The NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence has released the 11th edition in its Facing the Forces of Change series. This one, subtitled “Navigating the Seas of Disruption”, provides wholesaler-distributors, their suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders with strategic insights into the key business and economic trends affecting the wholesale distribution supply chain through 2020. This study explores these changes and opportunities in light of marketplace disrupters that are causing wholesaler-distributors to rethink their approach to technology, business processes and the customer experience.
Many of the forces identified in the last edition have only intensified and continue to exacerbate the change occurring today, NAW said in a release. A difficult economy, advancing technology, rapidly changing customer requirements, shifting demographics, and tight margins have placed distributors at a crossroads, where they must take bold, new steps toward becoming more “customer centric”— leading to a maximization of the overall customer experience.
Compounding matters, these market conditions have unleashed a set of disruptive forces — in the form of new competition, technologies, business processes, government rules and regulations, and more — that are causing distributors to reconsider and redevelop their approach to value creation today.
The study recommends several steps wholesaler-distributors must take to combat these conditions:
- investing in resources that can track and monitor customers’ behavior online
- developing a deeper understanding of the financial implications to the customer of doing business with your company
- creating demand for new services that customers acknowledge the value of and for which they are willing to pay
- understanding how Millennials fit into your workforce—and that they aren’t as different as you may think they are.
The study and more information about it are available from NAW at www.naw.org/ftf16.