The more you dig into technology issues in distribution, the less it seems to be about bits and bytes, and the more it is about process. That was reinforced two weeks ago at an industry e-business conference in Vancouver, sponsored by IDEA, the official standards-creating body for the electrical industry.

A panel session at the conference addressed the difficulties with getting an industry to adopt standards and collaborate more. The fact is there is no right answer for all the different niche vertical sectors across distribution. This is and will remain a highly fragmented industry. That’s why certain software providers do well in certain sectors with their feature sets, while others do well elsewhere. Even more …