This Shopify Plus Manufacturing Company Saves 15 Hours a Month via Automated Onboarding

First impressions matter, and the last thing you want when you're onboarding new B2B buyers is to create friction and frustration.

Before finding a better way, Kento Burke's sales team at Aquor Water Systems was managing a heavy manual workflow. A lead would submit a Jotform, which triggered a Slack notification. A rep then had to manually review the data, create a profile in HubSpot, manually build the Company profile in Shopify, and type in the appropriate tags.

The result? A 15-minute manual process for every single applicant and a 1-2 day wait for the customer.

By switching to Onboard, they automated nearly the entire pipeline.

The power of native automation

One of the biggest wins Kento noted was how deeply the automation integrates with Shopify. Instead of fighting against the platform, the team used form rules to create a self-sorting system.

• Custom Data Capture: They tailored their forms to ask niche-specific questions (e.g., "Are you a builder, architect, or plumber?").
  -Instant Tagging: Upon approval, the app automatically applies tags based on those answers.
  -Downstream Efficiency: These tags then trigger the rest of the tech stack, from HubSpot workflows to Shopify catalog assignments.

This shift turned a 15-minute chore into a 30-second Accept click, saving the team an estimated 10 to 15 hours of labor every month.

Solving the Weekend Gap

B2B buyers don't always shop Monday through Friday, but many lean sales teams don't have reps to cover the weekend. To prevent losing customers who apply on a Saturday, Kento's team implemented a clever stopgap:

"Whenever they submit a form, they get an email with a one-time use discount code... if they need an immediate order and we can't address the form because it's Saturday, they can just use the code."

This ensures the customer feels taken care of immediately, while the team maintains the integrity of their professional vetting process on Monday morning.

Calculating the ROI of time

When evaluating Shopify apps, it's easy to focus on revenue-generating tools like upsell widgets. But as Kento points out, labor savings are a critical, often overlooked metric.

If an app costs a couple of hundred dollars but saves 15 hours of manual data entry for a high-value sales rep, the ROI is immediate. It's not just about the money saved; it's about the opportunity gain of freeing your team to focus on building relationships instead of copying and pasting email addresses.

How many hours could your team save this month by automating your B2B applications?