Cardinal Health has instructed office staff to work from home through April 3 while striving to protect distribution, manufacturing and customer service employees. The company has expanded its travel restrictions and is encouraging employees to meet by videoconferencing rather than in person.

Although more than 70% of US companies say their supply chains have been disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak, nearly half are ready to handle changes in their Chinese supply chains, according to an Institute for Supply Management survey. Over 30% have postponed or rejected orders.

Air cargo rates from China to the US increased 27% in recent weeks as factories there begin to reopen, according to the TAC Index. Orders for goods from US businesses have increased and airfreight is seen as the quickest mode of transportation "because of the urgency to go to market," says Atlas CEO John Dietrich.

Lack of information sharing by distribution sales representatives can be bad for internal forecasting and for customers, writes eTurns CEO Rock Rockwell. Encouraging collaboration and educating employees on why sharing data is important can help close the customer intelligence gap between sales reps and inventory managers.

Colin Lewis explores why branding remains a challenge within business-to-business marketing, such as the prioritization of short-term goals and marketing team silos, and argues that the key to building a leading B2B brand begins with change management. B2B marketers must adopt change management strategies to convince the C-suite and sales colleagues that branding matters, he writes.

Internal factors are more often the reason a digital transformation runs into problems than external causes, according to a McKinsey report. Be clear about strategic matters, refine the economic elements and commit to the necessary resources, it advises.

Five behaviors differentiate "brilliant jerks" from "a maverick CEO," including lying and acting secretively, Rob Shelton and Marc Epstein write. "If you stay vigilant of your own tendencies and behaviors, it is possible to be a smart, aggressive, risk-taking executive -- a talented maverick who makes great things happen -- and make room for the collaboration, openness, and strong ethical compass that prevent you from becoming a talented jerk," they write.

Attendees from across many lines of trade will spend a few career-changing days focused on learning specific ways to improve their companies' profitability. Your leaders will return ready to impact your business now and for years to come. This is an exciting educational experience for anyone who wants to contribute to the success of his or her distribution company at an even higher level. Learn more and register.

To assist your leading-edge company in transforming your social selling practices, the NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence and Texas A&M University are holding a third kickoff meeting on Oct. 1 for the brand-new "Digitizing the Sales Process" consortium. If your company wants to be on the cutting-edge of creating and implementing a digital selling strategy that guides your organization and ensures that technologies are aligned with your other business processes, please register for this consortium now! To learn more, email NAW's Patricia A. Lilly.

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.