As a distributor building a digital strategy and creating digital solutions, I’ve worked with advanced and basic software solutions. I’ve been fortunate to be on distribution teams and work with distribution clients over the past 15 years learning sometimes the hard way, the key mistakes to avoid on a digital journey. 1: Mistake of Investing in technology instead of talent The … [Read more...] about How to Avoid Three Big B2B Distribution Digital Death Traps
eCommerce
Industrial Distributors, Is eCommerce Important to Your Customers?
That’s the question many senior executives ask themselves regularly about eCommerce. They’ve invested much into their website. They’ve invested into product data. They’ve invested into people. They ask, does anyone care? Are we getting an ROI? I know I’m being, perhaps, a little facetious as intuitively many believe / understand that these investments are now expectations, … [Read more...] about Industrial Distributors, Is eCommerce Important to Your Customers?
10 Technology Trends for Industrial Distributors in 2025
Technology is an ever-growing element of improving customer experience and corporate profitability for a distributor. The days of only having an ERP and the equivalent of MS Office on a server are gone. Nowadays every function within the business benefits from technology and essentially there is now “an app for that” inferring if you can conceive it, there is technology that … [Read more...] about 10 Technology Trends for Industrial Distributors in 2025
Embrace Change to Adopt AI and Improve Profits in the Industrial Channel
The concept of digital transformation, let alone AI, as a future driver for your organization is probably a folly unless … You have a leader, and leadership team, which believes in change. There are two key words in the above sentence … “leadership” and “change.” Leadership infers vision, an ability to perceive “need,” an entrepreneurial mentality that desires growth, … [Read more...] about Embrace Change to Adopt AI and Improve Profits in the Industrial Channel
Lessons Industrial Distributors Can Learn from Wesco
In 2025, I have been writing a series of articles on Wesco for Modern Distribution Management. In the series I took a deep dive into Wesco's 3 key enterprise strategies “Extend our industry-leading scale and value proposition.” “Further develop our team and our culture of excellence.” “Digitalize and transform our B2B business.” Wesco Analysis, Pt. 3: Digitize … [Read more...] about Lessons Industrial Distributors Can Learn from Wesco
Creating lemonade at Institutional Accounts
What do market segments such as government, universities / higher education, life sciences, government/ municipalities, sports teams, hospitals, and agriculture have in common? While most are considered "institutions", they all are significant users of eProcurement / punchouts as part of their electrical buying process. They use companies such as Ariba, Coupa, Jaggaer, … [Read more...] about Creating lemonade at Institutional Accounts
Winning the HVACR Product Data Revolution
In June HVACRTrends hosted a webinar introducing the Trimble / Distributor Data Solutions (DDS) collaboration. The two companies shared what they are seeing in the construction trades and how data is being used, and will be used, to help companies operate more efficiently, more effectively, and as a tool to capture market share. Takeaways Two key takeaways from the session … [Read more...] about Winning the HVACR Product Data Revolution
ERP … The Heart of Your Industrial Channel Business
There was a phrase years ago that is attributed to EF Hutton, which was a financial advisory firm that goes “when EF Hutton speaks, people listen.” The inference was that EF Hutton had a wide reach, and somewhat influence. The same goes for Epicor given how integral their Prophet 21 and Eclipse ERP platforms are for many HVACR distributors.So, when Frank Heenan, Global VP of … [Read more...] about ERP … The Heart of Your Industrial Channel Business
Punchouts Drive eCommerce in the Industrial Channel
eCommerce is more than, in the words of an Amazon and MRO analyst, “click and ship”. eCommerce is about a methodology and a mindset to do business more electronically. In fact, the commerce element can be very diversified, especially for medium to large MRO buyers. Consider Amazon Business, Grainger and MSC. Companies such as Grainger and MSC report that over 30% … [Read more...] about Punchouts Drive eCommerce in the Industrial Channel
Using Digitalization to Optimize Operations & Drive New Business in Industrial
To combat the challenges of today’s marketplace, progressive distributors looking towards the future are investing more and more into digitizing their processes to optimize performance. These companies recognize that: Data can be monetized. This means that information in their ERP systems can be acted upon rather than remain in data silos and databases. Whether this is … [Read more...] about Using Digitalization to Optimize Operations & Drive New Business in Industrial
