Technology has helped distributors enhance their offerings to meet customers' needs in a more complex business environment, said Stacy Nethercoat, vice president of cloud solutions for Tech Data's Americas business, during the recent NexGen 2019 conference. Distributors are now expected to help partners adjust to changing industries while "bringing more technical skills to the party," said Rob Moyer, senior vice president of cloud, mobility and IoT at Synnex.

Supply chain companies undergoing a digital transformation must understand that artificial intelligence is not the same as automation, as AI is actually a way of adapting automation according to data and strategies, writes Erol Beynam. Other misconceptions about AI include the common assumptions that more data will improve results and that people will be replaced by AI, Beynam writes.

Forrester has released five key trends for business-to-business marketing in 2020, including a shift toward more customer-focused strategies and a prioritization of both customer and partner experiences. Additionally, marketing teams will take ownership of sales enablement and the use of customer data platforms will not only increase but become more sophisticated with artificial intelligence capabilities.

Only 2% of business-to-business marketers are fully realizing the potential of marketing automation, per Communigator and Smart Insights, and the study reveals just 29% are using automation technology to target emails based on user activity. The report states that the biggest barriers are the inability to integrate data, a lack of skills and budgets that are too small to allocate the necessary resources.

Create thoughtful and productive strategy meetings by ensuring everyone is comfortable, finding ways to involve both introverts and extroverts and writing out the new vision concisely, says Beth Branning, head of Branning Strategies and former chief strategy officer at San Diego Zoo Global. "It's so important to get the vision down to its essence so that people can remember it," she says.

Using sarcasm that is critical of others can drain energy, limit creativity and create an atmosphere of shame and distrust, write Karin Hurt and David Dye. "Self-effacing humor displays humility and tells your people that you don't feel you're better than they are and that you don't take yourself too seriously," they write.

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!

Wholesaler-distributors save up to 25% off Hertz car rental base rates* on business or leisure travel when reserving with NAW discount code CDP# 55709. To reserve, go online or call 800-654-3131. *Taxes excluded. Terms apply.

If you missed last week's live webinar, "Reboot the Real World: Beating Disruption through Human-Centric Innovations," sponsored by SAP, you can replay the webinar now. In it, you'll hear Mark Dancer explore how to win by being human, engage customers through shared interests and mutual advantage, and optimize benefits through intentional combinations of human and technology forces of change. He shared critical findings from NAW's upcoming Innovate to Dominate research study.