Chris Pirvu started working at Conexiom in 2003 as the only software engineer in the company. Now, 18 years later, Chris leads Conexiom’s development team to create purpose-built technology that solves customer problems.

After moving to Vancouver from Romania with a background in electronic physics and more than 28 years of software experience, Chris helps customers eliminate archaic manual processes with technology. As a self-starting developer who’s been with the company since the beginning, there is no one better suited to serve as lead software architect.

In this Q&A, Chris discusses Conexiom’s purpose-built technology and how it solves customers’ needs.

Tell us about yourself and how you developed Conexiom’s “purpose-built” technology.

When I was first hired, there were approximately 35 employees, and I was the only software engineer for about a decade. As you can imagine, I wore many hats. I was a software engineer by day and a connection developer by night. I also did customer support and customer operations.

Eventually, we became a small team of seven. At the time, we had a client that received sales orders through their printer and manually typed the orders into our portal. To solve our client’s problem, sometimes after work, our team would go out for drinks and write down ideas on napkins.

We came up with the idea to develop a printer driver that could accept the print file itself and extract its data to flow directly into Conexiom. From there, our engine could locate data and transform it whichever way the client needed.

Over the years, as we were given new problems to solve, we enhanced the platform into what it is today. The platform is now flexible enough to cover all problems our customers encounter.

Today, nearly all our customers receive the majority of their sales orders via email. Because of the core architecture we developed, it can execute on various file exchange methods without any need for revision.

The idea of “purpose-built” technology came from us solving a customer’s problem by creating it from scratch. Our mission has always been to create technology that delivers desired business outcomes for our customers. Conexiom is truly a purpose-built platform for 100% data accurate, touchless document processing.

What problems do our customers want to solve?

Our customers want to process single documents from various trading partners without manually entering in the data. We help eliminate manual entry by transforming digital documents—regardless of their format, complexity, or repeatability—into touchless outcomes with unprecedented data accuracy.

I also see customers who want to free their customer service representatives (CSRs) to focus on providing a better customer experience.

For example, one of our customers, Werner Electric Supply, was challenged by its numerous branch locations and customer service teams. Because the CSRs at the 10+ locations had limited bandwidth, enlisting help seemed impossible. However, after implementing Conexiom, it saved them 6,263 hours per year, and its CSRs engaged in more customer-centered tasks. With Conexiom’s Sales Order Automation Software, we helped Werner Electric Supply’s CSRs concentrate on fulfilling value-added tasks.

How does Conexiom differ from other technologies?

Because our software is purpose-built, it contrasts with other technologies on the market. We have learned how to solve problems through 100% data accurate and touchless orders.

Conexiom focuses on handling even the most variable data from purchase orders. We use touchless automation and several different types of artificial intelligence (AI) to submit orders into our customers’ order systems with 100% data accuracy.

Conexiom is unique because of how it locates and extracts document data. It identifies the actual text of sales orders, compared to other technologies that use an optical character recognition (OCR) extraction, which identifies pictures of letters and numbers. Technologies that offer even a 99% data accuracy based on OCR can cause costly and time-consuming errors.

If the extraction isn’t 100% accurate, you could face serious repercussions. For example, your customer may order 20 units of a product, but if an inferior technology reads that as “2000,” that 1% error can be extremely detrimental to your business, and you will probably lose that customer.

If you could automate anything in your personal life, what would it be?

Since I was in high school, I imagined my house would be fully automated. Everything would automate at the press of a button, not just the TV or lights. I’d like to automate all my surroundings, like opening doors, cooking food, and making the bed.