Read, Review, Done: StoneAge Turns Data Entry into a Quick Check with Fluent

Built in Durango, Trusted Around the World

StoneAge, Inc. designs and builds high-pressure waterblast tools and automated equipment for industrial cleaning. Its tools clean heat exchangers, tubes, vessels, evaporators, and sewer lines, the kind of hard jobs that keep plants and cities running.

The company is based in Durango, Colorado, where it engineers and manufactures everything it sells. About 200 people work there today, and every one of them is an owner: StoneAge has been 100% employee-owned since 2023. Through its distributors and training programs, it serves customers across 90 countries worldwide.

Waterblasting is a “fairly niche industry”; few companies compete in a field like this, and buyers are usually specialists who know exactly what they need, but within that niche, StoneAge is a recognized leader. Its customers count on more than the tools. The company also offers rentals, training, support and a public online Jetting Calculator that helps users set up the right tool for each job. That calculator plays a surprising part in this story.

From a Garage in 1979 to an Employee-Owned Leader

When John Wolgamott and Jerry Zink started a water jet engineering business out of a garage in Durango, they had two goals from day one: solve tough industrial cleaning problems and create good, engaging jobs that made it possible to build a life in Durango.

The founders loved research and development, and that passion shaped the company’s culture. For more than 40 years, StoneAge has kept designing new tools and equipment that change how waterblasting work gets done. Epicor has been the backbone of its daily operations for the last nine years.

Meet Josh Lau: The Continuous Improvement Mind Behind the Project

Josh Lau is the Continuous Improvement Coordinator at StoneAge, where he has worked for 11 years. His job is simple to describe and hard to do: find ways to make each process leaner, then look for the parts that can be automated. He reports directly to the company’s CEO, Kerry Siggins.

In a recent conversation with Iván Rebolledo, CRO of Technology Coast Partners, Josh shared how StoneAge found Fluent, what it was like to work with the TCP team, and what the company has gained.

Josh did not come to AI looking for a shiny new toy. He came with a clear problem and a clear goal. While preparing for the Epicor Insights Conference in May 2026, he started looking for Epicor partners that could help. He found TCP through a Fluent webinar on Receipt Entry, where he simply watched the agent do the work, live.

He met the TCP team in person at the conference, and within weeks the first project was underway.

The Challenge: Skilled People Stuck Behind a Keyboard

Across StoneAge’s operations, people were spending too much time typing data into Epicor. The entries had to be accurate, but every minute at the keyboard was a minute away from the work that actually needed doing.

The receiving team was the clearest example. Packages tend to arrive in big blocks. A receiver would unbox a shipment, walk back to the computer, key in the details from the pack slip, then return to the next box. All the information was already printed on the pack slip, yet someone had to type it in again by hand. Splitting time between two very different tasks also made mistakes more likely.

Finding the right fix was not easy either. StoneAge faced several hurdles:

• Every supplier is different: StoneAge buys from vendors of all sizes, and their pack slips come in many layouts. Older tools could read data only when it was neatly structured and needed templates or trained models for each format.
• No appetite for extra systems: The team did not want to stack another platform on top of Epicor, maintain custom connections, or take on more technical debt.
• The same pain elsewhere: Customer service staff were typing customer purchase orders into Epicor instead of talking with customers.

What StoneAge needed was an AI that could read each document the way a person does, work directly with Epicor, and turn data entry into a quick review.

Implementation with TCP: Moving at StoneAge Speed

StoneAge kicked off the Fluent Receipt Entry agent between June and July 2026, only weeks after the Epicor Insights Conference. Josh says the company moves fast once it knows what it wants, and in past software projects it usually had to wait on its vendors. This time was different.

Connected in One Short Call

Setting up the connections between Fluent and Epicor took a single 40-minute call. From there, the TCP team framed the project in a way that stuck with Josh: think of it as onboarding a new employee. The agent already knows how Epicor works, but it needs to learn StoneAge’s own way of doing things. The more the team works with it and corrects it, the better it gets.

Fast Feedback, Steady Improvement

The learning curve looked a lot like training a person. Some early mistakes came from StoneAge’s own processes, where steps differed from what Epicor expects or were not always done the same way. The agent picked those up quickly, and in some cases it showed the team where its own process was inconsistent and worth fixing.

Whenever StoneAge gave feedback, the TCP team acted on it, often the same day or the next. Josh worked with the same people throughout, Andrés Cubeddu, Head of Customer Success, and Gonzalo B. Nuñez, Chief Technology Officer, who came to understand the business and its goals. Weekly check-ins on Receipt Entry continue even now.

The Jetting Calculator Puzzle

The second agent, for Order Entry, took on a problem unique to StoneAge. Many sewer dealer orders are for packages: a nozzle sold as a kit whose head and jets are left open until someone sizes them for the job. The purchase order names the package, then gives the pump it will run on, such as 12 gallons per minute at 4,000 PSI, sometimes with a hose length. A customer service rep would enter those values into the Jetting Calculator on StoneAge's website, read off the head and jets it suggested, and fill them into the kit on the Epicor order.

