Why Distribution’s AI Bottleneck Isn’t Budget
The companies moving beyond isolated pilots are building a repeatable operating foundation around data, integration, governance and measurable business ownership.
October 22, 2026
More than half of respondents in the 2Q24 Baird-MDM Distribution Survey indicated they characterized 2Q24 as slightly or much more competitive than a year earlier.
While anecdotal evidence points to industry improvement in hiring and retention, we polled hundreds of distributors about their turnover rate over the past year across leadership/management and frontline roles.
Tom Gale and Mike Marks discuss the biggest challenges distributors face as they transition from a traditional outside-generalist sales process to a more adaptive, digital-forward go-to-market model.
MDM attended the distributor’s biennial event in late June to learn all about its recent innovations, strategy and path ahead.
McKinsey Senior Partner Kevin Sachs joins us to preview the keynote presentation at MDM’s SHIFT Conference and the industry’s biggest driving factors in the year ahead.
Year-over-year sales and profit continued to slide at MRO supplies distributor Motion, though not as much as in 1Q.
The second of this three-part MDM Premium series examines Wesco’s strategy to digitalize and transform its business while developing its team and culture of excellence.
We benchmarked the results of a large-scale poll on distributors’ AI usage against that of a year earlier, and the findings were eye-opening. This piece examines the comparative results.
Despite the month-to-month regression for 2024 and 2025, full-year revenues are still expected to outperform the U.S. GDP by a healthy margin.
