What’s Your 2024 Value-Creation Plan?

This is a critical point in the current business/industry lifecycle to assess core areas of the business. Here’s a framework to identify where your team is today across the dimensions of people, sales process, technology and data analytics, and where to best invest resources for maximum ROI.

Consensus forecasts continue to shape a 2023 second half that ranges between a 5% recession for the year to a low single-digit growth scenario. I am the last person to predict the future, but that range frames a few considerations for planning a successful 2024 versus the constraints most teams have been contending with since 2020.

Much of our team’s focus at MDM is charting the competitive landscape across distribution sectors to help our members triangulate and build stronger businesses. We try to provide guidance across several critical dimensions: highlighting what leaders are doing to build competitive advantage, benchmarking financial performance through our quarterly Baird-MDM survey, and articulating the larger trends that define a maturing industry and impact running a successful distribution business on a day-to-day basis.

Measuring & Leveraging Industry Maturity Lifecycle

I’ve been fortunate enough to study North American wholesale distribution cycles across five decades now. Technology has always been the most powerful tool and lever for improving productivity and profitability, hands down, when deployed effectively.