ON BECOMING A DIGITAL DISTRIBUTOR

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1 July 2016 ON BECOMING A DIGITAL DISTRIBUTOR ERP, MOBILE, CLOUD, ECOMMERCE: MUSTs ALONG YOUR DIGITAL JOURNEY Data Source In this report, Mint Jutras references data collected from its 2016 Enterprise Solution Study, investigating goals, challenges and status and performance of software used to run a business. Like it or not, we live in a digital world. The younger generation was born into it, but even Baby Boomers and Traditionalists are succumbing to the siren call of digital communication and commerce. The vast majority (80%) of wholesale distributors agree that digital technologies are truly transformative in the way they connect operations to systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and 93% agree they are necessary for survival. And yet almost half still rely at least partially on spreadsheets and/or manual processes for maintaining their operational and transactional systems of record. A total of 525 responses were collected from companies across a broad range of industries, with 138 collected from wholesale distributors. This sample includes responses from a variety of disciplines in companies of all sizes, ranging from very small to very large enterprises. On the surface the business of wholesale distribution might appear deceptively simple. It s simply a question of moving product from point A to point B, right? Wrong! Distributors routinely walk the equivalent of a business tightrope, balancing the needs of customers across a complex supply chain, with little or no safety net. The need for speed, transparency and collaboration make them the perfect candidates and yet Mint Jutras research finds wholesale distribution lagging behind other industries in digital transformation. Digital technologies are here to help, but they don t install and implement themselves. Where are you in the journey to becoming a digital distributor? THE DIGITAL IMPERATIVE The Internet has leveled the playing field globally. Even small to midsize companies can establish a global presence and seize unprecedented opportunity. What s changed in wholesale distribution that makes digital transformation an imperative? Let s start at the very beginning. How you find your next customer has changed dramatically in recent years or more likely how they find you. Most searches for products and sources of supply begin today on the Internet. By the time viable leads pop up, your prospects have already educated themselves and perhaps even narrowed down their short lists. You need a strong web presence; you need to be able to conduct ecommerce, but you are still moving physical goods. So it is likely you will operate in a multi- or omnichannel environment. The good news is: The Internet has leveled the playing field globally. Even small to midsize companies can establish a global presence and seize the unprecedented opportunity created by new middle classes in emerging economies. The bad news: So can everyone else. So your next new competitor

2 Page 2 of 11 The digital generation is setting the bar higher in terms of volume and frequency of communication. can spring up from places where, in the past, you would least likely expect them. Once you do close the deal, you need to service that customer better, faster and more transparently, or someone else will. The digital generation is setting the bar higher in terms of volume and frequency of communication. You will need accurate data from enterprise applications like ERP to support that communication easily and seamlessly. Solutions that are easy to get data into but hard to get answers out of will not suffice. So the solutions that got you where you are today may not be what you need to get you where you want to go. And you better be pretty flexible in terms of where you want and need to go. Living in an age of potential disruption, we need to be ready for a future that is unpredictable at best. Giving examples like Uber, which disrupted the taxi industry, Airbnb, which disrupted hospitality and Netflix and itunes, which disrupted entertainment, we asked our 2016 Mint Jutras Enterprise Solution Study participants, How much risk do you face in your industry being disrupted? Figure 1 shows almost two thirds (63%) peg the risk as medium to high and imminent. Figure 1: How much risk do you face in your industry being disrupted? More than half of wholesale distributors surveyed believe disruption will come from some combination of sources, which makes it even more unpredictable. What will be the compelling events that drive this disruption? Those in wholesale distribution are less concerned with the introduction of new products and more concerned with disruption coming from new ways of selling/pricing existing products (Figure 2). This comes as no surprise when the product being sold by wholesale distributors is the availability, storage and movement of goods. Wholesale distributors have been adding new services (e.g. light assembly) for awhile, so this would not be truly disruptive. Completely new delivery methods (e.g. the use of drones, perhaps) might be considered new products though and that could have a disruptive impact. Only 10% fear entirely new business models, but more than half (58%) believe the disruption may indeed come from some combination of sources, which makes it even more unpredictable.

