that clients get what they need from their eoStar products. Ryan achieved something that’s getting increasingly rare in today’s economy — he got the job right after graduating college. Thanks to some family connections, Ryan found his place on the eoStar team, and he’s been a valuable asset to the company ever since. Thanks to his flexibility and quick learning abilities, he’s brought energy and a fresh perspective to the workplace. 

eoStar’s Commitment to Client Satisfaction 

Thanks to Ryan and other Business Support Specialists, the eoStar team can maintain its commitment to client satisfaction. At eoStar, the customer matters above all else. The eoStar team knows that their clients deal with high demands, tight deadlines, and several other pressures on a daily basis. 

Ryan and other eoStar team members maintain close connections with the clients. Because of people like Ryan, there’s no guesswork involved in eoStar product development. Instead, eoStar uses the insight from Ryan’s customer connections to build specific, multi-layer solutions. 

Coca-Cola Beverages Africa 

We asked Ryan two specific questions about his eoStar project involvement: 

  1. What was your most recent project with eoStar? 
  2. What eoStar project were/are you the most excited about? 

Ryan had the same answer for both questions: Coca-Cola Beverages Africa. Ryan and the other team members are currently wrapping up the first wave of the CCBA project. 

CCBA is Africa’s largest Coca-Cola bottler and the 8th largest Coca-Cola bottler in the world. eoStar is working with CCBA on each step of their production, from order generation to distribution. Ryan’s part of the job was to support the financial aspects of Coca-Cola bottling at CCBA. 

For Ryan and his team members, part of the project involved travel. “We got to go to South Africa twice,” Ryan told us. “It was the opportunity to learn about the culture…to learn about a different business model…There’s a lot of development we had to do on our end to bring eoStar to where it needed to be to work for them. There were a lot of interesting learning opportunities within that.” 

Travel opportunities may have dwindled for everyone recently, but Ryan will always be grateful for this particular experience, and he’s brought what he’s learned into his day-to-day job. 

Customization for the African market is just one example of how Ryan and other eoStar employees make sure that their clients get exactly what they need. The eoStar team believes that their products should always fit within the client’s business model, not the other way around. Having people like Ryan on the team is exactly how eoStar makes that goal happen. 

As the CCBA project ties up its loose ends, Ryan will continue working on the financial side of the project. Once that’s done, he’ll transfer back to support. 

Off the Clock

So, what does Ryan like to do when he’s not working? He enjoys watching sports, he told us, including football, basketball, and baseball. He also enjoys playing golf and video games when he has the time. These activities help Ryan maintain a solid balance between work life and home life. This way, when he goes back on the clock, he’s ready to give his full attention to the clients who need his support. 

Learn More about eoStar 

Want to learn more about the role of a Business Support Specialist? Need more information on eoStar as a whole? The eoStar team would love to answer your questions and give you more information about our software. Contact the eoStar team today to get started. eoStar is here to help you keep your company running smoothly.