TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 7, 2024--
Pivotree Inc. (TSXV:PVT) ("Pivotree'' or the "Company"), a leading provider of frictionless commerce solutions, announced today achievements in its ongoing partnership with Sonepar Canada to automate its data enrichment processes. As a result, the company has been able to process 350,000 SKUs with 95% accuracy within just 24 hours, while also realizing 56% in operational cost savings.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241107359267/en/
Sonepar Canada (member of the Sonepar Group, which is Canada’s largest privately-held B2B electrical products distributor), is an independent family-owned company with market leadership in the business-to-business electrical, industrial, safety products and related solutions with over 90 locations and coverage in 8 provinces.
As part of Sonepar Group's ambitious agenda to provide a fully digitalized and synchronized omnichannel experience, the collaboration with Pivotree illustrates the capacity for efficiency and innovation in the electrical distribution sector. The integration of Pivotree's proprietary DIVE platform, which leverages cutting-edge AI/ML technology, has enabled Sonepar Canada to seamlessly manage a vast and complex product portfolio, enhancing both speed-to-market and data integrity. The direct connection between their onsite Product Information Management (PIM) system and DIVE streamlined a lengthy manual process that once took weeks or months, turning it into a same-day service. Without time restrictions, they have shifted from one-time data enrichment to a continuous update model as new data emerges.
"The DIVE tool has been invaluable in automating the enrichment of the hundreds of thousands of SKUs we manage,” says Chris Staples, Director, Master Data Management, Sonepar Canada. “Achieving scale at this level has allowed us to bring our products to market much faster, while making customer experience seamless. Our ultimate goal is to make it easy for our customers to find, buy, and remain confident in the brands we represent."
Companies looking to embark on a similar digital transformation journey are encouraged to explore product data management solutions offered by Pivotree.
“Our goal is to streamline the process of product data management for distributors and retailers in the electronics industry,” said Cliff Isaacson, Chief Product Officer, Pivotree. “With our fully-enriched SKUs, businesses can focus on what they do best—serving their customers and driving growth.”
Pivotree recently launched the first edition of their Electronics SKUs library, encompassing interconnect, passive, and electromechanical parts (IP&E) components from the industry's top manufacturers.
For electronics distributors interested in transforming their data processes and enhancing customer experiences, contact Pivotree at 1-877-767-5577 or pivotree.com.
About Pivotree
Pivotree, a leader in frictionless commerce, designs, builds and manages digital platforms in Commerce, Data Management, and Supply Chain for over 250 major retail and branded manufacturers globally. Pivotree’s portfolio of digital solutions, managed and professional services help provide retailers, distributors, and manufacturers with true end-to-end solutions to manage complex digital commerce platforms, along with ongoing support from strategic planning through platform selection, deployment, and hosting, to data and supply chain management. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada with offices and customers in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. Pivotree is widely recognized as a high-growth company and industry leader. For more information, visit www.pivotree.com.
With advanced AI/ML technology, Pivotree helps Sonepar Canada efficiently manage a complex product portfolio, improving speed-to-market and data integrity to deliver a fully digitalized omnichannel experience to customers. Photo copyright: Sonepar
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — A Long Island architect who led a secret life as a serial killer pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings.
Rex Heuermann, 62, entered the pleas in a courtroom packed with reporters, police and victims’ relatives, some of whom wept as he detailed his crimes. He will be sentenced in June to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Heuermann's guilty pleas — to three counts of first-degree murder and four of intentional murder — bring finality to a case that bedeviled investigators, tormented victims’ relatives and tantalized a true-crime obsessed public for years. Although he wasn't charged in her death, he also admitted that he killed Karen Vergata in 1996.
Under questioning by Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, Heuermann admitted that he strangled all eight victims and dismembered some of them, that he used burner phones to contact them, and that he wrapped their bodies in burlap before dumping them.
Wearing a black suit coat and white button-down shirt, Heuermann appeared matter-of-fact and unemotional as he answered questions from Tierney and the judge. He never looked back at the packed courtroom gallery, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead.
The women, many of them sex workers, were killed over a 17-year span and buried in remote locations, including along an isolated beach highway across the bay from where he lived, authorities said.
“This defendant walked among us play acting as a normal suburban dad when in reality, all along, he was obsessively targeting innocent women for death,” Tierney said at a news conference hours after the hearing.
He thanked relatives of the victims, including some standing alongside him, for helping bring their loved ones’ stories to life. And he praised members of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force, which cracked the case with the help of clues that included DNA lifted from a discarded pizza crust.
“He thought that by killing them, he could silence them forever and get away with murder,” he said. “But he was wrong.”
Investigators and members of the public packed the hearing. Reporters and camera operators swarmed Heuermann's ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, and their daughter as they entered and left the courthouse.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families," Ellerup said afterward. "Their loss is immeasurable and the focus should be on them at this time and moment. I ask that you give some privacy to my family as they navigate through this very difficult time.”
Ellerup and her daughter, Victoria, had no knowledge of or involvement in the killings, said their lawyer, Robert Macedonio. Ellerup has said she found it very difficult to believe her husband was serial killer, because he never gave off warning signs during their time together.