3 Page 3 of 11 Figure 2: Where will this disruption come from? DIGITAL PREPAREDNESS So how well prepared are distributors for the digital age (Figure 3)? Very few admit to being in very early stages, or not prepared at all, while the largest percentage (41%) have made some progress but still have a long way to go. How long is a long way and are the 42% that are getting close or already there really as well prepared as they might think? We think not. Figure 3: How well prepared are you for the digital economy? How long is a long way and are the 42% that are getting close or already there really as well prepared as they might think? We think not. How well prepared are you? While many think they are in good shape, we asked some other questions in this year s Solution Study that leads us to believe perhaps many are fooling themselves. We look at digital transformation from two angles: the extent your transactional system of record is digital and the extent to which activities are performed and/or managed digitally. The scale we use for each of these differs slightly. In terms of transactions forming a digital system of record, our survey participants ran the gamut from completely paper-based and manual (i.e. definitely not digital) to completely digital, where manual intervention was only required for (digital) approvals and exception handling. One step down from the fully digitally transformed, we found a complete digital system of

4 Page 4 of 11 record (e.g. all transactions captured in an ERP solution), but manual data entry was required to capture this data. Another step down from there was a combination of paper and digital records. Table 1 shows the results. Table 1: To what extent is your transactional system of record digital? Note that the percentages across any of the rows in Table 1 do not add up to 100%. The remaining survey respondents indicated these transaction were not applicable (N/A) to their business. We believe a percentage of those saying they are close to being digitally prepared still rely at least partially on paper. If you compare the percentages in the leftmost column (the average of this column is 11%) to the 12% that say Bring it on! we can almost believe that is a reliable indication of preparedness, although quite a low percentage. You would also expect the 30% that say they are getting close to at least be in the second (from the left) column. That 30% is a little less believable. The average of that column is only 24%. So that implies a percentage of those saying they are close still rely at least partially on paper. But it is when we look at the second aspect the activities that can be performed and managed digitally - where the credibility around preparedness starts to really fall off. Table 2: To what extent are these activities performed/managed digitally?

5 Page 5 of 11 There is one indisputable fact about spreadsheets that should put fear in the heart of any responsible business person. The vast majority contain errors, and the more complex the calculations, the higher the likelihood of error. Mistakes are just so incredibly easy to make. Not only do we see a relatively high percentage of paper and manual in this table, but we are very concerned over the continued reliance on spreadsheets. Of course some use of spreadsheets is simply the result of familiarity and comfort level. But that doesn t make it any less troublesome. Spreadsheets have been the most universal of all business tools for decades now. But there is one indisputable fact that should put fear in the heart of any responsible business person. The vast majority of spreadsheets contain errors, and the more complex the calculations, the higher the likelihood of error. Mistakes are just so incredibly easy to make. They may result from something as simple as a misplaced parenthesis, or pointing to the wrong cell. And as easy as mistakes are to make, they are equally as hard or harder to find. A good portion of activity is a combination of digital and spreadsheets. Often this is a result of exporting data from enterprise applications. This in of itself is not cause for worry, but when that spreadsheet starts to take on a life of its own, it may indeed be cause for alarm. Now you are bypassing the built-in security and audit trail of the application. The more the data is shared and modified, the less likely you will be able to wind it back to the original source, making data integrity suspect. The preferred approach is to give the application itself the look and feel of a spreadsheet in order to keep the user in the application. Or better yet, make the application so attractive and easy to use that the user actually prefers it over a spreadsheet. Next generation ERP solutions should provide this type of user experience along with a footprint that is broad and deep enough to keep users out of spreadsheets. And while reporting and even spreadsheets might be useful in answering questions about your business, analytics help you ask the right questions in order to strategically guide your business to desired growth levels. Look for embedded analytics for real time visibility. If your ERP doesn t do this today, perhaps it is not supporting you as well as you might like to think. CLOUD IS A NECESSARY COMPONENT The Internet levels the playing field, allowing companies of any size to compete on a global basis. This is particularly relevant to wholesale distribution as many distributors are small and supply chains are global. And yet wholesale distributors appear to be lagging other industries in terms of acceptance of and movement to the cloud. Results from two questions in our 2016 Enterprise Solution Study figure prominently here. The first concerns cloud strategies. The top ranked strategy for wholesale distribution is no cloud strategy at all. Not only are wholesale distributors less than half as likely as other industries to operate

