Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/919877
November/December 2017 43 several questions to ponder throughout his book. Consider these five: "What is the context in which your customers and targeted prospects are setting business objectives? How are your customers, your competitors and your suppliers accessing data and deploying analytics? What are the factors that cause you to win and lose business? Is this changing? How?" -Share insights. The difference between ideas and insights is that the latter is relevant to your business and is inspired by a deeper understanding of the former. In Getting Results from Your Digital Investments, Dancer recommends transforming ideas into insights by categorizing them in terms of risk and degree of change, or determining "how significant of a departure is the new customer idea from your traditional customer understanding." -Settle on a direction. In this phase, the goal is to begin the work of organizing your insights into a concise vision statement—with a beginning, middle and an end. Think about where your company is going and how you're going to get there, says Dancer. -Take action. T his is a process of constantly gather ing infor mation, lear ning , measur ing pro g ress and making adjustments. What's at Stake The focus of NAW 's latest research, is all about rallying distributors, an objective that Dancer makes note of in the introduction of "Insights on Innovating the Distributor for the Digital Age," when he explains his rationale for using the terms manufacturers and suppliers interchangeably. Aside from acknowledging that distributors often do the same, he points to the distinction between the two. "The term supplier implies that distributors are in control, picking the businesses that will supply them with products to sell," he writes. " The word manufacturer names these businesses as they would name themselves and carries the understanding that they have broader concerns than simply supplying distributors with their products. This distinction is important because the manufacturer–distributor value chain is under assault by disruptors like Amazon." To counter, Dancer advises distributors to collaborate with their best manufacturer partners to improve the value chain and consider how digital tools can be used to strengthen the partnership. "Customers today really benefit from a value chain made up of both manufacturers, distributors and dealers," he says. "That's one argument for collaboration. The other is disruptors like Amazon. They're not going after individual dealers and distributors, they're going after the value chain— and a dysfunctional value chain is a vulnerable value chain." ■