CONTENTS
6
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8
Digital disruption can be good for customer service
Competition is fierce and distributors are pressured to keep up in a marketplace with shrinking margins. To futureproof their businesses, decision-makers should be prepared to embrace challenges and be creative when tackling changes in the marketplace. Thankfully, there are new ways for navigating the market and uncovering opportunities.
COVER STORY
Industry women who have earned their leadership stripes
Despite being quite male-dominated, our industry is increasingly welcoming women in positions of leadership. As such, we profile some of our industry’s “women in power” to learn more about how they got involved in the industry, the challenges they faced and what still needs to be done to close the gender gap.
14
Yes, Marketing is a professional discipline
It’s a common mistake and an easy trap to fall into: thinking that Marketing is just a function of Sales, but it’s so much more. A marketing specialist both complements and bolsters your sales efforts. To help drive this point home—and to inspire your own marketing efforts—we speak with marketing specialist Katrina Olson, and profile some of Electro-Federation Canada’s 2017 Marketing Award recipients.
COLUMNS
5 EFC Update / Rick McCarten
These are interesting times
12 CEMRA Forum / Sue Adler
With a little help from our friends
18 Go to Market / Mike Marks
A lesson in role specialization... from your doctor’s office?
We’ve got to get Canada moving FROM THE EDITOR
TANTHONY CAPKUN
he recent biennial MEET Show in Moncton served as a good example of just how vibrant and cutting-edge our sector can be.
Oh, sure, there were the fundamental basics upon which the safe delivery of electrical power rely, such as wall boxes, wire & cable, tools for pulling, terminating, and so on but, if you were following my video tweets @EBMag, you will have been reminded of just how advanced—and, in some cases, truly specialized—our sector is becoming.
Take, for example, the continuous progress being made in advanced manufacturing and “cobots” (collaborative robots) like ABB’s Yumi or the one on display at MEET by Sawyer. The latter looked familiar to me... I was sure this same unit served me a cup of beer at Lightfair 2017. In speaking with the guys at the booth, sure enough, that cobot was, in fact, serving beer at Lightfair, showing off its human-friendly, cooperative capabilities.
One of those abilities is picking up and moving things without squishing a human finger that may inadvertently end up in the cobot’s path.
Meantime, Omron’s self-guided robot was doing its rounds in the aisle; rather than just being a gimmick for the show, the robot served to inspire attendees with ideas of how these things can be used in real-world applications. The guys were telling me that secure, onsite deliveries were a growing application for this kind of unit. Whether it’s delivering pharmaceuticals within a hospital or specialized tools in an plant, the base unit can be fitted with a secure storage compartment to ensure sensitive deliveries make it from Point A to B.
But being cutting-edge isn’t necessarily just about cobots and robots, with innovations also extending to commonplace items, making them easier to install, infusing them with intelligence, and so on.
FLIR displayed infrared tools combining IR camera technology with traditional electrical test & measurement functions; Thomas & Betts showed me simplified, time-saving motor lead disconnects; Britech recently launched a self-regulating heating cable connection system that also saves technicians time; Stelpro’s Maestro smart thermostat won an EFC Innovation Award... I could go on.
All this is to say that, despite our relatively small population, we have a lot of astute, clever, forwardthinking people here in Canada.
massive tax reform legislation to reduce the overall corporate and personal tax burden and spur investment, innovation and growth, Canada needs to respond to reverse these investment trends and leverage the sector for broader economic growth across the country.”
that could have brought some much-desired work to the Maritimes—was killed. The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is not only in jeopardy, but fostering extreme anti-Confederation sentiment among our Western provinces. And what is Ottawa doing?
I don’t know... what is Ottawa doing?
All this is to say that, despite our relatively small population, we have a lot of astute, clever, forward-thinking people here in Canada. And I worry that, as a nation, we’re not doing nearly enough to attract and retain bright engineers and businesspeople.
Earlier this year I wrote a column about a letter addressed to Bill Morneau from the Canadian Manufacturing Coalition (manufacturingourfuture.ca), which notes capital investment and foreign direct investment in Canada have fallen, resulting in weakened productivity and global competitiveness, and fewer innovations.
