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Taking Advantage of an Economic Downturn |
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By Paul Pretko
The slow economy means down time for many distributors. Now is the time to invest in people and systems that will help you get through any current difficulties and position your company to profit from the rebound that is sure to come.
 PAUL PRETKO
Taking advantage of new enterprise technology is not new to the wholesale distribution industry. Many distributors have already put new enterprise technology in place to drive superior performance and profitable growth. For others, however, the timing has not been right to improve their systems. Implementing new systems can be temporarily disruptive and requires some of the best business people to be on the project. As most distributors run their business with lean headcount, high operational demands during bullish economic times often prohibits them from investing in new systems.
The foodservice distribution industry is full of some very adaptive and loyal companies. During tough times, they do not often have major layoffs, as they prefer to retain experienced employees needed when transaction volumes pick up and growth begins again. Their opportunity to retool is now, during this economic slowdown. They can take advantage of this slower period to place experienced “subject matter experts” on projects that will help pave the way for profitable growth in the future. Following a new system implementation and post “go live” tuning, many employees who were on the project get redeployed back into the business, adding new strategic business experiences to their existing tactical operational backgrounds, increasing their value to the company.
When economic growth begins, distributors with new enabling enterprise technology in place will be prepared to grow profitably, not just grow. The agile distributors that can leverage new industry-specific solutions will have a competitive advantage over traditional distributors who must continue to rely on dated and disparate systems.
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| Reactive Heroics
Location Specific Practices
Sales Driven
Disparate Latent Data
Product Only Based Revenue
Cost In Sustaining Old Technology |
Proactive Consistency
Standard Operational Processes
Margin Managed
Accurate, current Information
Product and Services Based Revenue
Investment in Technology for Growth
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In an economic downturn, traditional distributors face the challenges of streamlining operations, enhancing efficiencies, and reducing overall costs. Midsize and smaller distributors are additionally constrained by time, budgets and resources. That’s why it is important to tap into wholesale distribution–specific, preconfigured enterprise solutions to support business agility. By clearly defining how the software will behave for standard wholesale distribution business processes (best practices), system implementations are streamlined, minimizing business disruption and cost, and maximizing enterprise-wide adoption and benefit.
Imagine if you could efficiently support business growth of the future with wholesale distribution-specific functionality not generic technology, effectively execute on business decisions made from current information not latent data, and rapidly adapt to new business requirements by changing process rules not software code. Now is the time to take advantage of an economic downturn to prepare your foodservice distribution business for a prosperous future.
Paul Pretko is an industry principal for Wholesale Distribution at SAP America, Newtown Square, PA. He is a wholesale distribution technology and operations leader with over 25 years of comprehensive experience in distribution and logistics environments, executing operational improvement strategies through technology. He focuses on enabling efficient distributor operations with SAP for Wholesale Distribution solutions. He can be reached at paul.pretko@sap.com
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Beverage World
