Industry Consortia

TDC brings together distributors to share best practices, tools, and strategies for talent development. Each year, the council focuses on a key talent area through collaboration, learning, and networking.

AI4ID connects academia and industry to advance AI in distribution. It offers vendor-neutral tools, workshops, and insights to help organizations evaluate and apply AI for improved operations and decision-making.

MAC provides research-driven insights, tools, and education to help organizations navigate M&A. Led by Alonso Fierro, it offers workshops, tailored resources, and expert guidance to improve strategy, efficiency, and value from transactions.

MEC connects industry leaders and Texas A&M faculty to advance marketing through research and collaboration. It provides members with insights, best practices, and tailored reports to strengthen marketing strategies.

PATH connects industry and academia to advance technical sales recruiting and development. Led by Dr. Willy Bolander, it provides research, best practices, and insights to strengthen talent pipelines and recruiting strategies.

The Council for Research on Distributor Best Practices conducted its 2014 consortium on Optimizing Human Capital Development. Following the very successful Optimizing Channel Compensation and Optimizing Growth and Market Share consortia, this initiative conducted research to develop practical methodologies and tools to optimize recruiting, training and retaining human capital. A two-day educational session was developed based on the resulting knowledge, methodology and tools.

After years of research, a “best” approach is now known for nearly every distributor activity. Yet no one has yet attempted to implement all relevant best practices and determine their effects on the firm’s ROI and net profit. This program and the research behind it aim to help you become that perfect distributor – to see just how profitable a well-educated and well-equipped distributor can be.

This Consortium will research pricing strategy and variables designed to include break even analysis, price elasticity, price thresholds, product life cycle pricing and price sensitivity. Scientific pricing decision making is one potential focus area for profitable revenue management. Profitability depends equally as much on pricing as it does cost control.

Marketing is an underdeveloped science for most distributors. Few distributors seem to have a consistent, well thought out message that tells who they are and what makes them different from their competition. Consortium members will participate directly in the research and gain a better understanding of the findings. The full report will be issued to each consortium member with all analysis performed on the firm itself with the firm’s data.

The consortium is focused on important business topics for interested wholesale distribution companies of all sizes and across all lines of trade. This consortium will be pioneering research-driven education programs on the topic of Optimizing Distributor Growth and Market Share.

Many distributors may be familiar with these concepts and may utilize them to some extent, understanding and implementing a holistic approach has been achieved by only a select few. The development of tools that will enhance the scientific decision making capabilities and implementation procedures of firms will be the primary focus of the consortium. The consortium members will receive results, methodology and tools developed during this pioneering research in Optimizing Channel Compensation.

Current needs and trends in wholesale-distribution are pointing towards analytics. It will no longer be optional for a firm to invest in analytics. The consortium set-up (cross-industry collaboration and individual workshops) is designed for the very purpose of understanding industry-wide challenges and firm-specific opportunities. This Research Consortium will be beneficial to Wholesaler-Distributors and Manufacturers who go to market through Distributors.

A research team from Texas A&M University will analyze growth opportunities with consortium members to determine how to optimize ROI in value add services. Supply Chain impacting factors will be included in the analysis along with best practices in Supply Chain Management to determine the ROI impact of differing strategies.

Today small distributors are facing unprecedented difficulties in technology, human resources and investment. Technology continues to change at a rapid pace, becoming less costly, and spurring innovation in operational efficiency as well as sales and marketing at distribution firms of all sizes. This consortia will identify a set of best practices for optimizing small distributors’ resource (human and asset) utilization and profitability.

A team of professional researchers from Texas A&M’s Global Supply Chain Laboratory and Talent Incubator Program will work with consortium members to analyze growth opportunities and identify ways to optimize the sales process using digital tools. The analysis will also incorporate best practices in this area.