SugarAI’s work with Country Fare offers a useful example of how distributors can turn customer and transaction data into measurable sales outcomes. Named Customer Experience Solution of the Year in the 2025 ERP Today Awards, the project helped Country Fare increase revenue from existing customer accounts by 40% while giving sales teams better visibility into churn risk, margin pressure, and buying-pattern changes.
In this Q&A, Dennis Smith, Senior Vice President of Sales at SugarAI, explains how the company helped Country Fare operationalize ERP and CRM insight inside daily sales workflows rather than adding another reporting layer.
ERP Today: For context, how would you describe Country Fare’s business, and the customer experience challenges they were looking to solve when they turned to SugarAI?
Dennis Smith: Country Fare is a relationship-driven food service wholesaler operating in a highly time-sensitive environment. The company offers roughly 4,500 food and beverage products and manages around 500 orders a day.
The company was challenged by growing in a fast-moving, perishable goods market where precision matters.
Country Fare needed to go beyond order fulfillment to gain a better understanding of what each customer buys, when their behavior changes, where demand is shifting so its sales team can respond.
For example, if a customer suddenly stops buying a product category, such as dairy, that may signal a lost opportunity, a pricing issue or a competitor stepping in. Country Fare needed a smarter, more real-time way to understand customer buying patterns so its sales team could go into customer conversations better prepared to protect both revenue and relationships.
Q: What were the main pain points in their existing sales and CX processes – for example, around fragmented data, manual reporting, or limited visibility into customer behavior?
DS: Country Fare needed to move from scattered information to connected insights that could guide smarter customer conversations. Their teams were working across disconnected systems and manual processes that made it difficult to get a complete, current view of customer activity. In a fast-moving foodservice business, that creates real friction. Customer buying patterns can shift quickly, product pricing can change daily, and sales teams need to know where there is risk or opportunity before it impacts the relationship.
The pain points showed up in three ways. First, data was fragmented across systems, which limited visibility into customer behavior. A customer’s overall spend might look stable, but if they suddenly stopped buying a specific product category, the sales team needed a way to spot that change quickly and understand what was happening.
Second, reporting and analysis were too manual and time-consuming. Employees were spending hours entering and reviewing data, but because the business moves so quickly, that information could become outdated almost immediately.
Finally, margin visibility was critical. With fresh food and beverage products, pricing volatility meant the team needed a better way to identify products at risk of being sold below cost.
Q: What did Country Fare’s systems landscape look like at the start – which core platforms (ERP, CRM, order management, etc.) were in place, and where were the data silos?
DS: Country Fare’s core systems environment included Sage as a key business platform, supported by a private cloud/Microsoft Azure infrastructure. Like many growing wholesale and distribution businesses, the company had the operational systems needed to process orders and manage the business, but the challenge was turning that transactional data into timely, usable insight for the sales team.
The data silo was less about the absence of information and more about the disconnect between operational data and behavioral data – structured data and unstructured data. Country Fare was processing around 500 orders a day and serving more than 700 restaurants, cafés and caterers, but sales teams still relied heavily on manual processes and spreadsheet-based reporting.
That created issues with understanding customer activity, product purchasing patterns and changes in demand. Country Fare needed to move from fragmented, manual reporting to connected insight that account managers could use to easily understand what was happening to guide customer conversations and negotiations.
Q: How does SugarAI connect into that landscape in practical terms – what data do you bring together, and how do you avoid adding yet another dashboard or system of record?
DS: Sugar connects into Country Fare’s existing systems, including Sage and its cloud infrastructure, to surface the sales and customer intelligence already sitting within the business. The goal is not to replace the operational backbone or create another disconnected system of record but to make the data inside those systems more useful to the people responsible for customer growth.
Sugar brings together customer spend, order history, product-level purchasing patterns, year-on-year trends, recent changes in buying behavior, product gaps and margin signals. That gives account managers a clear view of where revenue is growing, where buying patterns are changing and where there may be risk or opportunity inside an account.
The way Sugar avoids becoming “just another dashboard” is by focusing on action. For Country Fare, Sugar is part of the daily sales rhythm. Reps start the day by reviewing customer sales figures, identifying increases or decreases in spend and spotting where customers have stopped buying certain products. That turns existing operational data into a practical guide for prioritizing outreach, preparing for meetings and having more relevant customer conversations.
Q: You’ve talked publicly about moving beyond the “CRM data trap” to a precision selling model. How did that philosophy shape the way you designed the solution for Country Fare?
DS: Often what happens with CRM systems is that companies capture plenty of customer and transaction data, but sellers still have to do the hard work of interpreting it, prioritizing it and deciding what to do next. For Country Fare, we wanted to solve that problem at the workflow level.
Country Fare operates in a high-velocity foodservice environment, where product demand, pricing and buying behavior can change quickly. The design goal was to make those changes visible and actionable for the sales team. That meant moving beyond a passive record of customer activity and giving account managers a practical way to see what had changed, why it mattered and where to focus their attention that day.
