Your European supplier sent the quote: €250,000 for a container of products with 60-day payment terms. At the exchange rate when you placed the order, that translated to $270,000—giving you comfortable margin when selling to U.S. customers at your standard pricing. You confirmed the order and began taking customer commitments. Sixty days later when payment […]
For decades, distribution followed a predictable pattern: large orders to business customers, pallet quantities, scheduled deliveries, and forgiving delivery windows. A typical B2B distributor might process 50 to 100 orders daily, each with 10 to 50 line items, shipping to commercial addresses with loading docks during business hours. Then ecommerce changed everything. Now that same […]
The call from Walmart’s buyer was exactly what your distribution company had been working toward: a major purchase agreement that would triple your revenue overnight. After years of selling to independent retailers and regional chains, you’d finally landed a national account that would transform your business. Then came the 47-page routing guide. And the EDI […]
The ERP implementation was progressing well until the data migration team opened the customer master file. What should have been 8,000 active customers turned out to be 23,000 records spanning 30 years—including customers who’d gone out of business a decade ago, duplicate entries for the same companies with slight name variations, addresses that were outdated […]
The ERP implementation project was on schedule and seemingly on track. Configurations looked good in demonstrations. Integrations passed basic connectivity tests. Training was underway. Everyone was optimistic about the upcoming go-live. Then, three days after launch, reality struck. A customer returned a product, and the system crashed when processing the return credit. Inventory transfers between […]
ERP implementation failures make headlines regularly. A distributor spends $500,000 and 18 months only to abandon the system and start over. Another goes live with critical functionality missing, forcing expensive emergency fixes. A third successfully implements technically but sees user adoption collapse within months because change management was an afterthought. The statistics are sobering: studies […]
Two distribution companies operate in the same market, carry similar products, use comparable technology, and serve overlapping customer bases. Yet one consistently achieves 98 percent inventory accuracy while the other struggles at 92 percent. One turns inventory 10 times annually while the other manages only 6 turns. One maintains 95 percent on-time delivery while the […]
Your distribution business has reached an inflection point. A major new customer wants to place orders through EDI. A regional competitor is available for acquisition. A manufacturer offers exclusive territory rights that would double your revenue. An ecommerce opportunity could open entirely new markets. Strategic growth opportunities are finally arriving after years of building your […]
Your CFO reviews the P&L and sees what looks like a healthy distribution business. Revenue is up 12 percent year-over-year. Gross margins hold steady around 25 percent. Operating expenses seem reasonable as a percentage of sales. The financial picture looks solid. But hidden beneath those top-line numbers, your legacy ERP is quietly draining hundreds of […]
Food distribution operates under pressures that don’t exist in other distribution sectors. A single temperature excursion can spoil $50,000 of inventory. Missing lot tracking during a recall can expose customers to contaminated products and your company to devastating liability. Failing to maintain HACCP compliance can result in regulatory action that shuts down your operation. Food […]
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