Nearly 270 industry leaders—distributors, manufacturers and service providers—participated in a September, 2019 MDM survey on strategies for small distributors. This survey revealed a number of challenges facing smaller firms as they compete in an evolving marketplace. These challenges include resource limitations, changing customer expectations and evolving marketplace technologies. This white paper summarizes these survey results, discusses the findings and offers recommendations for moving forward.

What does it mean to choose a channel partner in the digital age? As technical capabilities improve, distributors and manufacturers need to work closer together than ever before to integrate systems and master customer needs. These five key areas are essential to ensuring a strong, mutually beneficial working partnership.

Distributors can do so much more with their existing business data, but many are not aware of the tools at their disposal to analyze and execute on it. Or, they know the tools exist but aren’t sure how best to leverage them. Managing data in more effective ways can yield dramatic financial results. MDM’s John Gunderson and Tom Gale have outlined the most common challenges and address ways to overcome them.  They combine MDM’s latest research on best practices in data management to help you strengthen your capabilities.

Distribution companies are increasingly hearing about the digital transformation imperative for a reason. As explained in presentations at MDM’s 2019 Digital Distributor Summit, commoditization, competitive innovation and changing market dynamics are combining to forever alter the distributor’s traditional value proposition. Making a technology investment is no longer optional.

This year’s free edition of MDM’s annual ranking of the top 150+ profiles North American industrial and construction product distributors across 16 product sectors. This is the tenth year MDM has profiled the size and shape of these markets. We’ve expanded the list this year to more accurately capture the largest suppliers of an incredibly diverse and fragmented product portfolio of MRO, production and consumable products (OEM products excluded).

Nearly 250 industry leaders — distributors, manufacturers and service providers — completed MDM’s survey on pricing practices. The responses revealed a lack of consistency and direction concerning online sales strategies. Although customers are increasingly demanding it, some industry players appear reluctant to adapt historical sales and pricing practices to a digital environment. Download the white paper to read more about the results, conclusions and recommendations.

Learn how to optimize online pricing. This whitepaper will address pricing as it relates to five key areas: time, measure and test, people, information and price point. Understanding these components and how they fit into the overall picture of your price strategy across all channels will be critical for distributors to succeed into the future

MDM provides an outlook of the state of the distribution industry based on reader surveys and data collection in partnership with Oracle NetSuite. This white paper includes the growth outlook, top concerns, pain points, plans for building revenue and cutting costs and technology plans for 2019.

Distribution companies expect their customer touchpoints to radically change in the next three years, as sales channels continue to rapidly evolve. Even so, the distribution community is not aggressively embracing digital strategies, according to a recent MDM survey in conjunction with Infor.

The road to true, transaction-enabled e-commerce is fraught with obstacles, with many “right paths” to success. But there are proven best practices. Read the results of MDM’s latest survey on e-commerce implementation and learn how to quickly build a strong e-commerce platform with integrated inventory management capability.

In like a lion, out like a lamb – 2018 started with a few landscape-shifting deals in the industrial and building materials sectors. The competitive landscape continued a healthy pace in second quarter with major deals by Sunsource and MSC, plus competing bids to buy Essendant. The Staples-Essendant saga finally settled in October and M&A extended into marketing groups as IDC-USA merged with the marketing group Affiliated Distributors. Download a free copy to read about other M&A deals of 2018.

Amazon Business has not only changed the rules for customer expectations on price and purchasing options, they’ve rewritten the book on how distributors of all sizes, across all product sectors, compete in the future. Distributors need to map out a plan to invest in the technology and the strategic capabilities that will help them engage and retain customers, even as Amazon Business grows at exponential rates globally and other digital disruptors and traditional competitors quickly advance their value propositions.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer science fiction – it’s the here and now. And it’s transforming how business leaders look at enterprise resource planning (ERP) functionality, driven by digital disruptors that are leveraging AI across several dimensions to innovate on behalf of customers. But what is it? And how exactly can it help a business grow? This white paper outlines how artificial intelligence will increasingly support and enhance core ERP capabilities for distributors.

This report defines artificial intelligence and machine learning and how leading companies are using them so that executives understand both the promises of AI and the threat posed by competitors who use it well. In this analysis, we will cover a wide range of technology topics, and we will start by defining and explaining some terms that may be new to you.

This free PDF includes lists of top distributors in 14 sectors, including:

•  Company profiles
•  4-year revenue trend data
•  14 sector snapshots

This free PDF includes lists of top distribution companies across 14 sectors.

The lists are ranked in order of 2017 revenue size alone; no other factors were used to compile these lists.

This report, focusing on distribution’s omnichannel future, follows Amazon’s rise as it rapidly built the competencies needed to master B2B distribution the way it mastered the online bookstore. We examine the threats that Amazon poses, the rise of Amazon Business – formerly AmazonSupply – and why it presents a clear threat to today’s distributor.

This free report highlights five practices firms are using to transition their field sales rep roles from being self-directed generalists to management-directed specialists.

Learn how to avoid these common pitfalls distributors make with vending.

Each year MDM provides an outlook of the state of the distribution industry based on reader surveys and data collected in partnership with Baird.

This PDF includes an overview of current economic conditions, expectations for 2018 and the top three trends to pay attention to in the year ahead.