Lots of conversations regarding AI for distribution. Lots of application-specific initiatives, which is an approach. There are some more “comprehensive” systems, which is a different approach. What the right solution is is a company-specific conversation based upon goals, however, the […]
Channel friction inevitably occurs when money is involved. While the flow of money is always good, administering and reporting on it is where the friction comes about. This gets to the issue of “is the information accurate.” Achieving accuracy requires […]
Data is the lifeblood of every business. You need to know “the numbers” to track sales, manage inventory, pay bills. On a personal side, it is what drives commissions and payroll. But an underpinning of this information that is rarely […]
Earlier this year we conducted contractor research and asked about their eCommerce experience and utilization. The results mimicked what we do in our consumer lives – more usage. In the contractor world they are doing more information searching than ever […]
As we look forward to 2026 the crystal ball right now is showing slow growth aside from those who will benefit from data centers and possibly the industrial market if they are receiving a new factory or expansion. Those in […]
IDEA’s recent 2025 eBiz conference held earlier this month in Nashville brought together almost 160 people representing 20 distributor, 20 manufacturers, service companies, and IDEA’s staff. The conference expanded its contextual reach from talking data into the burgeoning topic of […]
Mary Derrick (Schneider Electric), Danna Stone (Graybar), Brian DiBella (Legrand), Larry Stern (Standard Electric Supply), Tessa Myers (Rockwell), George Vorwick (United Electric Supply), Martina Schubert (Van Meter) … are all key business people in the industry. We’ll respected by senior […]
From a tech viewpoint, AI is what companies talk about. Distributors are implementing it or at least discussing it. Not much gets shared within the manufacturer environment but it is well in use, in fact Zekelman just hired a VP […]
While AI burst into the mainstream relatively recently, “techies” have commented that it has been around for a while. As distributors have found out, seemingly every technology solicitation call is from an AI company. There is Chat, Perplexity, Grok, Claude, […]
While quarterly earnings for many companies are showing a strong Q2, if you are not servicing a data center, business is more challenging. This means that winning requires taking share. And to take share you need to outperform your competition. […]
