Do you lack visibility into your customers buying patterns?  Are you leaving money on the table? Are you generating revenue while margins erode and profitability is reduced?  Learn how to solve these problems by attending this program by Dr. Barry Lawrence. Dr. Lawrence leads the Supply Chain Lab at Texas A&M, a leader in supply chain research in the U.S.   This program will help you get more out of your sales force, improve profitability on a customer by customer basis and use pricing as a competitive weapon. Dr. Lawrence will present the latest research on best practices.   Use this information to accelerate your business improvement initiatives in 2010 as the economy starts to recover.  Don’t miss out on this leading edge knowledge.

Learner Objectives:

• Understand the important technology trends including the impact of web-based software, social media for marketing, mobile and wireless technology, radio frequency identification, standards, cyber security and more.

• Gain insight on how they will change our industry dramatically in the next two to three years.

• Learn steps to prepare for these changes to be able to work more efficiently and effectively. 

Attend this education program to learn more about each of the steps involved with our software selection projects, including:
1. Discovery (with users)
2. Key process requirements
3. RFI: qualify domain expertise
4. Scripted web demos
5. Select shortlist
6. Vendor discovery & live demo
7. Finalist Evaluation

The world around us is changing rapidly. Technology is a key driver of this change but keeping pace has become even tougher for managers and supervisors. Today’s economy has focused our limited information technology resources on immediate results, not research or long term strategy.

Please join us for a discussion on Information Technology in today’s Distribution Environment – Making sense of it all. During this presentation we will decode the acronym laden world of technology, pro­viding insights into: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, .NET, Web 2.0, and Business Intelligence (BI). Why they should and do matter to a distribution company.  

These technologies are the foundation for becom­ing more valuable to an organization by being able to generate a real Return-On-Investment when applying the latest capabilities. In this envi­ronment, an understanding of how to apply new technology for up-and-coming management is very worthwhile.

Rodney Winger joined Epicor Software Corporation in 2003, bringing 20 plus years of marketing, consulting, sales and application development experience in the wholesale distribution industry to the company. In his current position he is senior director of product marketing for Epicor Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management (SCM) solutions. Preceding his current role, Winger was responsible for worldwide sales and marketing of Epicor’s distribution and warehouse management enterprise solutions.

Prior to joining Epicor, Winger was the founder and CEO of TDC Solutions Inc., a long-time, successful partner of Epicor focused on the wholesale distribution industry, and T7 Group, LCC, the company’s consulting and reseller division.

Before founding TDC Solutions, Winger held various executive sales and IT management positions with Intermec Technologies Corp., a leader in global supply chain solutions, Alcatel – Metallurgy Division, and Canada Wire & Cable. He co-founded Winger’s Cabinet Manufacturing in Ontario, Canada, during the mid-1980s, serving as operations manager until 1988. Winger began his career with Canadian-based steel producer, Dofasco, Inc.

Winger is a graduate of McMaster University with his certification in business management. He also retains his Canadian Trades Certification as an Industrial Journeyman.

IFS Enterprise Explorer (IEE) - An Overview
IFS's new user experience, IFS Enterprise Explorer, is a radical departure from traditional ERP user interfaces. It empowers users by organizing business data efficiently, makes searching and navigating as simple as browsing the web, allows highly relevant but unstructured data to be captured and shared, and packages it all up in a beautiful and extremely easy-to-use interface.

Distributors looking to gain control of their distribution business, reduce their costs and enhance their customer service will find great value in this presentation. Dedicated to the distribution business, Infor offers industry-leasing distribution ERP solutions that are supported by a dedicated group of individuals with deep expertise in an array of vertical markets. During this presentation, attendees will hear how they can benefit from Infor’s market-leading strength of 9000 distribution customers, best-in-class solutions, flexible deployment, low TCO and a clear path to the future with products that are built for their specific business. This session will be of great value to those individuals who look to enhance their businesses bottom line.

Gary Rippen is the Director of Wholesale Distribution Solutions Marketing for Infor. Gary has more than 15 years in the distribution industry and is responsible for building on Infor’s considerable strengths to help drive measurable business growth among existing customer communities and distributors facing strategic change.

As climate change issues impact the global market, come see how Microsoft Dynamics can help your company gain critical ground. Do you know how much energy your company consumes? Do you know how that translates to carbon emissions? This information will help you assess your risks and opportunities in a carbon constrained world. And these critical issues are becoming increasingly important to businesses as climate change becomes a market issue. Come see how the recently launched Environmental Sustainability Dashboard can help you calculate your carbon footprint, so that you can find ways to mitigate your company’s environmental impact while translating savings directly to your bottom line.

Larry Negrich has over 15 years of experience in the industry solution arena including roles in product development, sales, and marketing with industry leaders such as JDA Software, Oracle/Retek, and EDS Automotive Retail Group. Currently Larry is sr. industry manager for the Distribution and Retail industries for Microsoft Dynamics at Microsoft Corp.

Jennifer Pollard is a senior product manager for Microsoft Dynamics at Microsoft Corp. As a member of the Microsoft Dynamics Marketing team, Jennifer has spent the past two years developing the strategy for Microsoft Dynamics products that will enable customers to become more environmentally sustainable. She has also worked with the User Experience team to tell the story about Microsoft Dynamics RoleTailored Design—Microsoft’s approach to understanding the people who use its applications every day, resulting in products that customers feel were made for them. Prior to coming to Microsoft, Jennifer spent six years at Oracle working in Product Strategy and Industry Solutions. She graduated from the University of Chicago with an AB in biological sciences and has completed master’s degree work in clinical psychology.

