The Federal Aviation Administration last week granted approval for UPS to operate unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver parcels on university and hospital campuses. The approval enables trips beyond line of sight for pilots with UPS' Flight Forward subsidiary.

Gordon Food Service has teamed with Square Roots for a modular indoor farm at Gordon's Wyoming, Mich., headquarters. The farm, which can produce over 50,000 pounds of herbs and greens each year, includes 10 growing units with LED lighting, digital hydroponics controls and cloud connectivity.

Amazon has signed at least 12 leases in the Los Angeles market as part of its plan to open a grocery chain, with the first stores likely to open before the end of the year, sources said. The concept is also expected to launch in other US markets, including Philadelphia and Chicago.

The silos that exist between distributors' sales, marketing and operations departments often lead to missed opportunities to better serve customers, according to MDM technology director Jason Capshaw. When these teams work together to consider experiences from a customer's perspective, they can improve websites, e-commerce platforms and customer service processes accordingly, he says.

Kevin Payne describes five strategies to accelerate business-to-business buying journeys, including aligning sales and marketing and using buyer personas to target the right prospects. Call leads, as well as putting in place an email strategy, and make sure landing pages are designed to convert visitors.

Business-to-business marketers can let their content shine by making stories about people the main attraction and then showing the evidence that will convert decision-makers, Mary Buhay writes. Marketers should also use natural language to not only humanize their brand but to optimize for voice search, and post YouTube videos that offer a behind-the-scenes look at their company, products and values, she recommends.

Organizations can keep up with industry changes by forming diverse teams around a clear question and for a short amount of time, all while allowing them to set the agenda, write David Benjamin and David Komlos of Syntegrity. "By changing your approach, you can compress the time it takes to reset the course for the company," they write.

Companies that can quickly create and deploy solutions for consumers or B2B customers will gain a competitive edge, writes Tom Puthiyamadam. "It turns out that business customers want the same things individual consumers say are highest on their list when it comes to customer experience: speed, convenience, ease of use, and results," he writes.

Register today for the NAW 2020 Executive Summit: INNOVATE TO DOMINATE, January 28-30, 2020! Our program will provide for you a road map to innovation. You'll ignite your innovative mindset as you peer into the future of wholesale distribution, explore marketplace platforms, and examine the points of view of today's business experts and next-generation distribution entrepreneurs who are creating new business models to satisfy industry and customer needs, and create new demand. Get all the details and register today!

Two things are clear: Major portions of the sales process will be digitized, and the sales force isn't going anywhere. What portions will be digitized and what new value-add will be created? What will remain in the hands of the sales force? Find out the answers to these questions and more by joining this cutting-edge NAW and Texas A&M University consortium, and you'll be ahead of the rest of the industry. Get details and sign up.

Distributors are stepping up to the challenges of our time, and our first-ever "Facing the Forces of Change" challenge paper, "Creating Innovations and Shaping the Future of Business: A Look at Commerce, Technology and Human Forces in Distribution," shares essential insights you can act on now. This electronic challenge paper includes preliminary findings and actionable ideas. Find out how your business can become an innovator of business services. Order your copies.