Owens & Minor to pay $1.6B for home health product maker | TricorBraun to expand beverage packaging footprint with 2 acquisitions | Univar Solutions to work with nonprofit Chicago incubator
Owens & Minor is acquiring Apria, a provider of home health care equipment, for $1.6 billion. President and CEO Edward Pesicka says Owens & Minor will now be able to "better serve the entire patient journey -- through the hospital and into the home."
The freight procurement sector will likely make greater use of artificial intelligence this year to find alternative carriers using automation, negotiate fair pricing and improve overall efficiency, writes Mike Nervick, CEO of Sleek Technologies. "AI success will ultimately come down to implementation and having the right strategy," Nervick writes.
Distributors can choose the best technology and tools for sales and marketing teams by identifying problems to solve, getting employee input and looking for simple integrations with existing systems, writes Proton.ai founder Benj Cohen. "[S]end potential vendors a list with the technology your sales team currently uses to ensure that there are simple integrations available that won't drain your IT resources," Cohen writes.
COVID-19 shifted business-to-business marketers' attention toward digital efforts and fueled a rise in personalized customer experiences, including artificial intelligence-powered chatbots that deliver real-time customized messaging to new and returning customers, writes David Cancel, Drift's CEO. Cancel points to internal research demonstrating quicker response times with conversational marketing boost engagement and notes such systems "free up human team members" for interactions requiring "more heavy lifting."
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Asking for coaching can still be stigmatized in some organizations, and Ed Batista offers four models for leaders who want to supply coaching for their teams. While leaders are also coaches, an outside perspective can offer guidance to employees without becoming too attached to the outcome, Batista writes.
Organizations aren't good at predicting crises, but they can get prepared for them when they emphasize a systematic response that encompasses 10 categories, including communication, technology, overcoming inertia and leadership, says retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal. "About 80% of what you do in a crisis is the same, whether it's a natural disaster or a cyberattack or a financial crisis," McChrystal says.
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.