6 Page 6 of 11 Cloud vs. SaaS Many use the terms cloud and SaaS interchangeably, but there are some important differences. Cloud refers to access to computing, software and storage of data over a network (generally the Internet.) You may have purchased a license for the software and installed it on your own computers or those owned and managed by another company, but your access is through the Internet and therefore through the cloud, whether private or public. SaaS is exactly what is implied by the acronym. Software is delivered only as a service. It is not delivered on a CD or other media to be loaded on your own (or another s) computer. It is generally paid for on a subscription basis and does not reside on your computers at all. All SaaS is cloud computing, but not all cloud computing is SaaS. predominantly from the cloud today and twice as likely to prefer on-premise solutions, but also taking specific action now is at the very bottom of the list. Figure 4: What is your cloud strategy? Secondly is the attitude within wholesale distribution towards Software as a Service (SaaS). We asked a (hypothetical) question: If you were choosing a solution today which deployment options would you consider? Attitudes towards SaaS are at least 5 years behind other industries. Too many wholesale distributors are ignoring the potential benefits of SaaS (Figure 5). Figure 5: Which deployment options would you consider? Distributors running SaaS solutions reached their first go-live milestone 22% faster than those running on-premise solutions. And yet those that make the move are not disappointed. In fact SaaS delivers far more benefits than anticipated.those distributors running SaaS solutions reached their first go-live milestone 22% faster than those running on-premise solutions. While only 16% of on-premise deployments achieved 100% return on their investment (ROI) within the first two years, almost half (43%) of SaaS implementations did just that.

7 Page 7 of 11 Beyond these results, we asked survey respondents that were not running SaaS ERP today what benefits they anticipated from SaaS. We asked a similar question of those already deployed as SaaS but phrased it in terms of benefits actually realized. We found eight benefits that were more likely to be realized than anticipated, sometimes by as much as 150%. Table 3: Benefits anticipated and realized from SaaS Selection Criteria Priorities Survey respondents were asked to stack rank the different selection criteria from 1 (least important) to 10 (most important). They were not allowed to have two ranked at the same priority, forcing them to decide on the order of importance. In Table 4 the sequence is more important than the mean value presented, but we include the mean rankings as an indication of how close (or not) the priorities are. Once in the cloud you can start to take advantage of other digital technologies in support of mobile and ecommerce. But you also need the right solution (Table 4). For Distributors especially, that means the right fit and function, followed closely by the completeness of solution. Table 4: Selection Criteria Ranked by Importance

8 Page 8 of 11 The list of special needs for wholesale distribution can be quite long. Although digital technologies might give you a competitive edge, you can t sacrifice functionality. And you can t be fitting a square peg into a round hole, so you need one offered by a vendor that knows your business, if not purpose built for wholesale distribution. Completeness of solution means you need to be looking beyond the core modules of traditional ERP. Let s use ecommerce as an example of extended functionality that completes a solution. When ecommerce was a novelty or just a nice to have ecommerce solutions were largely bolted on to existing ERP solutions. So these bolt-on applications needed to be integrated with ERP, but often (just as likely) they stood apart with their own customer and product masters and a separate view of available inventory. All this redundant data may or may not have been synchronized with ERP. So the same customer working through different channels might get different answers to the same questions. This is not the recipe for happy customers, particularly when they show up at your warehouse expecting to pick up a critical part they ordered online only to find it out of stock. This is only one example of functionality beyond traditional, core ERP that is needed for a complete solution for wholesale distribution. Consider other factors like warehouse management. Any good ERP system will manage inventory. But will it help you manage the activity within your warehouse(s)? Will it help you plan for demand and optimize placement of that inventory within a particular warehouse or across a distributed network of warehouses? Will it help you manage global supply chains? The list of special needs for wholesale distribution can be quite long. Beyond fit and function, user experience is quite high on the list of priorities. For ERP to be effective it has to also be seamlessly integrated into the whole business environment. The better the user experience, the more complete the solution, the better engaged your users become, wherever they are: in the back office, in the warehouse (on a forklift truck) or outside of the office. This means accessibility from any type of device, whether it is a consumer smart phone carried outside the office or a ruggedized device in the warehouse. While access from a mobile device is still fairly low on the priority list for wholesale distribution, we would argue it is still quite important. However, Mint Jutras would also agree its placement in Table 4 is probably where it should be. While it is important to bring access to ERP to an increasingly mobile workforce, none of the selection criteria ranked above it can be sacrificed in order to deliver mobile access. The digital economy is a connected economy, so you can t sacrifice integration capabilities. And the quality of of built-in reporting and analytics is an important factor in terms of real-time decisionmaking. And of course you need to be able to afford the solution, although the cloud can certainly help by turning capital expense into operating expense. All

