The Future of Distribution Belongs to the Digitally Deliberate

Imagine a puzzle that, for some reason, everyone in your life is telling you that you have to have. In fact, by figuring out how you take the pieces and solve this magical puzzle, your life will change for the better. 

So you decide to give it a try - maybe you’re tired of the hype or far too eager to see the claimed results. Either way, when you finally get your hands on this puzzle, you start forcing the pieces together, one after the other, until you’ve got an awkward clump of puzzle pieces that look nothing like the picture on the box. 

Your life hasn’t changed - you just spent time and maybe got a bit frustrated along the way. 

Here’s the thing: The problem wasn’t that the puzzle was overhyped or the value isn’t there.

The problem was that you didn’t have a strategy for putting the pieces together.

If anything, digital transformation also tends to get a lot of hype, and its results can look magical from the outside. However, the magic only happens when company leadership is deliberate about the platforms and tools they invest in.

What does it mean to be digitally deliberate?

Unlike jigsaw puzzles (magic or otherwise), no picture on the box shows exactly what your company’s tech stack should look like. Sure, there are “best practices” or “recommendations,” but your company and its reality is going to look different than what is on the box.

To bridge theory to reality, it’s important to have a clear plan and a cohesive strategy for investing in solutions and fitting them together.

Distributors wanting a real return on their tech investments must be digitally deliberate. That means your team has:

• A plan. Your stakeholders have agreed on an approach to improving the company’s technology to move the business forward. You have a long-term vision for digital transformation, and you’ve mapped out a way to get there. Ultimately, you’re treating technology like any other part of the business: as a driving force that requires careful consideration.
• Commitment from leadership. Your plan won’t be formed, much less achieved, without people willing and able to take the lead. Digital transformation can’t be at the bottom of everyone’s to-do list — it needs to be a top priority for leaders whose work must be valued by the rest of the team. With strong leadership, you can keep your departments aligned and focused. Your technology will touch every department, so they must understand and buy into the plan. 
• Data as the foundation. As a distributor, you generate massive amounts of data daily, and you should be using that data to inform your decisions, set your priorities, and define your goals.
• A balance of short- and long-term goals. There will be tension between your quarterly earnings report and your long-term investments. Today’s most competitive distributors can navigate that tension and break free from typical constraints to focus on the present and the future. They can get quick wins with smaller tech projects that fit into their more extensive, multi-year plans - while also making their numbers and commitments to shareholders.
• A productive approach to customization. Not every tech solution will be a perfect fit for your company right out of the box. Some of your company’s challenges may not have a clear solution available in the marketplace yet. A digitally deliberate distributor will be able to anticipate the need for custom tools to address the problems unique to their niche. 

What are the pitfalls of being reactive?

Digitally deliberate distributors can deliver a better customer experience to buyers and increase their operational efficiency to create a competitive advantage. That advantage becomes even more pronounced compared to distributors that merely react to trends and take a piecemeal approach to adopting technology.

The costs of not being digitally deliberate include:

• A fragmented and overlapping stack of technology tools feeds inefficiency rather than solving it. Any efficiency gains a distributor could have made by upgrading their platform is offset by the tools’ inability to work together seamlessly.
• Falling behind competitors that use digital tools to innovate and improve the customer experience.
• Struggles with data that lead to difficulty leveraging insights and making better decisions.
• Missed opportunities from tools or processes that align with their unique strengths.

If they get lucky and stumble into tech solutions that fit, reactive distributors are unlikely to get the most out of them. Without true digital leadership, your company’s people — the actual end-users of the tech solutions you choose and implement — will find it harder to embrace the solutions. If you drop a new solution onto your people’s desks and tell them to figure it out, they’re unlikely to adopt it successfully if they even try in the first place. 

How to Become Digitally Deliberate

So, how do you shift out of a reactive gear and into a more deliberate one? 

First, look at your data and assess your current systems. Develop a detailed map of your existing tools and platforms, and identify any efficiency and/or effectiveness gaps. If you don’t have a comprehensive diagram of your systems to work from, you’re simply not being deliberate. 

Next, build a unified vision for digital transformation. With your current setup laid out, it should be easier for leaders across the company to determine what they want from the process. Gather priorities from stakeholders in each department and see where they naturally align. Then, work to resolve any conflicting priorities until you land on goals everyone can agree on. 

As you lay out your timeline, establish a mindset of continuous improvement. Digital transformation is a series of initiatives, but those initiatives should overlap so that it always feels like progress is being made. Don’t wait for one initiative to end before starting the next; otherwise, you risk losing momentum. 

When it’s time to carry out an initiative, engage the right technology partners. To compensate for a lack of strategy, reactive distributors rely on external software providers for direction. But many of those providers won’t bother to understand your company’s unique needs and will instead try to fit your company into their way of doing things, even if it’s an uncomfortable squeeze. 

The right partners will offer a high level of technological expertise and a firm understanding of your company and the sector in which it operates. They’ll take a collaborative approach and fit their solutions to your business rather than forcing your business to fit their solutions. And they’ll see your project through to the end, delivering your desired outcomes and setting you up for continued transformation and growth.

Being Digitally Deliberate is not a single action that will lead to success.

It’s a state of mind, and a series of compounded, consistent actions of executing against a plan that lead to outsized outcomes. 

And it’s these Digitally Deliberate that the future of Distribution belongs to. 

Dive into the future with ProfitOptics

‍At ProfitOptics, we know what it takes for distributors to become digitally deliberate. If you’re unsure where to start, we can help, from the first step to the last, starting with assessing your current systems. Contact our expert team today to learn more about how your company can find its technological edge — no magic required.