Office Depot will rely on its business solutions and CompuCom technology services to improve performance in 2020, and the two B2B divisions already account for 60% of total sales. Stores remain a source for B2B sales, along with various online portals and Alibaba's US marketplace.

The debt of Ingram Micro's parent company, HNA Group, and its potential nationalization by China will not affect Ingram Micro, CEO Alain Monie wrote last week to partners. "Ingram Micro operates as a separate stand-alone company that is not and cannot be integrated with HNA," he wrote.

Walmart will pilot a rebrand of its membership program, which offers unlimited same-day grocery delivery from more than 1,600 stores, as Walmart+. The revamped program may offer fuel and pharmacy discounts as well as mobile scan-and-go and order-by-text options to best Amazon Prime with more benefits.

The effects of the coronavirus outbreak on global supply chains will reach their highest levels this month and could continue for several months after, write Pierre Haren of Causality Link and David Simchi-Levi of MIT. They predict "there will be a spike in the temporary closures of assembly and manufacturing facilities in mid-March."

These infographics from SocialPubli and TopRank Marketing display top insights about influencer marketing and a guide on how business-to-business marketers should employ influencers. Insights include that the best return on investment is delivered by combining influencer marketing with search engine optimization and paid social, and B2B marketers embarking on influencer campaigns should get leadership buy-in by proving the effectiveness of the strategy through a pilot.

The first step to establishing solid sales tactics is to define the landscape around your company and the challenges it faces, writes Colleen Francis. Identify simple goals and use your sales plan to specify the basics of how your team will achieve those goals, Francis writes.

Warren Buffett's annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders has become a strategic guide for business leaders and investors, offering advice such as embracing the virtue of sloth and when to be greedy. Buffett also covers topics such as global economics, how to handle debt and ways to improve company culture.

Why is NAW's "Optimizing Human Capital Development" overshadowing every other basic talent book out there? It's based on rich and extensive research with leading distributors from across the industry, it includes practical experiences directly from those distributors, and it provides a distribution-specific success formula that identifies key ingredients, from talent strategy alignment, talent planning and talent acquisition, to talent management, talent development, talent retention and return-on-talent investment. It culminates with best practices and a plethora of tools to assess, evaluate and improve your company's current initiatives.

Growing in popularity within our industry, the NAW Certificate in Distribution Professional Management Program is ideal for your high-potential managers who seek to complement their professional development with a strong emphasis on practical application within the distribution field. Two, one-week sessions at Texas A&M University in 2020 focus on Distributor Capability Development (April 13-17) and Optimizing Distributor Profitability (Oct. 19-23). Get all the details and enroll your high achievers today before the seats are gone.

This new groundbreaking research study was inspired by many distributors and manufacturers as they set out to discover and implement best practices in channel design and management. In it, Dr. Barry Lawrence and the world-class researchers at Texas A&M University present a comprehensive channel alignment framework that provides a common ground for distributors and manufacturers to align their financial goals in the context of meeting customer needs. Download a sample. Order copies for your team and your manufacturer partners.