Readers Respond: Hot Technology Trends in Distribution

Over on MDM’s Independent Distributor Network group on LinkedIn I’ve been watching an active conversation on technology trends for distributors in 2012.

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Group participants noted social media, warehouse management systems and marketing automation as some of the key trends they are seeing in technology right now.

But of all the technology trends noted, the cloud – or delivering business applications and data over the Internet – drove the most discussion. The cloud is arguably becoming a more popular way to delivery business applications to the desktops of companies of all sizes. Most major software providers are adding or have already added cloud services to their portfolio of products. And some, like salesforce.com and NetSuite, have staked their entire business model on it.

The cloud goes hand-in-hand with mobility – another top trend discussed over in our LinkedIn group. “We are working with our ERP provider to allow our salespeople real-time access to pricing, quotes, open orders, credits, A/R and all the data that is on our AS400 system,” CH Briggs President and COO Donald Schalk wrote. “It’s about speed. They no longer will have to email or make calls to find this out.”

In an MDM survey, about 45 percent of readers said they had implemented mobile tools in their organizations; nearly a fifth said they had plans to. That number is sure to rise and may not even be reflective of all the possible uses of mobile technology.

As Brian Kazmierczak of Rubber Tree Systems told MDM last year for our Emerging Technologies in Distribution Special Report: “Everyone has a different idea of what mobile is. What we’ve come up with is mobile is anything that keeps your salespeople out of the office and in front of the customer, and reduces manual communication …”

Over in the LinkedIn discussion, Matthew Petersen, Wholesale Distribution Industry Solution Manager at SAP, said mobile can expand beyond just sales. “The bottom line is, most roles within a wholesale distributor – be they admin and finance, supply chain or customer-facing sales and support roles are being mobilized.”

He said a “quick win” is to mobilize authorizations for things like invoices, purchase orders, time and vacation requests and travel expense reimbursements. Petersen also noted Big Data – the ability to analyze data in an instant – as something that must be addressed by distributors in 2012.

Read more of the discussion and contribute your own comments. Or comment below on this blog.

We recently covered emerging technology trends in a special report. Here are the articles:

• The Growth of Cloud Computing
• Demand Booms for Pricing Analytics, Tools
• Distributors Embrace Mobile Technology
• Business Intelligence Tools Provide Actionable Data
• E-Commerce Evolves for Distributors