This article, the final in a 2-part series, analyzes opportunities for distributors and manufacturers to use point-of-sale data more strategically to identify and capitalize on opportunities in their markets. This article also discusses the biggest constraint to capitalizing on POS: It requires a large investment in technology, culture and collaboration to do it correctly.

In general, a gap still exists between what many distributors and manufacturers would like to see done with the point-of-sale data that is collected and shared in the channel and what actually occurs.

The sharing of customer data often has limited impact on …