This e-commerce migration guide helps managers navigate each stage of the migration project.
Use it to ensure that you avoid common pitfalls when looking for a new e-commerce provider, catch the critical requirements for your project, and prepare to change your platform.
Discover how distributors are using AI technologies to drive efficiency, enhance decision-making and create competitive advantage.
What’s Inside?
Today’s customers demand more than just a transaction – they expect a seamless experience, quick responses, and value that extends beyond the product. This whitepaper, “Can Your Distribution Business Meet Rising Customer Expectations?” dives right into the essentials every distributor needs to stay relevant and competitive. We explore the most pressing challenges and opportunities in today’s distribution landscape, offering clear strategies to bridge the gap between current operations and the next level of customer engagement. It’s not just about keeping up; it’s about leading the way.
The supply chain situation entered 2023 in much better shape than which it entered 2022, but the inventory lessons of the past two years were apparent: Just-in-time is too prone to disruption to remain the industry standard in the post-pandemic world.
In this report, we will examine new research from Modern Distribution Management that shed light on the current state of inventory management practices among distributors and manufacturers.
Is your warehouse overflowing with the wrong SKUs? Are you finding your mounting Excel spreadsheets less and less useful? Do you depend on manual, tedious processes to keep your inventory management afloat? If so, you are not alone. The wholesale distribution industry is stuck between aged, legacy systems and modern business needs.
A poor inventory management strategy can have a detrimental impact to distributors. High inventory costs, fluctuating inventory turnover, unnecessary order duplication, errors in reporting, lost customers and additional costs all wreak havoc on your business strategy.
That’s why an inventory management system is so important.
In this eBook, we share how a good inventory management system can help ease distributors pain points. Topics include good management strategies, solutions to ever-changing customer demand and key questions to ask if your inventory management system isn’t giving you the information you need to be successful.
The Marketplace Suite Spot℠ report evaluates the top marketplace development technologies businesses can use to create, launch, and grow an ecommerce marketplace. Some of these marketplace enablement technologies require integration with a standalone ecommerce platform to operate, some include that customer-facing catalog/cart/checkout functionality along with marketplace-specific functionality. The report contains vendor information, platform capabilities, ideal market fit, and more including several comparison visuals in order to gain a clearer understanding of the leading options in this space.
Nearly three years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, distribution business conditions are still far from “normal,” as in what they were in late 2019. While improved in most areas of pandemic-led disruption, 2022 was the third-straight year that distributors had to navigate major challenges of inflationary pricing, supply chain bottlenecks and a labor pool that has been difficult to attract and retain. Those factors were amid the ongoing challenge of a digital transformation that the entire distribution landscape had already embarked on pre-2020 but was forced to accelerate by B2B buyers’ rapidly evolving preference for a digital buying experience.
With 2022 now behind us, let’s look at the current state of forces impacting distributors, what 2023 may have in store and how distributors can navigate conflicting market signals.
As companies have struggled to pivot normal operating procedures over the past few years, automation tools have rapidly emerged as levers to not just manage stretched employee resources, but to support a deeper business model transformation. Automation – often referred to as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – typically yields the highest and fastest return-on-investment of any technology deployment, especially in early adoption stages.
In this report, we’ll examine ways in which distributors are navigating this journey, expanding the use of automation across every area of the business – customer-facing, back-office, warehouse and delivery. We’ll share insights from a distributor that has created transformational leverage through process automation. And we’ll also offer a few tips on how to frame your own successful automation deployment.
Since the onset of the pandemic, Modern Distribution Management has identified key differentiators between distribution organizations challenged to tread water and those able to strengthen profitability and customer loyalty. The biggest differentiator is how the successful organizations effectively use data analytics tools across operations, sales and marketing, while struggling organizations are holding on to the status quo. And the gap is widening.
This report distills MDM research from the past two years to provide a roadmap for how distributors can use advanced analytics best practices to drive revenue growth and profit despite (and often because of) a volatile market environment.
As technology, buying behaviors and influence from the B2C market disrupt the distribution industry, models that worked for decades are no longer effective. Distributors are adopting new platforms, ecosystems and tools to ensure they can fulfill demand across a variety of channels and deliver the additional value commercial buyers demand.
Download this free report to learn how distributors must innovate to meet the changing landscape.
Distributors find their most significant business challenges are typically centered in five areas. In this guide we look at 5 big business challenges solved by Business Intelligence software. Like a powerful flashlight, Business Intelligence (BI) can “shine a light” on these areas to reveal trends and the root causes. Business Intelligence will lend powerful insights for solving challenges and help improve business outcomes.
