Productivity

Growth Strategies / Industry Consolidation / Industry News / Lighting / Lighting2 / Productivity / Renewables / Technology

Solar, LEDs, Diversification, Inventory Management and More

David Gordon Posted On May 13, 2010

A little bit of a reading roundup before this weekend’s NAED Leadership Summit. Recently there has been array of news from 3M, GE, Home Depot, Rexel, Square D, Datalliance, CED and Hilti to get us going (or at least cause some […]

Industry Consolidation / Industry News / Productivity

A Sign of the Times?

David Gordon Posted On May 10, 2010

Given the dramatic decline in industry revenues over the past 18 months, many have wondered when consolidation will occur and are surprised that they haven’t seen more than a few. We agree, and from talking with a number of potential […]

Growth Strategies / Marketing / Productivity

Addressing Customer Service … Having the Right Inventory

David Gordon Posted On April 15, 2010

Last week I visited an electrical distributor client to discuss customer service. Given the economic environment that has gripped the industry over the past 18 months, no one is surprised to hear that some companies have experienced customer service issues […]

eBusiness / Pricing / Productivity / Profitability

What do you think? Stay in or get out?

David Gordon Posted On April 7, 2010

If you are a distributor, and the business has been struggling, you might be thinking: Why should I hunker down and try to ride this economic downturn only to have to start all over trying to rebuild my wealth? I’ve […]

eBusiness / Productivity / Profitability / Technology

Could the Electrical Industry Run on SAP?

David Gordon Posted On March 19, 2010

Maybe … especially if we (the industry, not your specific company) want profitability. You may remember SAP’s marketing theme of a couple of years ago that basically of “The best-run businesses run SAP”. With a multitude of electrical manufacturers turning […]

Growth Strategies / Industry News / Marketing / Productivity / Profitability

Looking Towards 2010

David Gordon Posted On November 2, 2009

We wanted to title this “Looking Forward to 2010”, however, we debated on the word “forward” given the forecasts that we’re seeing. Consider: “There is so much uncertainty about the first half of next year that until you have a […]

eBusiness / Growth Strategies / Productivity / Technology

Can ERP = Enjoy Resource Productivity?

David Gordon Posted On October 23, 2009

In a market that many economist project to be flat for a while, manufacturers and distributors are looking at their back office to identify where they can gain efficiencies. Many companies rely on older ERP systems and only utilize between […]

Awards / Channel Strategies / Lighting / Lighting2 / Productivity / Profitability / Supplier / Products

A Birthday, CED, Rep Relations, Copper, Renewables and Theft

David Gordon Posted On August 21, 2009

In other words, a little bit of everything to end the week! August marks ElectricalTrends’ two year anniversary. During this time we’ve had over 28,195 visits resuting in 39,241 page views from 13,525 unique visitors (all numbers are according to […]

Productivity / Technology

Rexel and Activant … What does it mean?

David Gordon Posted On August 18, 2009

As most industry participants and observers know by now, Rexel has decided to standardize upon one ERP software system, Activant’s Eclipse package. Rexel had been operating different systems for a number of years and trying to aggregate information to support […]

Associations / Channel Strategies / Growth Strategies / Productivity / Profitability

PAR for the course as margins, and profit, race downhill

David Gordon Posted On July 14, 2009

We’ve been talking with distributors the last couple of weeks and a common refrain is the lack of profitability in much of their businesses. Many are attributing this to marketplace pricing strategies and some distributors’ desire to take share based […]