This week is arguably one of the most important weeks at MDM, as we launched our annual Market Trends survey seeking the input of distributors, manufacturers and service providers to the industry to identify critical trends and where the industry is headed in the near future. It is your opportunity to not only share your insights on the key challenges you see impacting your business for the coming year, but also to help focus MDM’s coverage of issues that matter most to you and your business. 

The 10-minute survey will help direct our research and industry coverage you want to see in the coming year. By completing it, you will also be entered to win a $50 gift card.

Based on a review of MDM’s most-read content in the first six months of the year, several issues that are top-of-mind for distributors in 2019 include: 

• Keeping up with the industry’s most technologically advanced distributors and manufacturers
• Improving e-commerce to rise to the expectations of customers used to shopping online through innovative consumer sites 
• Driving accountability across the organization for overall productivity, customer service, sales and other important business metrics
• How to take advantage of Big Data by harnessing the overabundance of information already available within your company
• Competing against the rapid rise of Amazon Business and other non-traditional competitors into distribution markets
• Finding the right people to move your organization forward

While I trust many (if not all) of these issues will hold constant in the coming year, we are eager to find out what you see on the horizon for your business in 2020. For example, are there new challenges emerging in the second half of 2019 that you see shifting your results? Or how you develop a 2020 strategy? And with a presidential election year in 2020, do you anticipate a shift important to your company’s interests? Or, are you more concerned with local-level or core business priorities such as improving cash flow and reducing costs? 

With increasing talk of a potential market downturn within the next 12 months, we want to know what your expectations are for 2020, as well as how you plan to build revenue and cut costs. 

Perhaps the most important questions in the survey are the open-ended ones, where we solicit your response to the top pain points, technological challenges and recruitment issues for your business. It’s through these candid responses that we can truly shape MDM’s future coverage to be most valuable for your business. 

Thank you for participating in this important research. Please contact me, elizabeth@mdm.com, or CEO Tom Gale, tom@mdm.com, if you have any questions.