That is precision selling in practice. It is not about asking sellers to manage more data. It is about giving them clearer guidance so they can protect existing revenue, identify expansion opportunities and enter customer conversations with more confidence.
Q: Concretely, how does SugarAI turn transactional signals from ERP and CRM into prioritized next‑best actions that sales and CX teams actually follow through on day‑to‑day?
DS: It starts by looking at the signals that already exist inside the business: order history, product-level purchasing patterns, customer spend, year-on-year trends, recent changes in buying behavior and margin indicators.
Sugar AI gives Country Fare’s sales teams insights to understand whether customers have increased or decreased spend or stopped buying a particular product. If a customer’s total spend looks stable but they have stopped buying a certain product category, for example, that becomes a prompt for the account manager to investigate what changed.
The important part is that these signals are tied to practical actions. A drop in category spend can trigger a retention conversation. A product gap can become a cross-sell opportunity. A margin issue can prompt a pricing adjustment before profit is lost. That turns ERP and CRM data into a daily sales plan rather than a retrospective report.
Q: Where does AI sit in this deployment – what kinds of patterns or risks is it detecting?
DS: In Country Fare’s deployment, AI sits in the contextual intelligence layer between ERP data, CRM activity and the daily selling workflow. Its role is to interpret the commercial signals already sitting inside the business, understand them in the context of each customer relationship and surface the changes that require action.
This is central SugarAI’s approach: helping CRM evolve from a system of record into a system of action. The value is in giving sales teams a clearer understanding of what is changing, why it matters and what to do next. In this deployment, AI and sales intelligence sit closest to the signal layer, reading patterns across order history, product mix, buying cadence, pricing, margin movement and year-on-year trends.
For Country Fare, those signals are especially important because small changes can have a big commercial impact. The business operates in a fast-moving foodservice environment where fresh produce prices change daily, customer buying patterns shift quickly and margins can be tight. Sugar helps identify products that may be at risk of being sold below cost, allowing the business to adjust pricing before margin erosion becomes a larger issue.
It also detects changes in buying behavior that might otherwise be missed. For example, if a customer stops buying a specific product category, reduces order frequency, shifts volume away from certain lines or shows a short-term change against their normal buying pattern, that can be a churn signal or an indication that a competitor has stepped in. The same intelligence can reveal expansion opportunities, such as customers buying in one category with a clear gap in adjacent products they are likely to need.
The value comes from translating those patterns into timely, practical guidance for the sales team. Instead of asking reps to search through reports or manually compare spreadsheets, Sugar surfaces the accounts, products and risks that need attention. That gives Country Fare’s sales team a more current view of each customer and helps them act earlier, whether the next step is protecting margin, recovering lost spend, preventing churn or growing an existing account.
Q: How do you present those insights in the workflow so that they feel like helpful guidance rather than another stream of alerts – what did you learn about UX, thresholds, or explainability from this project?
DS: Insights must be contextual, explainable and presented in the existing workflow and processes that sales reps use every day.
The organizing UX principle is to make the next step obvious. A rep should not have to wonder why something matters. If the system shows that a customer has stopped buying a product category, the seller immediately understands the commercial context and can decide whether to follow up, prepare a targeted offer or raise a service issue.
That is also where thresholds matter: Not every movement in data deserves attention. The value comes from surfacing the changes that are meaningful enough to shape a customer conversation or business decision.
Q: How did the shift from manual, retrospective reporting to real‑time, proactive insights change the way Country Fare engages with its customers in practice?
DS: This has improved the confidence and the capacity of the sales team. Instead of spending valuable time looking backward at static reports or manually piecing together customer data, account managers can now go into customer conversations with a current, granular view of what is happening inside each account. Country Fare has reported a 20% reduction in time spent on data analysis and reporting, which gives reps more time to focus on strategic customer engagement rather than administrative work.
That shift matters because Country Fare’s team can now prepare for meetings with a much clearer understanding of what each customer is buying, where spending habits have changed and where there may be risk or opportunity. Reps are not just showing up with account history. They are showing up with insight.
That is a meaningful shift as customers are now no longer interacting with a supplier taking orders, but a true partner who understands their business, notices change and can bring relevant ideas to the conversation. In food service, where reliability, product availability and cost control matter, that level of preparedness builds trust and helps the sales team spend more time creating value for customers.
Q: Can you share any examples of how account managers now prepare for customer meetings differently, or how they use SugarAI to spot issues before the customer does?
A practical example is product-level visibility. Before a customer meeting, an account manager can look beyond total account spend and understand what is actually changing inside the relationship. Overall spend may look healthy, but Sugar can show that the customer has stopped buying a specific product category, reduced order frequency or shifted volume away from items they historically purchased. That gives the account manager a more focused reason to reach out: Has the customer’s menu changed? Are they sourcing that product elsewhere? Was there a pricing, availability or service issue?
This shifts the value and productivity of the customer conversation. The rep can walk in with a specific commercial signal and a clear next step. The discussion becomes more consultative because the account manager is prepared to solve a customer issue, protect the relationship or recover lost spend.
