Technology Adoption in Distribution
How to get people to actually use new tools!
Hi everyone,
Before we get to this week’s newsletter, we wanted to highlight MaintainX’s $1B valuation and $50 million fundraise. MaintainX is another example of an eProcurement 2.0 opportunity for distributors. The company provides a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) that has grown like wildfire – with estimates that they grew revenue over 1,300% since 2021, eclipsing over $20M revenue in just a couple years. A remarkable accomplishment and with MaintainX’s over 6,500 customers… industrial distributors should take note.
Now onto this week’s newsletter…
Upon reflecting on this year’s Innovators Summit, there is one key area we’d like to explore between now and the 2024 conference:
How distributors are managing technology adoption
Distributor executives found all these amazing technology solutions at the event. So, how do they proliferate them throughout their organizations? Distributors are historically decentralized organizations who have grown through M&A. Many companies operate with regional P&L’s – and many times the “branch manager” can have just as much power as the CEO when it comes to branch-level decisions.
The branch manager can have just as much power as the CEO.
What’s interesting is that branches have a lot of decision-making power over a variety of functions and decisions, such as:
Pricing
Purchasing/merchandising
Marketing
Quoting and sales enablement tools
Logistics and fulfillment tools
These areas seem pretty important to any distribution business! At the Summit, we had tech innovators that provide modern solutions in each of these areas. But if management decides to implement a new tech solution inside the branch, how do you get each branch to adopt?
Distributors, we’d like you to hear from you - please fill out this survey!
We’ll be sharing the results in a future newsletter – and if you fill out the survey, we’ll provide you a 1-month free trial for the Distribution Technology newsletter, so include your email in the survey.
For tech innovators, we’d love to hear from you as well. You have great insights into what has worked and what hasn’t with your customers, so please write to us!
Here are a few factors to think about when exploring ways to accelerate digital adoption in any type of organization, especially a decentralized distributor:
Team and resources
Training
Embracing decentralization for testing & iterative processes
Compensation