This is the second of my three posts previewing this month's TUG Connects 2018 conference, and it has one very big piece of news: Expertek has engineered access to ION for the StarShip shipping system—enabling a full integration with Infor's CloudSuite Distribution platform.

The TUG Connects conference is just around the corner (March 26-29). The Expertek team is coming to Phoenix with a full load of new products, updates, and enhancements that will help distributors get more value from their SX.e investments, deliver better service to their customers, and accelerate theirbusiness growth.

This is the first in a series of "preview" posts to give you a taste of what you'll see at the Expertek booth (Booth #11).   

Late last fall we conducted our first Innovation in Distribution survey. Now, I'm excited to make available the survey's findings to everyone in the distribution industry. Download your copy now. 

See how your distribution business stacks up. 

The Innovation in Distribution report reveals telling trends in technology usage across a range of distribution enterprises. 

Remember Aesop's fable about the tortoise and the hare? The moral was, "slow and steady wins the race." But when it comes to winning the race you run every day as a distributor, "slow" is the very last thing you want to be. 

Business velocity matters in distribution because we live in an on-demand world where customers expect same-day shipping and next-day delivery. They want their complete orders in hand ASAP and if you lose one sale to a faster competitor (or if you ship a wrong item), then you've probably lost that customer, too. 

In my last article I asked the question, "Are you still distributing like it's 1999" I also compared old-school, paper-based sales, ordering, and fulfillment processes with the methods of a 21st-century distribution business-"Distributor 2.0"-that's maximizing today's avaliable technology.

Distributor 2.0 isn’t hypothetical. These are real, thriving companies, some of whom we work with. In my opinion they’re visionary distribution businesses. They know where they want to go and how they want to grow. And they’re committed to doing what it takes to get there. It starts with growing their sales, and the #1 thing they’re doing in that effort is establishing eCommerce sales channels.

Having operated a technology business for twenty-five years, I’ve come to appreciate the importance of innovating and reinventing yourself every so often. We live in a time of continuous market disruption. All businesses (yours as well as ours) must evolve to respond to new challenges, grow, and thrive—and distributors are no exception. 

Thanks to all who participated in the “Innovation in Distribution” survey over the past few weeks. The survey closed on December 18 and we’re deep into analyzing the data and preparing the survey report (look for it in February). But in our preliminary review, we see three trends you might want to know about:

How big a problem is employee theft and embezzlement? Probably much bigger than you think—more than $50 billion annually, according to a recent survey. The actual number is probably higher, because companies don’t always report theft and the perpetrators are rarely prosecuted. And speaking of perps, that same study reports that 75% of employees have stolen at least once from their employer.

I’ve been writing recently about how distribution enterprises can improve their profitability through more efficient operations. In this and my next two posts, I want to shift gears and discuss how distributors (and all businesses, for that matter), can do more to protect the money they earn.

At Expertek, we always want to know about the business challenges distributors face—because serving distributors is the reason we're here. 

To help us consistently innovate with fresh solutions, we're inviting selected distributors across the country to participate in a brief, 3-minute "Innovation in Distribution" survey—and now is YOUR chance to participate.