1. Welcome to Solutions Engineering 101
My name is Dustin Koehn and I will be your tour guide for the next few minutes. You might be
wondering what Solutions Engineering is, after all is it a vague term. I jokingly call myself a
Solutions Engineer at work. I say that because any company level problem or one that requires
outside of the box thinking ends up on my desk. If you want it done on time, on budget and right
the first time, give it to me.
Let us look at a few of the projects/solutions that I engineered.
 Backup cellular network for the store locations
 E-Commerce Platform
 Document Management from the stores to Corp HQ
 Managed Print Solution
 Freight Agreements with UPS and FedEx that were adopted by Sonic and Love’s
 Volume Pricing/Incentive Rebate Agreement
 PCI-DSS and Security Compliance processes and procedures
 E-Commerce tax and tax exempt implementation
E-Commerce was one of the main reasons that Atwood Distributing hired me back for the
3rd time. They contacted me for this project because of my comprehensive knowledge of both
their ERP (Epicor) and WMS (PathGuide) systems that I helped to implement in 2010. This is
also my largest project to manage to date. After looking at open source, custom development and
SAAS options, I decided the SAAS option was best for Atwoods. I eventually settled on
ShopVisible and sold the idea to the owners. I also convinced other Mid-States companies to
choose this solution as well. After the onboarding of several other Mid-States companies and
completing the integration, Epicor bought ShopVisible. I have also made recommendations that
ShopVisible has put on their roadmap or already implemented such as, price by region, SFTP as
an option instead of just API calls, reworked the software for updating the website and inventory
quantity by category or sub category to name a few.
The PCI-DSS project came about while working on the E-Commerce project. They had
been a year out of compliance with the bank and received a letter from them explaining some
serious consequence unless compliance could be achieved within 90 days. Unknown to me at the
time was how far out of compliance they actually were. I would say somewhere in the 90-95%
range. I put out some bids for security companies and selected Dell Secure Works. After
consulting with them, they gave us a slim to none chance of success after our GAP assessment. I
am always up of a good challenge and proceeded to get started right away. We accomplished so
much in 90 days that the bank gave us a 30-day extension after which we received the Letter of
Attestation from Secure Works. The auditor said we went from one of the worst companies that
he had ever worked with to the top 10%. I wrote 25 company polices, established a PCI training

2. program with ANX, created the Incident Response plan and the IT Risk management and matrix
as a part of the process.
The backup cellular network was a cheap and effective alternative to paying for
redundant commercial grade networks at all of the store locations. This also alleviated the issue
of credit card charge backs while the stores were offline by providing away to still swipe cards
for payment instead of manually typing in the number and/or calling for approval. A small one-
time fee for an additional Cradlepoint router, cellular card from AT&T and the monthly fee for
data was less than 50% of the cost to implement other backup solutions and without the continual
monthly operation expenses.
The freight process came about from the E-Commerce project. Naturally, shipping is a
big part of the E-Com war for online customers. After talking to other parties involved with our
freight accounts, I learned that we had not negotiated a new deal in a few years even though our
business has steadily grown mostly in inbound freight but e-commerce outbound would increase
as well. After contacting UPS who had the contract, I learned that only Lowe’s has had a faster
growing account. We looked at how we could reduce our inbound freight costs while also
lowering out outbound parcel for e-commerce. After the process was complete, we had an
estimated savings of 225K per year on inbound and lowered our outbound freight cost by 30%.
UPS shared the method with both Sonic and Love’s travel stops who have since implemented the
same processes with success.
I believe in doing things right the first time. I like a good challenge and working on a
variety of projects. Doing the same thing(s) repeatedly is just not for me. I enjoy working with a
team to accomplish our mission. No risk, no reward is a motto of mine. I like to be involved in
the projects that matter and carry both risk and reward. I enjoy helping people. I like to solve
problems.