Asked about Heuermann's admissions, his defense attorney Michael Brown told reporters, “There came a point in this defense where Rex said, ‘I want to plead guilty,'" noting that one of Heuermann’s concerns was sparing the victims’ families and his own family from the ordeal of the case going to trial.
In response to a question about whether Heuermann was sorry, Brown responded, “I would hope so. ... I would expect at sentencing he would have something to say.”
As part of his guilty plea, Heuermann agreed to cooperate fully with the FBI's behavioral analysis unit.
The case began in earnest in 2010 after police found numerous sets of human remains while searching for a missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, along Long Island’s South Shore, setting off a search for a potential serial killer that attracted global interest and spawned a Hollywood movie. Although her relatives disputed the finding, authorities eventually determined that Gilbert drowned, and Brown said Wednesday that Heuermann "had nothing to do with Shannan Gilbert.”
Investigators used DNA analysis and other evidence to identify victims. In some cases, they were able to connect them to remains found elsewhere on Long Island years earlier.
Remains of six victims — Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello, Valerie Mack, Jessica Taylor and Megan Waterman — were found in the scrub along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach. The remains of another victim, Sandra Costilla, were found more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) away in the Hamptons.
Police also identified the remains of Vergata, which were found on Fire Island, more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) west, in 1996, and near Gilgo Beach in 2011.
But despite the attention, including a documentary series and the 2020 Netflix film, “Lost Girls,” the investigation dragged on for more than a decade, punctuated by fleeting leads and dashed hopes.
In 2022, six weeks after a new police commissioner formed the Gilgo Beach task force, detectives identified Heuermann as a suspect by using a vehicle registration database to connect him to a pickup truck that a witness reported seeing when one of the victims disappeared in 2010.
Heuermann lived for decades in Massapequa Park, about a 25-minute drive across a causeway spanning South Oyster Bay to the sandy stretch where the women’s remains were found. Some of the victims were believed to have disappeared from that community and their cellphones were found to have pinged towers in the area, authorities said.
After the truck discovery, a grand jury authorized more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants, allowing the task force to dig in to Heuermann’s life.
Detectives collected billing records for burner phones he allegedly used to arrange meetings with the victims, retested DNA found with the bodies and scoured Heuermann’s internet search history, which showed that he had viewed violent torture pornography and exhibited an intense interest in the Gilgo Beach killings and the renewed investigation. Cellphone data showed Heuermann was in contact with some victims just before they disappeared, investigators said.
To obtain Heuermann’s DNA, a task force surveillance team tailed him in Manhattan, where he worked, and watched as he threw the remnants of his lunch — a box of partially eaten pizza crusts — into a sidewalk garbage can.
Investigators rushed in, grabbed the box, and sent it to the crime lab, which matched DNA from the crust to a male hair found on burlap used to restrain one of the victims. He was arrested in July 2023.
After Heuermann’s arrest, detectives spent more than 12 days searching his yard and home, where they found a basement vault that contained 279 weapons. On his computer, investigators said, they found what they described as a “blueprint” for the killings, including a series of checklists with reminders to limit noise, clean the bodies and destroy evidence.
Associated Press writers Philip Marcelo in New York City, Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, and Julie Walker in Riverhead, New York contributed to this report.
Rex A. Heuermann, center, pleads guilty to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings, at a court hearing in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y., Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (James Carbone/Newsday via AP, Pool)
Victoria Heuermann walks to the courtroom as Rex Heuermann, accused in Long Island's infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings, is expected to plead guilty, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
Elizabeth Baczkiel, mother of victim Jessica Taylor, walks to the courtroom as Rex Heuermann, accused in Long Island's infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings, is expected to plead guilty, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
Asa Ellerup, left, wife, of Rex Heuermann and Ellerup's attorney, Robert Macedonio, right arrive outside court as Rex Heuermann, accused in Long Island's infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings, is expected to plead guilty, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
Rex A. Heuermann, pleads guilty to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings, at a court hearing in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y., Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (James Carbone/Newsday via AP, Pool)
Rex A. Heuermann, pleads guilty to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings, at a court hearing in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y., Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (James Carbone/Newsday via AP, Pool)
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney walks to the courtroom as Rex Heuermann, accused in Long Island's infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings, is expected to plead guilty, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
Asa Ellerup, wife, left and her daughter Victoria Heuermann arrive outside court as Rex Heuermann, accused in Long Island’s infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings, is expected to plead guilty, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
Asa Ellerup, left and her daughter Victoria Heuermann arrive outside court as Rex Heuermann, accused in Long Island’s infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings, is expected to plead guilty, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
Asa Ellerup, left and her daughter Victoria Heuermann arrive outside court as Rex Heuermann, accused in Long Island’s infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings, is expected to plead guilty, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
Asa Ellerup, estranged wife, center left, and her daughter Victoria Heuermann arrive outside court as Rex Heuermann, accused in Long Island’s infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings, is expected to plead guilty, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
Asa Ellerup, estranged wife, of Rex Heuermann arrive outside court as Rex Heuermann, accused in Long Island’s infamous Gilgo Beach serial killings, is expected to plead guilty, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
