Webcast - Modern Distribution Management

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Join a handful of distribution leaders in a compelling roundtable discussion on redefining inventory management for a volatile world. In this live event, you’ll discover first-hand how these executives are revolutionizing their inventory policies, supply chain planning and response mechanisms to adapt to market fluctuations. Learn from your peers as they delve into leveraging insights, AI/ML technologies, and the industry expertise of GAINS to optimize performance and effectively address pressing inventory challenges.
MDM reported on news of more than 400 M&A transactions during 2023, and the vast majority included independent distributors — many that were family-owned. We expect 2024 to be another big year of distribution M&A, as economic uncertainty, the labor situation, the ongoing technology transition and generational retirements have many company owners likewise looking to sell. Selling a distributorship involves numerous decisions and questions to be asked, and our free, one hour, MDM webcast will provide a guide for those considering a sale, or currently in the process of one.
Benchmark your sales and growth expectations for 2024 with MDM’s annual industry forecast, review of macroeconomic and distribution-specific trends, and the latest exclusive Baird-MDM MarketPulse survey insights. Join Baird Senior Research Analyst David Manthey, NetSuite VP Ranga Bodla and MDM CEO Tom Gale for the data and insights on how to best navigate the conflicting market signals shaping 2024.
You may have the best products and sales team, but if you frustrate customers with your digital processes and service delivery, they’ll shop elsewhere. Join this free webcast panel discussion to learn how these distributors have leveraged automation and core process improvement to create stronger customer relationships.
Join us for this insightful webinar on the practical application of Artificial Intelligence as our panel of wholesale distribution executives across every stage of AI adoption share their experiences. From initial efforts building AI foundations to advanced practitioners pushing the boundaries of innovation, we’ll delve deep into the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence across all corners of your business – from inventory to product recommendations to customer support.
With budgets for next year already set, distributors are set to face a 2024 that is expected to feel an industrial slowdown, and these firms won’t be able to ride the inflation wave like they have recently. Given the pace of market and technology advancement, distributors are wise to plan for not just the year ahead, but for several of them. Join us for this forward-looking discussion that will help distributors win for years to come.
Artificial intelligence is more accessible than ever to distributors, but the early-stage hype cycle makes it difficult to separate the signal from the noise. Join us for this 60-minute webcast to hear the findings of MDM’s deep-dive AI research report, and hear from those on the front lines on the keys to AI success. Our research report and this program combine the insights of distributors and technology innovators to help you build a practical roadmap for AI implementation.
B2B marketplace industry is expected to reach $3.6 trillion in sales by 2024, up from $680 billion in 2018 (DC 360, 2023). This highlights the growing importance of marketplaces in the distribution space and underscores the need for companies to embrace this model of third-party commerce in order to remain competitive and capture a share of this growing market. For existing B2B commerce operators, now is an exciting time to consider transforming your ecommerce experience into a marketplace ecosystem, rapidly expanding categories, aggregating inventory, and elevating your position within the industry. So join our expert panel hosted by Tom Gale (MDM) and featuring Tom McFadyen (McFadyen Digital CEO * Author of Marketplace Best Practices), along with distribution industry marketplace leaders as they discuss the evolving landscape of marketplaces, highlighting key strategies for success in this dynamic sector.
Learning how to optimize your eCommerce strategy through interconnected sales channels and data-driven decision-making is essential to maximize your ROI. But there is an abundance of different aspects that must be considered to do so. Join Kristen Thom, VP of Product at White Cup, to delve into the different pieces of strategy to focus on when maximizing your eCommerce. This webcast will uncover valuable insights into analyzing customer behavior and overall sales trends and demonstrate how to establish correlations between eCommerce behavior and broader sales outcomes. Don’t miss this opportunity on Aug. 17 to uncover the hidden potential of your eCommerce business through data-driven insights and seamless channel integration.
After two straight bumper revenue years, the distribution sector is navigating a slower-but-solid 2023, while 2024 forecasts call for a slowdown. Join Baird’s David Manthey and MDM’s Tom Gale as they analyze economic conditions and the demand outlook for the rest of this year and beyond. The webcast will feature brand new data and insights from the 2Q23 Baird-MDM Industrial Distribution Survey.   This program breaks down the latest economic trends, emerging growth opportunities, what to watch out for and how distributors can capitalize on the current competitive landscape.
Distributors have quickly learned in recent years — sometimes the hard way — that keeping up with the pace of customers’ rapidly-evolving buying experience expectations is crucial to winning or maintaining business. The proliferation of AI and self-service tools have only made things more interesting, and complicated. This webcast will analyze MDM and Infor’s latest research benchmarks on distributors’ technology utilization in this area compared to a year ago, along with insights from distributor panelists about how they are navigating the CX journey.
Despite challenged supply chains, a difficult labor environment and whispers of a looming industrial slowdown, wholesale distributors rode the inflation wave to a bumper revenue year in 2022. This led to considerable jumps in year-to-year revenues charted across MDM’s 2023 Top Distributors Lists. Join this free webcast as Executive Editor Mike Hockett provides the first look at our rankings in various industries, slotted by their latest fiscal revenues within each industry. We’ll examine the key factors and moves that led certain distributors to see major movement on our lists, including a few companies that made first-time appearances.
As distributors navigate market instability, margin protection discipline is paramount. Join us for a webinar featuring Tony Pericle, the architect of distributor solutions that have generated over $1 billion in profit in the past two years. In this webinar, Tony will share practical examples of how distributors can maximize profitability, including best practices for pricing, cost management, and work-flow optimization. Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a proven industry expert and discover how to build a resilient business that can weather any storm and emerge stronger than ever.
Even with great salespeople, distributors often serve the wrong customers in the wrong channels in the wrong ways. Most distributors have a significant opportunity to drive top and bottom-line growth by optimizing their go-to-market (GTM) strategy and approach, particularly their outside and inside sales forces. Many distributors have invested in an expensive sales force, but it’s not optimized — and that puts senior management at risk.

