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. 

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.