Technology Sessions
Analytics2Go: Creating Economic Value through Artificial Intelligence
Thursday, Oct. 5 | 10 a.m.
Understand the ways you can significantly impact your revenue and profitability with Artificial Intelligence and Data Orchestration exemplified in four mini-case studies:
- Employing Differentiated Pricing to Optimize Revenue and Profit
- Employing Purchasing Behavior to Optimize ROI on a Loyalty Program
- Determining Ideal Quantity and Price/Product/Region to Maximize Multi-Region Revenue and Profit
- Optimizing Holistically to Maximize Revenue on Non-Select Items
Speaker:
- Pete Stiles, Chief Marketing Officer, Analytics2Go
Blue Meteor: Revolutionizing Product Information Management: The Impact of AI
Wednesday, Oct. 4 | 3:45 a.m.
Artificial Intelligence is ushering in a new era of efficiency, accuracy and strategic insight in managing product data. AI-driven PIM systems will enable organizations to effortlessly gather, standardize and enrich product information from diverse sources, ensuring data quality and consistency. These systems will empower businesses to adapt rapidly to market changes by providing real-time insights and facilitating dynamic product catalog management.
The use of AI in PIM will elevate the role of data as a strategic asset. Advanced analytics and predictive modeling will allow organizations to anticipate market trends, consumer preferences and demand fluctuations with unprecedented accuracy. AI-driven PIM systems will also enable hyper-personalization, tailoring product recommendations and marketing strategies to individual customer profiles, thereby enhancing customer engagement and driving revenue growth.
However, the future of PIM with AI also raises critical considerations. Striking the right balance between automation and human oversight will be essential to ensure trust and transparency in AI-driven PIM systems.
Speaker:
- Sanjay Agarwal, Blue Meteor
Conexiom: Harnessing AI to Maximize Perfect Orders and Profitability from Digital Channels
Wednesday, Oct. 4 | 10:45 a.m.
In a competitive distribution landscape, increasing your chances to deliver a profitable, perfect order is no longer optional—it’s essential. Attend this session to explore how AI is revolutionizing the way distributors handle order processing to achieve greater profitability and customer satisfaction. We’ll examine how purpose-built AI like Conexiom can be tuned to automate even the most complex digital orders, and how it can help your team deliver a competitive customer experience by maximizing your rate of perfect orders.
Attendees will learn how to evaluate what type of AI is best suited for their order fulfillment process. Additionally, they’ll learn how AI is able to automate such complex processes, enhance decision-making and increase efficiency across your operations. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to discover how you can take advantage of AI to deliver an experience that not only delights your customers but positively impacts your bottom line.
Speakers:
- Alex Witcpalek, Vice President of Sales and Business Development, Conexiom
- Hyunzoo Chai, Chief Data Scientist, Conexiom
DataXstream: Leveraging AI to Streamline Order Processing and Increase ROI
Wednesday, Oct. 4 | 2:40 p.m.
To keep pace with today’s competitive business environment, embracing AI technologies such as order automation and machine learning are essential for streamlining complex sales order processing, minimizing errors and improving productivity. This session will explore how distributors can apply AI technologies to different order processing scenarios, specifically covering topics such as order automation, material matching and material substitution. It will also shed light on the challenges of integrating AI technologies within the SAP ecosystem.
Speakers
- Tim Yates, CEO, DataXstream
- Xilin Cheng, Machine Learning Solution Engineering, DataXstream
Dylog: How to Use AI to Elevate Customer Interactions Drive Customer Loyalty & Sales
Thursday, Oct. 5 | 11 a.m.
Hear how distributors leverage Conversational AI and Generative AI to become the easiest supplier to do business with. Boost customer loyalty, drive sales and improve inside sales and customer service efficiency.
Speaker:
- Subhash Guduru, Founder & CEO, Dylog
Enavate: AI Roadtrip with Microsoft & Enavate: Your Guide to the Future of Distribution Excellence
Thursday, Oct. 5 | 10 a.m.
AI is a journey. In this 20-minute fast-track session, we invite you to take that first step and explore the transformative world of Generative AI in distribution. Discover the latest Microsoft AI tools, based on OpenAI technology, that are now within reach for every business. We will demystify the process, offering a clear roadmap to leverage ready-made Generative AI tools out of the box for immediate value. This session will guide you through the opportunities for custom and advanced AI usage across your entire internal and customer-facing operations. We aim to help you envision a future where AI transcends operational acceleration and optimization, becoming a core value proposition that opens new revenue streams for your business.