In this free 30-minute webcast, attendees will receive high-level insights on how to right-size and redesign their outside and inside sales forces to perfectly align them with customer needs and opportunities. These tips will help create happier customers, more productive sales staff and a bigger bottom line. 

The past three years of rapidly-evolving buying habits have shown distributors the high value of leveraging and analyzing customer data. But while most distributors agree that putting data into practice is important, how many are actually doing so, and how are they using it? In this free webcast, we’ll dive into the results of brand new MDM research that polled more than 110 distributors about how they are leveraging metrics and data analytics to support sales operations. Find out how your data analytics usage stacks up with that of your industry peers, and how modern tools can help distributors do more with less while making sales smarter, faster and easier.
Providing an extraordinary and sustainable buying experience needs more than just having the right product information in place. Today's buyers expect personalized and accurate product content – no matter where they are getting in touch with your products. In this webcast, you will learn how to create a comprehensive buying experience that reduces shopping cart cancellations, converts more customers and leads to incremental sales with greater efficiencies.
In this MDM Webcast, McKinsey Partners Alex Abdelnour and Kevin Sachs share their latest research on the recipe for leveraging innovation to win in distribution, including a panel discussion with executives who have successfully applied the recipe. Those who attended the 2022 MDM SHIFT Conference saw these McKinsey Partners present their research on what leaders have done to outperform in the evolving distribution landscape — a landscape characterized by below-GDP growth, increasing customer expectations, accelerating consolidation, increased disintermediation, non-traditional disruptors and tight labor markets. Companies that successfully transformed in this landscape showed an ability to deliver outsize growth while expanding margins. To achieve this, they innovated — whether in business model, service, experience, process or some combination.
Cyber threats and malware have been a security threat to distributors ever since they began launching websites, and those risks have grown exponentially in today’s hyper-connected business environment. But even with cyberthreats everywhere, they can easily be overlooked by businesses when speed-to-market is an utmost priority and other challenges exist. This webcast will examine what cybersecurity and malware threats exist for distributors, what they look like and what business areas are often targeted. You’ll also learn about blind spots in your cyber defenses and where you may be most vulnerable. Above all else, you’ll learn how to make your business more vigilant against these many threats and the actions you can take to avoid a crippling security breach.
Best practices for inventory management have been whiplashed from just-in-time to just-in-case. After double-digit growth years for distributors, consensus forecasts indicate a slowdown in 2023. Join us for this free one-hour webcast to better prepare your team for what’s ahead. We’ll explore the current state of inventory management after three volatile years; how to maintain lean, efficient inventory (and cash) practices with high customer-service levels; and how to increase your supply-chain visibility to ensure high service levels.
Benchmark your sales and growth expectations for 2023 with MDM’s annual industry forecast, review of macroeconomic and distribution-specific trends, and the latest exclusive Baird-MDM MarketPulse survey insights. Join Baird Senior Research Analyst David Manthey, NetSuite VP Ranga Bodla and MDM CEO Tom Gale for the data and insights on how to best navigate the conflicting market signals shaping 2023.

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