Strategic pricing has become a noticeable market trend that can increase your profit percentages. This session will explore the theory of strategic pricing as well as provide insight into pricing strategy in the current economic environment and thoughts on handling pricing pressure from both your customers and your sales force. Learn about how strategic pricing can bring an additional 2 to 4 margin points (or more!) to your bottom line.

Pete Zimmerman joined VAI in March 2000 to serve as Manufacturing Segment Manager and has spearheaded efforts to expand VAI's S2K for Manufacturing software product line. His responsibilities include planning new products and features, organizing sales and marketing activities, develop sales tools, direct and indirect sales and worldwide field support. Prior to joining VAI, Zimmerman was Director of Sales and Marketing for a small IBM Business Partner that specialized in providing solutions to small to medium-sized manufacturers. Zimmerman has extensive experience with a number of manufacturing solutions including MAPICS, and MESA . In addition to his wide-ranging knowledge of manufacturing, he has significant expertise selling solutions and services across broad IT portfolios and with virtually all types of enterprise software. As an IBM Certified Specialist and manufacturing industry expert, Zimmerman has spoken at numerous conferences and trade conferences shows including COMMON . Zimmerman holds a B.A. in International Affairs with a concentration in International Economics from George Washington University.

Companies spend considerable resources to develop a strategy that defines their business in the marketplace. However, all too often these bold intentions do not represent the reality of product and service delivery. Companies have difficulty translating strategy into action often because their outward and forward looking strategy is difficult to relate to the here and now of operations. Decisions remain under-influenced by strategy and therefore often depart in impact from company intent.

* How to frame or augment your strategy to provide guidance within the company as in the marketplace.
* How to translate that strategy into guiding principles at each level of management so that everyone acts in alignment with strategy.
* And most importantly, How executives can inspire consistent, strategically aligned behavior by empowering employees to improve their effectiveness with relevant information.

It is all too easy to use email attachments as the main collaboration pipeline, but email is not the best mechanism to work together on documents or projects. In this DSC webinar David Strom will demonstrate more than a dozen different technologies that can be used to share documents, schedule meetings, and other common office tasks. He'll show you how these technologies can tie you closer to your customers, reduce expenses, and free up an hour a day or more of your time to be more productive and effective.

Attendees will get the following benefits from attending this program:

* Know which technologies are more useful than others for collaboration
* Where does Twitter fit in for business uses?
* Ways to evaluate your collaboration methods and requirements and how to match them with the right automated solutions
* Stay on top of the fast-paced social networking marketplace

How you'll benefit from this seminar event:

* develop a market-oriented environment that brings you closer to your consumer
* understand the importance of value-added effect
* develop the steps of a marketing plan
* learn to identify positive and potentially negative market effects
* combine promotion marketing and merchandising most effectively
* respond to a mature or saturated market
* develop market strategies that identify new or overlooked markets
* convert a product-driven marketing effort to value-driven marketing
* respond effectively to price competition
* get control of your advertising

In this educational Webcast, learn some ways distributors are gaining traction in tough times while preparing for the eventual upswing. Join industry experts for this Webinar and learn:

* How optimizing the "front office" pays dividends for the entire business
* How reducing reliance on paper orders & manual reviews saves costs
* How a "No Touch" business environment can benefit your business
* How "role-based" systems are helping to maximize employee time
* How one small distributor increased profitability without hiring more labor

IDEA’s deep category knowledge was born of the electrical industry in 1998. IDEA was founded through a partnership rooted in the collective leadership, vision, wisdom and expertise of the National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED) and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) members. IDEA is the official standards creating and setting body for the electrical industry and those same standards translate  to other industries. Our eCommerce/Business-to-Business, Synchronization, Standards Adoption, and Professional solutions and services optimize your business to:

• Run lean
• Gain efficiency
• Synchronize data flow
• Streamline processes
• Standardize systems

Our knowledge of the players, realities, challenges, and opportunities provide a powerful consulting partner to make the right decisions to Unleash the Power of e and position you solidly for success in today’s business environment (www.idea-esolutions.com).

Watch the IDEA 10 Year Anniversary video to find out why IDEA “gets it” when it comes to optimizing business for manufacturers and distributors. You will also hear senior management of companies like yours discuss the results they have seen from adopting IDEA solutions.

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Creating a great place to work is one of the best things a company can do for its bottom line. It's no accident that the organizations consistently identified as winners also happen to be some of the best places on earth to work. This occurs not as an afterthought, but as a vital, premeditated element of business strategy.

Richard Hadden is a Certified Speaking Professional with a focus on Employee Relations and Creating a Great Place to Work. He is the co-author of Contented Cows Give Better Milk: The Plain Truth About Employee Relations and Your Bottom Line.

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For more than 20 years, Ed Oakley's company, Enlightened Leadership Solutions, has served 2,547 companies from mid-sized organizations to the very largest, including 23 of the current Fortune 100. The company has conducted 627 live public seminar events and many others inside organizations. And over 50,000 managers from 67 different countries have benefited from their service. During this time, the company has perfected what it takes to quickly turn managers into more effective leaders. They are the experts at the "soft part" involved in any and every organizational process -- and how to find balance between the two.

In Pursuit of Warehouse Automation & Accuracy

Learn what differentiates a best-of-breed WMS from a fully integrated ERP solution.

During the session, we will present the criteria you should consider when choosing a solution for your organization, and we will also cover the specific functionalities a comprehensive Warehouse Management system should provide. The session will be hosted by Tony Naumann, Application Specialist - IBS Enterprise.

There are tools and capabilities that can help you sell. Find out how it is done, what it costs, and how you can make money. The future is here today – now it is up to you to use the new capabilities to gain competitive advantage.