BI keeps you on top of trends to solve many modern distribution problems before they start. With BI, you have insightful and actionable information right at your fingertips to solve these nagging business problems. Now you can stop “fighting fires,” to operate more proactively, and focus more of your efforts on growing your business.
Download your free guide to learn how you can use BI to solve business challenges from day one.
Are you leaking profits? Are your margins so tight there’s no room for error? Are you having trouble balancing upstream and downstream partner demands? You’re not alone.
But…there’s a way to ensure this all adds up.
Download Vistex’s eBook: Walking the Value Chain Tightrope: How Wholesale Distributors Will Survive and Thrive. Use these actionable ideas and tips to survive and thrive despite the big squeeze. This eBook covers how to:
How do digital marketers position themselves in the most effective way to present and sell their products? In today’s cut-throat world, a digital marketing strategy needs an edge that sets them apart from the competition.
Dive into our whitepaper where we share the secret weapon that leverages AI and data to increase ROI and conversions.
Less than 20% of your customer base makes up 80% of your profits. Chasing the wrong customers can cost you dearly – in time, resource investment, and opportunity loss.
To prioritize profit in your business strategy, distributors need to revamp their pricing strategy. Your sales team can move away from the ad hoc “deal desk” approach to a data-driven approach based on the perceived value they bring to their customers. A customer that values your services will pay more for those services.
Pricing has a solid trickle-down effect that goes well beyond winning the deal. A well-orchestrated pricing strategy sets the intention for your business. Eliminate unprofitable business pursuing and focus your efforts on those customers who have the promise to become more profitable.
User adoption is the key to achieving the greatest return on investment from your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and can give you an incredible edge over your competition.
You can lead your sales reps to the CRM waters, but how do you get them to drink and, more importantly, continue to come back to the CRM well again and again?
Over the years, White Cup has partnered with more than 1,000 companies worldwide to help them structure their CRM rollouts for optimal uptake. This report shares 11 things our experts say make all the difference in creating an engaged, enlightened, and fully CRM-empowered salesforce.
The worst of the pandemic might be over, but B2B point-of-purchase habits have evolved. And they’re unlikely to revert to what they were before. Data now points to a heightened need for quick, easy and trusted credit-approval options to reflect post-pandemic realities for distributors of all sizes.
According to research compiled by MDM and Credit Key, quickly securing lines of credit will be vital to B2B companies moving forward. Flexible financing will help suppliers and vendors stay stocked during eras of sustained growth and times of supply crisis.
As distributors have rapidly upgraded their technology, many e-commerce customers have gotten used to convenient, digital purchasing options while increasingly turning away from traditional buying options.
Companies now are looking for e-commerce specialists and B2B lenders who offer real-world, real-time solutions that allow businesses to focus on their true goals: offering top-line products and services to their target markets.
In this report, MDM Research benchmarks the state of distribution customer experience delivery and
identifies emerging best practices to keep customers engaged in a noisier and more transparent
marketplace.
Finding a product on a B2B distributor’s site can be like playing a game of Waldo with no idea what Waldo looks like. To spare customers the headache of sifting through a sea of products, distributors can create a more organized, user-friendly experience.
Learn how 3 different distributors have cracked the code to growing sales through search.
B2B companies investing in digital are seeing value and gaining share.
See which product discovery, conversion and customer acquisition tools make your competitor’s roadmap and see what the data says about B2C practices in B2B.
Throughout history, the distribution industry has looked to specific metrics to understand business performance. By tracking these metrics, organizations know how they are doing, month over month, quarter over quarter, and year over year.
But often, organizations fail to review, reevaluate, and adjust their metrics regularly; as a result, organizations can end up paying attention to the wrong metrics or things that are no longer truly meaningful.
Get started with five key metrics that distributors should be reviewing, reevaluating, and adjusting to drive 2022 revenue.
Among the pandemic-era trends that have impacted distributors, a deeper focus on robust technology investments may be the longest lasting. Read the results and analysis of the technology portion of the 2022 MDM Trends Survey, where you’ll find how distributors expect to make technology investments and ways companies can plan now to get ahead of the next wave of innovation.
Supply chain disruptions are expected to continue throughout the coming year and beyond. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing distributors can do about it. This whitepaper addresses some of the key issues that are preventing a smooth supply chain and ways that distributors are approaching the challenges. From taking a closer look at near-shoring to investing in more collaborative business partners and technology, three supply chain experts will take you through the latest thinking on the topic.
Work with a banking partner that knows your business. Get detailed information on investment banks with expertise in the wholesale distribution industry.
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