Failed technology investments in wholesale distribution are almost never a technology problem. They are a clarity problem.
That was the central argument from Michael Biwer, CEO of Cavallo, and John Doffing, Senior Director of Field Sales at Epicor, during a Distribution Strategy Group webinar on using technology to drive profits and productivity. In this report, DSG Executive Editor Mark Brohan distills what the panel revealed: distributors routinely approve major software purchases without ever defining the business outcome the money is supposed to buy. The systems get installed, transactions process, and profit leaks anyway.
The data behind the argument is hard to ignore. Distributors running 500 orders a day are sitting on roughly 1 billion transaction data points by year end — most of it untouched. A single enforced pricing rule saved one distributor $350,000 a year; a comparable rule saved another seven figures annually. Yet Biwer regularly shows owners 5,000 transactions where purchase costs rose and prices never moved — and they had no idea. That is not an analytics gap. It is a profit gap that better-instrumented competitors are not carrying.
The report covers where the clarity gap originates (the boardroom, not the software), why enterprise value is the one metric that resists manipulation, how margin erosion compounds quietly at the order level, and what it takes to fix it — from naming two or three margin targets before evaluating any vendor, to assigning a pricing czar and a data czar to monitor margin daily rather than discover erosion after the period closes.
Download this report to diagnose whether your technology spending is anchored to a defined business outcome — and what to do if it isn’t.