The letter suggests several measures for boosting investment and growth, including reducing federal and provincial general corporate taxes, expanding and improving the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance (ACCA) depreciation rules to mirror new U.S rules, introducing an Investment Tax Credit on purchases of new equipment and software, and more.
You can download a copy of that letter from EBMag.com, direct link tinyurl.com/y7lkf8o4.
The fact that Electro-Federation Canada is a member of this coalition, and a signatory to that letter, means a number of us are worried about Canada’s competitive future.
The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is not only in jeopardy, but fostering extreme antiConfederation sentiment among our Western provinces.
“[The] U.S. is out-competing Canada for new direct investment,” says the coalition. “With the U.S. passing
Now, couple the aggressive competition for jobs and talent occurring south of the border with our apparent inability to build anything related to getting our resources to foreign markets—not to mention things like poor energy policy choices in places like Ontario that drive up costs for manufacturers—and I have to question whether Canada truly is open for business.
Energy East—a project
We need forward-thinking federal (and provincial/territorial) leadership that recognizes the needs of the present (jobs, manufacturing, taxes) while sowing the seeds for the future (education, research clusters, fossil-free innovations). Exploit the resources with which we were blessed; create stable, competitive business environments where clever people can create jobs and product, go to market globally, and reap the rewards of their hard work.
Collect taxes. Invest those monies into workforce development, education for the burgeoning technologies of today and tomorrow and, last but not least, into giving every Canadian the chance at enviable quality of life.
acapkun@annexbusinessmedia.com
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inform more accurate and knowledgeable decision-making. Analyzing data from unstr uctured sources like emails is highly important as it offers businesses a holistic and accurate view of trends.
Previously considered difficult to compile and analyze, emailed purchase orders can turn unstructured data into digital data through prog rammatic analysis for a complete view of customer purchasing behaviour. Distributors don’t have to miss out on valuable information on trends such as order volume, preferences and transaction details for each customer.
Getting to the bottom of cost to serve
It is easy for distributors to rely upon total sales figures or gross margin as success metrics. But an oft-overlooked area of operations is the amount of time sales reps actually spend on transaction and customer
While digitization promises the benefits of reduced costs and increased efficiency, do not ignore the possibility of harm to customer satisfaction.
support for each account. This plays a major role because it affects margins.
While many distributors have sales platforms like EDI (electronic data interchange) or web portals in place to ensure a smooth and efficient customer transaction experience, the execution is not always perfect. This means decision-makers may lack true sight of operational and financial strain when transactional exceptions at the platform level happen. Additionally, unique sales orders and contracts add fur ther tedium to processing sales.
For example, special pricing agreements take more time to process, as unique order s require meticulous error-proofing and effort on alignment from both the distributor and manuf acturer. As such, details of time spent serving each customer can help distributors pinpoint the accounts that are within margins and the ones that take more effort than expected
to serve. Solutions, like sales order automation, can then be derived to optimize transaction management of customers that are not within the forecast margin.
Balancing digital transformation and
customer satisfaction
The majority of businesses are either already beginning their digital transformation journey or considering implementation. While digitization promises the benefits of reduced costs and increased efficiency, do not ignore the possibility of harm to customer satisfaction. While attempting to become operationally efficient, you should pause and consider the risk (if any) your digital transformation goals may have on customer loyalty.
Document data entry is one area of operations you should consider as an easy first step toward digital transformation that offers the best of both worlds. For example, automating the manual entry processes of punching in sales order details not only boosts productivity, it also frees up more time for sales reps to become valuable customer service experts who can focus on the important work of keeping customers happy.
While these challenges pose business risks, they also shed light into the various operational processes that distributors should re-examine for new oppor tunities. In the era of disruption, it comes down to decision-makers being creative with identifying the real pain points and using the right technology to continuously improve. Innovation is no longer a value-add... it is a necessity. Those who don’t think about their digital transformation will fall behind the competition.
Earl van As is vice-president, Marketing & Product Management, of ecmarket, the cloud solutions developer of the patent-pending Conexiom sales order and invoice automation solution, which helps manufacturers and distributors manage their supplier relationships (conexiom.com).
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