Speaker:
- Matt Petersen, Global Black Belt, Business Applications Sales Executive, Retail/Consumer Products/Wholesale Distribution, Microsoft
Epicor: Ensuring a People-Centric Approach to AI for Distributors
Wednesday, Oct. 4 | 10:45 a.m.
As your business adopts AI technologies, the impact on your people must be the focus of your strategy to ensure success. Understanding what your workforce needs to improve productivity, supplier performance, or even customer experience is key to guiding your adoption strategy. Join us for a discussion on the value of partnering with an industry expert who prioritizes people in AI technology, process and data decisions.
Speaker:
- Kerrie Jordan, Vice President, Product Management, Data Platform, Epicor
Industrial Data Labs: AI in Sales: Possibilities, Projections and Pitfalls
Thursday, Oct. 5 | 10:30 a.m.
Embracing AI in sales holds the promise of revolutionizing business processes, and for distributors, a clear definition of use cases is paramount. This session offers a comprehensive overview of AI’s tangible benefits, from task automation to sales trend forecasting. A key highlight will be a walkthrough of an existing Applied AI technology, showing how to transform unstructured customer orders into ERP inputs. We’ll emphasize the importance of outlining clear use cases for successful AI integration and forecasting potential AI advancements. As with any technological journey, challenges will arise. We’ll explore common pitfalls, challenges and red flags, equipping distributors to navigate the AI landscape with confidence and foresight.
Speaker:
- Marty Dytrych, CEO, Industrial Data Labs
Intuilize: The Distributor Holy Grail: Optimize Service, Inventory and Profitability With AI
Thursday, Oct. 5 | 11 a.m.
Running a profitable distribution business involves data-crunching and careful product management. Limited visibility into the metrics that matter and feeling restricted by manual analysis are common complaints. What if AI could unlock insights and help busy leaders stay on top? In this session, we’ll unpack the four key actions you can take to leverage AI in your business, and share our Drivers of Profitability Playbook. You’ll learn how AI can help distributors provide better customer service, accurate inventory management and profit growth to stay ahead of the competition.
Speaker:
- Nelson Valderrama, CEO, Intuilize
LeadSmart: AI 360: What Is It and Why Does It Matter? A Roadmap to AI and Technology Success to Increase Adoption, Sales and Customer Experience
Thursday, Oct. 5 | 11:00 a.m.
In this presentation, we will explore “AI 360” (also referred to as a Holistic AI) and the importance of building a 360-degree AI strategy around your entire organization, prospects, customers and partners vs. AI strategies built around siloed solutions. We will also introduce tools and tips for success along with innovative AI tools available today through the LeadSmart Channel Cloud™ SmartCRM Platform along with a sneak peek into the new AI 360 success framework being released soon incorporating AI 360 into LeadSmart Channel Cloud™ and our family of products.
Speaker:
- Kevin Brown, CEO-Investor, LeadSmart Technologies
Moblico: Mobile Engagement and AI: Better Service and Enhanced Productivity
Wednesday, Oct. 4 | 3:45 p.m.
Moblico is a leading mobile engagement company on a path to redefine distributors’ customer and team experience, offering cutting-edge solutions that streamline operations, reduce costs and ultimately enhance satisfaction. In this presentation, Moblico will delve into the ways in which AI integration into mobile engagement minimizes friction in digital communications, simultaneously equipping the team to expedite tasks with fewer resources.
Speaker:
- Pierre Barbeau, Co-Founder and CEO, Moblico
NetSuite: Smart Growth: How Your Business Can Benefit From NetSuite and AI
Wednesday, Oct. 4 | 3:45 p.m.
As a unified suite of solutions, NetSuite stores, secures and structures your business’s data. When AI technologies are used with this data, it finds new ways to simplify tasks and empower better decision-making. Businesses that have data spread across many silos will need to first gather, organize and transform that data before AI can make use of it. In this session, learn how NetSuite has incorporated AI technologies and what’s real and available today.
Speaker:
Geno Battista, Sr Solutions Consultant, NetSuite
ProfitOptics: Reduce Friction, Make Better Decisions and Automate the Mundane with AI Tools
Wednesday, Oct. 4 | 10:45 a.m.