9 Page 9 of 11 combined, this means the careful selection of the best solution must take into consideration all these important factors. World Class ERP Implementations in Distribution Mint Jutras uses World Class to measure the performance of an ERP implementation. We measure improvements since implementing ERP shown in Figures 6 and 7, progress against goals and current performance of the following universal metrics: Current performance in % complete and ontime shipments Current performance in customer retention Current performance in Inventory accuracy World Class represents the top 20% with the remaining categorized as All Others. SIGNS OF SUCCESS As a wholesale distributor how can you tell how well your ERP solution is serving the business itself? Is it a help or a hindrance in your journey to becoming a digital distributor? What kind of results have you produced in terms of key performance indicators(kpis)? We capture some of these KPIs in order to determine which implementations are World Class. Figure 6 shows cost and cycle time reductions measured since implementing ERP. While we might like to say these are as a result of implementing ERP, performance improvements and cost savings are typically produced by an effective combination of people, process and technology. But ERP is often a catalyst and serves as a stake in the ground against which we measure. Figure 6: Cost and Cycle Time Reduction Since Implementing ERP As you can see, pretty impressive results can be achieved, but most often they are not. You not only need the right ERP, that is a good fit and a complete solution, you also need to pay attention to results. We find almost half of those that do not qualify as World Class either don t know or don t measure these results, in spite of the fact that improving selected performance metrics and business cost savings typically top the list as primary goals of ERP. As the old adage says, You can t manage what you don t measure. We find a little better results when we look at more general improvements (Figure 7) but we still find many not measuring them. The KPIs we use to benchmark performance are metrics that can be universally applied to most any business. We encourage you to be even more specific and set your own goals. Once you implement a good ERP solution, you really have no excuse for not measuring these kinds of results. But you have to pay specific attention.

10 Page 10 of 11 Figure 7: Improvements Since Implementing ERP Profitability is the one metric we measure year over year (YOY) as the age of implementations vary and might span different economic cycles. 81% of employees at wholesale distributors with World Class ERP implementations actively use the ERP solution on a regular basis and 89% of top level executives have direct access to the solution. As you take your place on the world stage, be careful what you wish for. The enterprise applications that got you where you are today simply may not be able to take you where you need to go. One measure of how well you are paying attention is the level of employee engagement with ERP. Eighty-one percent (81%) of employees at wholesale distributors with World Class ERP implementations actively use the ERP solution on a regular basis and 89% of top level executives have direct access to the solution. If your ERP implementation is not producing World Class results, you might want to investigate whether your employees are spending more time avoiding or working around the solution than actively engaging with it. If so, a poor fit, lack of functionality or a poor user experience, or all of the above, could be to blame. Your employees need to be on the bus for your digital journey. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS We are all on a digital journey today whether we acknowledge it or not. Most wholesale distributors understand the importance of digital technologies, with 93% agreeing they are necessary for survival. But many overestimate their digital preparedness as they still rely heavily on spreadsheets, paper and manual processes. As a wholesale distributor you walk a fine line, balancing the needs of increasingly demanding customers, with little or no safety net. Don t underestimate the role your enterprise applications, like ERP, play in your participation in the digital economy. You need a complete digital system of record that requires minimal manual intervention. For that you need an ERP that is not only a good fit, but one that is complete and easy to use. Your employees need to be well engaged, not with spreadsheets, but with an application that provides real-time access to a single source of data for decision-making for all activities from planning to execution. The Internet levels the playing field in our global economy, allowing companies of any size to establish a presence and compete on a global basis. That s the good news. The bad news is that those same windows of opportunity you might encounter, are also open to your competitors. And those competitors come in many different shapes and sizes. So as you take your place on the world stage, be careful what you wish for. The enterprise

11 Page 11 of 11 applications that got you where you are today simply may not be able to take you where you need to go. In order to participate and become a real player, wholesale distributors need to embrace the cloud and take advantage of digital technologies in support of mobile access and ecommerce. The digital imperative is upon us and it s not too late (yet) to begin your digital journey. About the author: Cindy Jutras is a widely recognized expert in analyzing the impact of enterprise applications on business performance. Utilizing 40+ years of corporate experience and specific expertise in manufacturing, supply chain, customer service and business performance management, Cindy has spent the past 10+ years benchmarking the performance of software solutions in the context of the business benefits of technology. In 2011 Cindy founded Mint Jutras LLC ( specializing in analyzing and communicating the business value enterprise applications bring to the enterprise.