Customers have flocked to Digi-Key and Avnet in search of computer chips and alternative products during the ongoing shortage. "We're seeing suppliers and customers really leaning on us more and more and leveraging more of our capabilities, both on the design chain side for our technical and design capabilities and on the supply chain side," said Tony Roybal, president of Americas Electronic Components at Avnet.
WESCO's acquisition of Anixter puts the company "in an absolutely outstanding position" as the federal government looks to strengthen broadband service in rural areas, says John Engel, WESCO's chairman, president and CEO. The Federal Communication Commission's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund provides $20 billion over 10 years for companies to expand and improve rural broadband.
Companies that are adopting electric vehicles and taking other steps toward sustainability must go further and use circular planning to truly be effective, writes Polly Mitchell-Guthrie, vice president of industry outreach and thought leadership at Kinaxis. "Planning for circularity makes good business sense, because it mitigates risk from the scarcity of raw materials, volatile prices of those materials, and regulatory restrictions on disposal, among others," Mitchell-Guthrie writes.
Strategic sales planning ensures that sales operations line up with corporate goals, with unified, transparent data to make salespeople's jobs easier, writes Eric Baldwin, vice president of customer success at Jedox. Such companies "are better equipped to manage the inflow of data and more readily optimize the value the new insights provide," Baldwin writes.
Business-to-business marketers should emulate the content-focused strategies of media companies and can start by drawing prospects into authentic conversations on social media, advises PandaDoc's Shawn Herring. Invest in long-term content strategies such as a weekly podcast and don't be afraid to take risks, Herring writes.
Swapping your to-do list for blocks of scheduled time can help you lock in on the most important tasks "without worrying about finding time for deferable tasks," writes Naphtali Hoff. "In effect, you're telling yourself, 'This one task is of great importance to me, and I will devote time and singular focus to it, to the exclusion of everything else,' " Hoff writes.
Airline pilots are focused on the details, think ahead about potential danger and help each other grow, writes Octavian Pantis. "By doing this over and over, we make the profession better, we make flying safer and our own jobs just a little bit easier," Pantis writes.
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The quote that published on July 29 was attributed to the wrong person. The quote should have been attributed to public works official and urban developer Robert Moses. SmartBrief regrets the error.