StoneAge asked the Fluent agent to do exactly what that person does. It runs the same calculator, fills each open slot in the kit, and records the pump on the order line. When the dealer has already chosen the jets, it uses the dealer's choice. When the order leaves out something it needs, it flags the order rather than guessing. Josh remembers the TCP team smiling through the call, excited to take it on. They solved it: in its first month, the agent filled the kit on 126 package lines across 101 of the 239 orders it entered.

The Results: 1,301 Documents, Checked in Seconds

From August 24 to October 29, 2026, Fluent read and staged 1,301 documents for StoneAge: 1,062 supplier pack slips and 239 customer sales orders. A person approved every one before it posted to Epicor.

The headline numbers:

139 hours of manual keying returned to the team

Pack Slips into Receipt Entry

Receivers scan each pack slip and its material certificates at the receiving bench, and the scanner sends them straight to Fluent. Fluent reads each one, matches every line to its purchase order line and release, records lot and heat numbers, and stages the receipt. Once a receiver approves it, Fluent creates the receipt in Epicor and attaches the pack slip and certificates to the receipt lines.

• 1,062 pack slips received into Epicor in 10 weeks, about 106 a week.
• 1,278 receipt lines across 537 purchase orders.
• Every pack slip came straight from the receiving scanner. None had to be keyed or uploaded by hand.
• 8 to 16 seconds of review for the middle half of pack slips.
• 99.3% of fields posted exactly as Fluent read them.
• About 2 minutes, median, for Fluent to read a slip and match its lines.

Customer Orders into Order Entry

Customer purchase orders arrive in a shared inbox. Fluent identifies the customer, ship-to address and terms, matches each part to StoneAge’s catalog, applies pricing from the customer’s quote when one fits, and stages the sales order for review.

• Entered 239 sales orders and 554 order lines, with up to 41 lines on a single order, in 4 weeks.
• 43 customers served, with 98% of orders arriving by email.
• Median review time was 64 seconds per order; the middle half took 33 seconds to 2 minutes.
• 78% posted with no changes to the order data.
• 25% priced from a matched customer quote.

The Human Side

Receivers are now reviewers, not typists. They can focus on what matters most: counting quantities, checking materials and deciding where each item goes next. Because receiving also carries other duties in order fulfillment, finishing receipts faster frees them to help the rest of the operations team.

Seeing the agent work beside them has also built trust in AI. Receivers see the value directly, because the agent takes over the data entry that used to fill their day.

It’s Worth the Investment

StoneAge sees Fluent as a very worthwhile investment. Josh asked the company’s data optimization team to compare its cost with other software StoneAge pays for. They came away impressed and found Fluent’s compute costs hard to beat.

“What Else Can it Do?”

StoneAge’s leadership is excited, and the question Josh hears most often from the CEO is simple: what’s next? The answer is already taking shape.

• Order Entry goes mainline: The order agent is moving from pilot to everyday use, with more customer service staff working alongside it.
• Quotes: The team wants to bring quote requests into Fluent next.
• More business units: Today the order agent runs in one business unit. StoneAge is looking at how to extend it to orders across the rest of the company.
• More time with customers: Every purchase order the agent handles gives customer service more time to answer tough questions and help customers directly.

Behind all of this sits a clear philosophy about growth. The easy fix for an overloaded team is to hire another person. StoneAge first makes each process as lean as it can, automates what makes sense, and only then adds people when the team truly reaches capacity.

With Fluent, StoneAge can grow sustainably, knowing it's taken automation as far as it can before scaling its teams.

What StoneAge’s First Two AI Agents Teach Us

• Start with a clear problem: StoneAge knew exactly what it wanted from AI: turn data entry into review. That focus made it easy to judge Fluent and move fast.
• Fix the process, then automate it: The agent even exposed steps done inconsistently, so StoneAge could clean them up.
• A native fit with Epicor matters: Fluent connected in just one 40-minute call, with no extra platforms or custom connections to maintain.
• Treat the agent like a new hire: Regular feedback and quick turnarounds from TCP made the agent accurate fast: 99.3% of pack slip fields posted exactly as read.
• Quick reviews: A median of 10 seconds to review a pack slip and 64 seconds for a sales order returned about 139 hours of keying.
• People do more valuable work: Receivers focus on counting and checking materials, and customer service can spend more time with customers.
• A partner that delivers: TCP took on a complex, StoneAge-only task, the Jetting Calculator, and solved it.
• One success opens the door: Leadership is already asking for quotes, and more business units come next.

The Tools Have Changed, the Promise Has Not

In 1979, two engineers in a Durango garage set out to do two things: solve tough cleaning problems and create good jobs that let people build a life in their town. More than 40 years later, that promise still guides how StoneAge works.

Fluent's biggest contribution to StoneAge is time. The receiver who used to walk back and forth between boxes and a keyboard now spends that time counting, checking and sending parts where they need to go. The customer service rep who used to type line after line can now focus on helping customers with the questions that really matter.

At a company where every employee is also an owner, those 139 hours are more than a number on a report. They belong to the people who built StoneAge, and they now go to the work only people can do.

The tools have changed since that garage in 1979, but the mission has not. With each new agent, StoneAge keeps showing that the best way to grow is to make work better for the people who do it.