institutional customers anywhere in the country. But when the company started in 1993, it was selling parts out of co-founder Michael Lewis’s garage in Boulder, Colo. A belief in the importance of staying up- to-date with technology, coupled with a customer-driven culture, has fueled that growth.
Like Avanti, Tundra sees tech- nology not as the end goal, but as a means of improving the customer experience. Its e-commerce website,
etundra.com, is only one way cus- tomers can order equipment, small- wares, and parts from the distributor. Working directly with a salesperson remains a popular option. “We al- ways make sure we offer all avenues of communication with our custom- ers because not everyone has the luxury of being able to pop online to make an order,” says Alicja Spauld- ing, director of e-commerce. Many customers may still prefer to buy through a real person, but those real salespeople are being supported by several digital sys- tems. Slack, a cloud-based collab-
oration hub, helps with interoffice communication and Basecamp has enabled the team to better coor- dinate project management. Both tools are essentially designed to heighten collaboration within the company. “Being able to overcome that communication gap has helped the customer experience,” says Marketing Manager Rachel See. On the sales side, Tundra uses Salesforce for marketing automation and customer relationship manage- ment. This allows the company to react quickly to customer requests, such as password resets for their online buying accounts and ship- ping notifications. “Your essentials are always very much available within a minute or as quickly as the system can process that informa- tion,” Spaulding says. Customers desire a fast re- sponse, but, as See points out, it’s even more important for a restau- rant owner to know the up-to-the- minute status of their order because their business relies on those deliveries to remain in operation.
DIGITAL TOOLS SUCH AS SLACK AND BASECAMP HELP TUNDRA’S TEAMS COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER AND FACILITATE PROJECT MANAGEMENT.
“A lot of times these customers are ordering something because some- thing has broken and needs to be replaced in their restaurants,” she says. “It’s an unavoidable last-min- ute fire approach.”
Being able to provide that information instantaneously gives the operator peace of mind and reduces downtime. In many cases, Tundra can deliver the critical com- ponent or equipment by the next day once an order is placed. “When something breaks, it has to be re- placed immediately,” See says. “We need to get them that solution so they can get their restaurant back up and running.”
To deliver that capability, Tundra has invested heavily in automat- ing its processes over the past 10 years. “Because our company is so customer-driven, we knew what solutions we needed to provide and we weren’t going to fall behind on that,” See says.
At first, that meant hiring inter- nal software developers to create plugins and APIs to better custom-
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