Another example is margin protection. In fresh produce, prices can move quickly, and small changes can have an immediate impact on profitability. Country Fare uses SugarAI to identify products at risk of being sold below cost, helping the team address pricing before the issue becomes a broader margin problem. For the sales team, that means they can enter customer conversations with timely pricing intelligence, rather than discovering the issue after margin has already been eroded.
The broader shift is from reactive account management to proactive customer management. Reps are using Sugar to prepare around what has changed, what needs attention and where the next opportunity or risk may be. That helps them spot issues earlier, whether it is a product gap, churn signal, competitor threat, margin risk or expansion opportunity.
Q: The project has delivered 21% overall growth and 40% more revenue from existing customer accounts, along with significant time savings for the sales team. What are the key levers behind those results?
DS: Many companies, like Country Fare, have a significant opportunity for upsell and cross-sell opportunities hidden in plain sight. With Sugar, Country Fare can see customer spend, product-level purchasing patterns and shifts in buying behavior much more clearly, which helps the team identify both risk and opportunity. Sales teams are often under pressure to meet revenue goals by pursuing new business, but Country Fare shows the growth potential that can come from serving current customers more intelligently. The 40% increase in revenue from existing customer accounts is important because it shows how better customer insight can help teams identify untapped opportunities inside relationships they already have. And with better prioritization, reps can now focus on the customers and categories where action is most needed.
Q: Beyond revenue, what CX or operational KPIs stand out for you – for example retention, order accuracy, time spent on analysis vs selling, or customer satisfaction?
DS: Another key performance indicator is customer retention. Country Fare cites an 80-90% customer retention rate, which is significant in a competitive food service market. Time savings also matter because every hour not spent manually analyzing data can be redirected toward selling, customer engagement and issue resolution.
I would also point to preparedness as an operational KPI, even if it is harder to quantify. When account managers consistently enter meetings knowing what changed in the customer’s buying behavior, they are better positioned to create value. That improves the quality of the customer interaction in addition to efficiency of the sales process.
Q: From your perspective as a product/CX leader, what made this project stand out to the ERP Today judges as “Customer Experience Solution of the Year” – what did SugarAI and Country Fare get right that many CRM or analytics projects miss?
DS: The project is exceptional because it shows the real promise of CRM when it is focused on delivering insights that matter and which directly map to measurable customer and commercial outcomes. The ERP Today award recognized projects that improve how businesses engage, serve and retain customers through enterprise technology. In Country Fare’s case, the judges highlighted that the data was not simply centralized; it was operationalized, helping the business move from reactive sales processes to proactive relationship management.
Many CRM and analytics projects stop at visibility. They give teams more dashboards, but they do not necessarily change behavior or measurably impact outcomes. Country Fare used sales intelligence to change how account managers prepare, prioritize and engage every day for more successful selling and service to existing customers.
Q: If you had to distill two or three key design principles from this deployment that other enterprises should adopt when trying to operationalize customer data, what would they be?
DS: First, start with the decision, not the data. Ask what the seller, account manager or CX team needs to decide today, then design the insight around that action.
Second, make the insight explainable. If the system flags a risk or opportunity, the user should understand the underlying signal, whether that is a drop in spend, a stopped product category, a product gap or a margin concern.
Third, embed the insight into the daily workflow. The best technology does not ask teams to step outside their process to find value. It makes the next best action visible at the moment the team is planning outreach, preparing for a meeting or managing an account.
Q: How repeatable is this pattern for other mid‑market distributors or manufacturers that are sitting on rich ERP data but struggling to turn it into proactive CX?
DS: These results are highly repeatable and achievable because the underlying problem Sugar solves is common across manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors. These companies often have rich ERP data: orders, products, pricing, inventory, margins and customer history. The challenge is that this data is usually designed for operational control, not for frontline sales action.
Sugar is built for complex, relationship-driven industries where growth depends on understanding account behavior and acting at the right moment. The platform is designed to cut through complexity, prioritize opportunities and increase upsell using the resources companies already have. Sugar also supports more than 180 ERP integrations, which is important for businesses that want to unlock ERP data without ripping out their operational backbone.
For mid-market distributors and manufacturers, the pattern is the same: connect the operational data, identify the customer signals that matter and turn them into practical guidance and improved outcomes for sales and revenue teams.
Q: Looking ahead, what’s next on the roadmap – either for Country Fare specifically or for the SugarAI platform more broadly – in terms of deepening ERP integration, expanding AI use cases, or supporting new CX roles and workflows?
DS: For Country Fare specifically, I would frame the next opportunity around deepening the use of insight across the customer lifecycle: helping teams anticipate risk earlier, identify more expansion opportunities and continue improving how account managers prepare for customer conversations.
More broadly, the Sugar roadmap is about making precision selling even more actionable. That means deeper ERP connectivity, richer account-level intelligence, clearer risk and opportunity signals, and more guidance embedded directly into the workflows sellers and CX teams already use. The future of CRM is an intelligence layer that helps teams understand what is changing, what matters most and what to do next.
