E-commerce made up 43% of MRC Global's $685 million in total sales for the third quarter, up from 38% in the year-ago period. "We made recent enhancements to the platform, and we continue to see an increase in usage," CEO Rob Saltiel said.
Trucking recruiters say it's gotten harder to find drivers because of a small pool of candidates, competition with each other and many candidates failing or refusing drug tests. "All we are doing is chasing each others' drivers with higher cents per mile, a bigger sign-on bonus, more paid time off," says Tim Norlin of Roehl Transport.
A lack of travel and on-site meetings amid the pandemic has lessened the ability to track corrupt practices on both the corporate and regulatory levels, reports Kroll, a consulting firm. Kroll's Jordan Strauss says it has become more difficult to police supply chains and violations of labor law.
A survey by the Content Marketing Institute and sponsored by Vidyard delves into marketers' use of video and reveals 46% of marketers say their main audience watches video but it's not necessarily their preferred content format. In addition, 83% say videos have grown in importance for their brand over the last two years and 49% say videos featuring experts and influencers deliver the best results.
The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and other trade organizations have sued the Occupational Safety and Health Administration over its vaccine-or-test requirement for businesses with at least 100 employees. "This is a case about American businesses that do not want to face the immediate irreparable harm of losing employees, incurring substantial and unrecoverable compliance costs, and worsening already fragile supply chains and labor markets," the groups wrote in the filing.
Scenario planning helps businesses prepare for uncertain futures by allowing them to create strategies that anticipate various outcomes, according to Peter Schwartz of Salesforce. Scenarios Schwartz and Accenture developed for a future beyond the pandemic's current iteration include prosperity, a "global shakeout" spurred by rising inflation and the spread of a new variant that causes geopolitical division.
AI has completely changed the landscape of B2C sales -- the companies that have adopted it deeply are dominating their competition. In part 2 of this series, we'll explore what B2B distributors can learn from these B2C companies and what kinds of problems distributors can solve with AI. Register here.
The NAW Executive Summit is back in-person January 25 - 27, 2022 and it will be bigger and better than ever before! Learn more about the NAW 2022 Executive Summit.