Learn practical AI solutions that allow people and systems to:
- Automate the mundane
- Provide insights/prompts to make better decisions
- Reduce friction between the distributor and the customer
Example solutions include:
- Automated email/chatbot response (interpreting and responding to common questions)
- Demand gen for R&R plumbing contractors (where the distributor is the facilitator of demand for the contractor)
- Customer sentiment interpretation
- Sales prompting to build positive, long-lasting customer relationships
Learn how ProfitOptics tackles these challenges, as well as what it takes to build these types of AI capabilities in-house.
Speaker:
- Nick Pericle, Managing Director, ProfitOptics
PROS: Connecting Chess, AI and the Dynamics of Pricing and Profitability in Distribution
Thursday, Oct. 5 | 10:30 a.m.
As a distributor, you are at the forefront of grappling with supply constraints, inflationary pressures and volatile currencies. Add to that the constant adjustments your competitors make to their pricing strategies and the complex task of product bundling or unbundling.
These factors flood your pricing teams with massive volumes of data that, if not used properly, directly affect your profitability. Even the most robust segmentations fall victim to data sparsity and relevancy. Join this session to learn how AI innovation in pricing has evolved to dynamic neural network models, and how neural networks revolutionize profit optimization, empowering distributors to make the right adjustments in real-time and across all sales channels.
Speaker:
- Josh Bardell, Pricing Principal, PROS
Proton: Boosting Efficiency in Distribution Sales Through AI
Wednesday, Oct. 4 | 2:40 p.m.
Leading distributors like MSC, ORS Nasco and R.S. Hughes are turning AI into a competitive edge, and the time to join them is now. Hear how distributors like these are leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance sales efficiency across inside sales, customer service, field sales and ecommerce. With engaging stories and real-world examples, Benj Cohen will strip away the complexity of AI, showing you how it’s fueling growth for distributors today. He’ll also offer a clear roadmap to weave AI into your business strategy. Don’t miss this chance to learn how to make AI your secret weapon.
Speaker
- Benj Cohen, Founder and CEO, proton.ai
SugarCRM/sales-i: Hit the (AI) Ground Running: How to Avoid 4 Common Pitfalls Associated with AI-Guided Selling
Thursday, Oct. 5 | 10:30 a.m.
Learn from our experiences of successfully launching AI-guided selling with hundreds of customers. This session is a blend of war stories, case studies and practical advice to make sure that when your business deploys AI-guided selling, you get it right the first time.
Speaker:
- Kevin McGirl, Co-Founder and President, sales-i
ThinkDeeply: Capturing Organizational and Industrial Expertise: Leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs)
Wednesday, Oct. 4 | 4:15 p.m.
In the world of distribution, knowledge is power. In this presentation, we will unveil a transformative strategy for harnessing and preserving invaluable organizational and industrial expertise. We will delve into the remarkable capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in capturing and codifying the wealth of knowledge dispersed throughout your enterprise.
Attendees will discover how LLMs can serve as the ultimate knowledge repositories, enabling organizations to document, access and share expertise seamlessly. Join us to explore how this innovative approach empowers distributors to preserve institutional wisdom, accelerate onboarding, enhance decision-making, and ultimately, thrive in an ever-evolving industry landscape.
Vendavo: Are You Prepared for the AI-Driven Pricing Revolution?
Wednesday, Oct. 4 | 2:40 p.m.
Artificial intelligence is transforming commercial strategies for distributors. AI is already identifying cross sell opportunities and optimizing pricing targets. Join us to learn how you can use AI to stay ahead of the competition and turbocharge your revenue engine.
- Quickly identify cross-sell opportunities in real time
- Provide more accurate, trusted pricing guidance and recommendations
- Increase collaboration between pricing and sales teams
Speaker
- Corey Schroeder, Vice President of Product Management, Vendavo
WrangleWorks: Learn How Data Work Automation, Powered by AI, Can Unleash Your Data Initiatives
Thursday, Oct. 5 | 10 a.m.
Distribution relies on quality data, but most data is dirty and difficult to work with. As a result, your teams spend countless hours doing manual data work in Excel, and still come up short on eCommerce catalog completeness, supplier price updates and bid response cycle time.
AI is the ideal technology to automate data work because it can wrangle dirty data better, faster and cheaper than people. Come see AI transform and integrate data at digital speed and scale. Super-charge ecommerce, supplier operations and pricing with AI-powered Data Wrangling.
Speaker:
- Eric Hills, CEO and Founder, WrangleWorks
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