Jan-san products are full of near-duplicates. There are dozens of roll towels that look alike but fit different dispensers. Can liners vary by size, gauge, color and whether they're measured in microns or mils. Chemical concentrates from different makers do the same job under different names. That makes part numbers a real issue, both for keeping customers and for winning new ones.
Let customers order with their own numbers
Larger customers like school districts, hospitals and property management companies often have their own item codes for supplies. Their warehouse and their requisition system use those codes, not yours. Customer part numbers let them order using their own part numbers. Load the cross-reference from their codes to your items once, and their buyer types their code and gets your exact item at their price.
For a master account like a school district, the cross-reference sits on the master and every school inherits it. The head custodian at each building uses the district's codes, and every order points to the right product.
My Catalog keeps it simple
My Catalog shows a customer everything they've ever ordered from you. Most jan-san customers buy a fairly short list out of a large catalog: their paper, their liners, a handful of chemicals, gloves and a few tools. With My Catalog, a custodian doesn't search for "roll towel" and get 30 results. They see their roll towel, the one that fits their dispenser, with a photo.
That alone heads off one of the most common jan-san mistakes: ordering a towel or tissue that doesn't fit the installed dispensers.
Winning accounts: scan the competitor's label
When you go after an account that buys from another distributor, their supply room is full of that distributor's shelf labels and part numbers. Scan a competitor's bin label lets you scan another distributor's label with your phone and get your matching item. Behind it is a cross-reference table, every competitor part number matched to yours, and cross-reference progress shows how many items are crossed to each competitor so far and what's still in progress.
A conversion might go like this:
- Walk the supply room and scan the competitor's shelf labels.
- Mark which items cross directly and which need a substitute, such as a different liner gauge or a different brand of neutral cleaner.
- Check dispensers, since paper and soap often have to match what's on the wall.
- Quote the whole room, review substitutes with the facility manager, and swap in your labels on changeover day.
Start from their old invoice
If the buyer hands you a competitor invoice instead, AI Quick Quote can read it. Upload or snap a picture of an invoice, packing slip or spreadsheet, with competitor part numbers, and get a priced quote with your items. Quick Quote re-check then re-checks any line still being matched against the competitor's full description, and every crossed line shows their invoice text next to your item. The facility manager can see exactly why each match was made.
Once a customer's own codes and shelves point to your products, switching vendors means redoing that work. It's a real reason to stay that has nothing to do with the price of a case of tissue.
It also helps your own team. When a new inside rep takes a call about "the towel for the brown dispenser on the third floor," the customer's history and their own codes answer the question, not somebody's memory. Fewer wrong cases go out, fewer heavy returns come back, and the account feels well looked after.
Want to see your own jan-san catalog in it? See how it works.