From the NAW Blog:
Marketplace pressures continue to evolve and change the competitive landscape, ranging from commoditization to eCommerce to the changing workforce. These factors are beginning to negatively impact the bottom line for many distributors. Distribution is traditionally a thin-margin business to begin with, so these new pressures are challenging many distributors. What is your company’s profitability outlook for the years to come?
From the NAW Blog
Pricing is one of the most complex day-to-day decisions in any business environment, and the distribution industry is no exception. In fact, pricing is the most critical profitability lever for wholesaler-distributors due to their position in the supply chain, ever-increasing competition, and other business forces like commoditization and globalization.
From NAW
The COVID Effect on Purchasing
From the NAW Blog
We’ve been tracking weekly sales in our Pandemic Revenue Index, in which distributors are reporting double-digit declines week over week. A lot of distribution companies have been handling the COVID-19 crisis moment to moment, with barely a chance to catch their breath.
From the NAW Blog
Our research for Innovate to Dominate: The 12th Edition in the Facing the Forces of Change® Series revealed a massive new opportunity for distributors: the future of business is up for grabs! Every customer of every distributor in every line of trade is working to understand how their business can survive and thrive in the digital age. Customer change is about harnessing the power of technology- and human-driven forces and reinventing how work is done and how individuals and organizations learn. The opportunity for distributors is to help customers transform for the future of business. In doing so, distributors can carve out a spot as a valued source and essential partner.
From the NAW Blog:
Many distributors think they need to look like Amazon to compete in today’s market. After all, more than 197 million people visit Amazon every month to shop the more than 12 million products available, according to BigCommerce. But just because Amazon is a household name doesn’t mean that distributors need to emulate its every move to be competitive in the digital distribution game.
From the NAW Blog:
For many distributors, growth has been stagnant. The question is – why?
From the NAW Blog:
Customer service is a big cost center for distributors. It doesn’t have to be. Customer service (CS) reps speak with buyers and decision makers every day. Each conversation is a sales opportunity, but one that CS reps aren’t equipped to take advantage of. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can change this by empowering customer service to make orders, instead of just taking them.
From the NAW Blog:
Over the past few years B2B distributors have learned from successful B2C companies and embraced online sales. Today, distributors must do so again and further update their e-commerce platforms. AI-driven personalization will help distributors sell more across all their online sales channels.
From the NAW blog:
Most distributors think they know their customers, until they actually talk to those customers. That is because wholesaler-distributors often operate in an echo chamber, talking to their sales team, but not to their customers.
From the NAW Blog:
Companies like Amazon and Netflix have used cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to drive growth and disrupt business-to-consumer (B2C) markets. Business-to-business (B2B) distributors have been slow to adapt this technology, however. This will soon change. B2B distributors that leverage the power of AI technology have the potential to turbocharge revenue and disrupt their own markets. Those that fail to do so will risk getting left behind.
From the NAW Blog:
The wholesale distribution industry is at a watershed moment. Technological advances are creating massive upheavals, with industries converging, new forms of competition surfacing, and new business models emerging as never before. Wholesaler-distributors must navigate these uncharted waters and position their organizations to prosper in this disruptive age—a time when distributors are being bombarded by forces threatening to disrupt the way they conduct daily operations, serve customers, and interact with suppliers.
From the NAW Blog:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has existed for more than 20 years and its impact on the workplace has received more attention in this digital era. Because AI promotes deep learning and predicts human accuracy, it has drastically transformed the way we work and accelerated growth in ways humans could not.
From the NAW blog
Retail isn’t distribution, but lessons from Best Buy as a “disruption survivor” offer essential insights for distributor leaders. As reported recently on Inc.com, Best Buy was nearly killed by losing business to Amazon, but turned things around through a combination of corporate strategy and emotional intelligence. Best Buy was terminally ill, but has become healthy through smart, assertive leadership and real-world innovations around people, relationships and physical space. Five powerful insights are revealed in the Inc.com article, three enumerated as a list, and two revealed in other paragraphs and an attached video. All are important and relevant for distributor leaders.
From the NAW Blog
In our recent Facing the Forces of Change® challenge paper, Creating Innovations and Shaping the Future of Business, we identified a growing movement in wholesale distribution, in which leading distributors are innovating business services as a means of fighting disruption. Since the publication of our challenge paper, our continuing research has revealed evidence of distributors striving to identify and align with market trends to find willing buyers of new service offerings. While most distributors focus on end customers for service opportunities, it may turn out that suppliers are a target-rich environment.
Working Capital is an important concept for every business to understand. From Amazon or Apple to a small locally owned business, business owners need to understand the importance of working capital. At its heart, working capital is defined as, “the amount of a company’s current assets minus the amount of its current liabilities,” or simply, a company’s available capital for daily operations at any given point in time. Thus, working capital provides a measurement to determine a company’s operational efficiency and short-term financial health.
At the basis of working capital is the calculation, which is generally the difference between the current assets and the current liabilities. Current assets are assets that can be converted into cash within one year or less. This would include assets such as cash equivalents, marketable securities, accounts receivable, inventory, and prepaid expenses. While current liabilities include short term debt such as accounts payables, accrued liabilities, and other similar debts. Subtracting the current assets by the current liabilities will provide the working capital figure. The working capital is positive when there is an excess of current assets compared to current liabilities.
However, a working capital calculation not only plays a role as a financial measuring tool, but it can play a large role in Merger and Acquisition (M&A) transactions.
From the NAW Blog:
Looking ahead to the coming connected world, consider a scenario in which all transactions are digital. Orders are received from a variety of virtual channels including a distributor’s online store and mobile apps, as well as customer e-procurement platforms and online marketplaces. Data transparency is nearly ubiquitous. Suppliers, distributors and customers succeed on what they do with data, not by hoarding it. Distributors no longer shield their customer data as a means of preventing disintermediation and disruption. Artificial intelligence and data-driven services enhance customer experiences and redefine collaborations with suppliers. Breakthrough results are achieved by sharing data up and down the value chain and by aggregating data across the market.
From Entrepreneur
Your operations can be streamlined by following these simple things READ MORE
From Inc
Every organization can reap the benefits of disruption. All you have to do is start thinking like an outsider. READ MORE
From Entrepreneur
Don't ignore how much is beyond your control but never take your focus off of what is within your control. READ MORE
