Building supplies, construction, specialized tools, and fasteners are just a few of the industries that fall under the umbrella of industrial distribution. There are numerous recurring themes and issues in this varied environment, ranging from industry mergers to aging workforces and supply chain disruptions. Automation and digitization are critical to meeting these challenges and to achieving growth in this space. The software applications within Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems offer an intelligent, scalable solution to complex supply chains, helping distributors adapt fast.

It has been a time of great global change and the JanSan industry has certainly felt the impacts, from the effects of the pandemic to the supply chain difficulties and related inflationary pressures of the past few years, to the steady march of technology delivering ever greater efficiencies, and the ever-accelerating trend of industry consolidation. Proactive distributors are quickly creating new business models that enable them to broaden their offerings and improve their capacity to offer end users solutions that go beyond products. The objective remains the same whether extended services or add-on services are used: to restore and reestablish the distributor's importance to facility managers and building service contractors.

While at the 2024 HIDA Streamlining Healthcare Expo & Business Exchange that took place in Dallas recently, our team had the opportunity to meet with dozens of healthcare industry businesses who shared some of the challenges they routinely face within their industry. These include optimizing workflows, future forecasting, data security, meeting the ever-changing regulations of the industry, improving efficiency in warehousing and distribution operations, and handling vendor chargebacks.

For years, many businesses have struggled to grasp the benefits that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide. AI seemed too new and unproven to many of them, and at the time appeared more like technology that required a data scientist rather than a typical IT worker.

Business expansion demands improved decision-making. The key to making better decisions is understanding business data and distributing that data more quickly to those who require it. But this information is meaningless ones and zeroes without context. Having the tools to leverage data, predictive models, and generative AI capabilities to make better decisions is a major goal of CEOs who wish to create a data-driven organization.

Technology for supply and demand planning, or SDP, is more crucial than ever for businesses of all sizes and in all sectors. Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered SDP solutions help businesses plan inventory and make smarter purchasing decisions by leveraging historical data spanning several years. AI also assists businesses in comprehending "dead stock" by detecting unsold products to ensure they aren't reordered.