“History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.” — Sydney J. Harris With the challenging business climate introduced by the Coronavirus pandemic, we are seeing some businesses and governments maneuver in ways that are reminiscent of World War II—governments closing borders, citizens rationing supplies [...]

Supply chain visibility is something all distributors need, but most don’t have. A crisis such as the big “C” word that we’re in now is a huge wake-up call in the supply chain management department. Harvard Business Review recently wrote about supply network mapping and the expensive, reactive and uncoordinated hoops companies are going through to secure supply.

Given COVID-19 and the current economic uncertainty, my bet is that your most pressing business worry right now is how the ___ to free up cash. You got it… inventory. Inventory reduction is the most powerful strategy you can employ right now to defend against the long-term business impacts that are keeping you up at [...]

Traditional demand forecasting strategies no longer work because they look at demand where the purchase happens, NOT at the point of fulfillment.

Scared of losing service to your customers because of a supplier? Worse yet, because of a supplier during a pandemic? Supplier constraints even on a normal day can wreak havoc on service. Throw COVID-19 into the mix, and it becomes an official crapshoot. If you feel like keeping your customers happy at a time like [...]

Totally borrowing this brilliant cartoon from Marketoonist Tom Fishburne, who says that this period of uncertainty is the acid test of business agility. It's so true. In the unprecedented face of COVID-19, "uncertainty" doesn't even come close to explaining it. We need to invent a stronger word. Businesses could never prepare for this monstrosity. And [...]

[simple-author-box] Demand shapes price... Or is it the other way around... Price shapes demand? Actually, it's both. Earlier this month we introduced a game-changing Price Optimization solution that uses predictive pricing analytics to strategically shape demand, which is then used to shape price, and so on. The result? Distributors and retailers now have the power [...]

Some excellent points in MDM's article last week -- the top one being that, "Distributors play the most important role in getting this country back on its feet as quickly as possible." It's true. Distributors keep the economy running at a time like this. Here are a few things MDM's CEO Thomas Gale pointed out [...]

CORONAVIRUS = CASH PROBLEMS Coronavirus presents cash problems for businesses everywhere. This morning MDM shared that the CEO of BlueLinx, a large building products distributor, voluntarily cut his monthly salary to $1, in response to the impact of Coronavirus on their bottom line. Revenue streams are thinning or drying up for a lot of folks, [...]

Welcome to Part 4 of our series! If you've been reading, you know the cold, hard truth:  the decisions you make today, and how you are managing your Coronavirus-stricken business, will follow you for quite some time. How much time? That's the million-dollar question. Yesterday we blogged about some recovery signs in China. And the [...]