Profitability
Microsoft 2015 Convergence
You say or mention Microsoft around just about every distributor and their employees and they respond “Excel” almost in unison. Some will say ‘Outlook’, ‘Power Point’ or ‘Access’. Very few will say AX (The ERP software) or AX Dynamics. Your kids […]
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Graybar, Sonepar … Creating / Fulfilling Demand
Over the past couple of months we’ve been talking about growth, be it from demand creation or demand fulfillment. We’ve written an article on it for Industrial Supply, one for the Canadian Electrical Wholesaler and a couple here on ElectricalTrends […]
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Could Software Determine Who Gets The Business?
We’ve all heard how customers want to be self-sufficient, that they want easier ways of doing business, that software can create connectivity between customers, that customers want to buy online or get their own pricing or use data-mining software to better understand […]
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Poaching your small and mid-sized contractors – The Big Sting
Introducing Electrical Distributor Research Group, an Allen Ray Associates and Channel Marketing Group service to help independent distributors compete with national chains through end-user research and solution identification. Participation in this research relating to econnectivity to increase share from […]
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Lighting the Way to Demand Creation
Most distributors are perceived as demand fulfillers, waiting for a customer to generate an order, be it from a contractor or an MRO opportunity. Few have mastered the skill of creating demand while also fulfilling customer needs. Typically these few […]
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Demand Creator or Demand Fulfillment agent?
Virtually all want to grow their company’s profitability. Whether it is a manufacturer, manufactures rep or distributor or the distributor’s customer. In fact I haven’t found anyone that wants the status.But, in today’s market here are two different worlds for […]
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I was talking to a couple of distributors this week and the topic of new / potential suppliers and rebates came up in the discussion. Now mind you, I know the value of rebates to distributors as I was the […]
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Cable Technology Trends: How Does This Affect You?
Obviously the answer is “big time”. When we think of technology we think of ERP systems, CRM, eCommerce, perhaps mobility, RF for a warehouse and more from a tools perspective. From a “product” viewpoint there is LED, controls as well […]
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Sync Baby, Sync that product data!!
Almost thirteen years ago I started out on a joint project for IDEA to prove the value of synchronizing product data between the manufacturer and their distributors. The assumption, which was proven correct, was that the electronic flow of matching […]
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