Industries > Manufacturing & Distribution

The role of distributors and third party logistics providers remains similar. The distributors still provide warehousing, which is expensive, but necessary. Distributors/ 3PLs provide product flow control by determining which products will be in demand, forecasting future stock requirements. Distributors must become experts in all aspects of demand forecasting requirements, information manufacturers and retailers will be eager to obtain.

"Knowledge centers" for markets and products

Having established themselves as "knowledge centers" for markets and products, distributors position themselves as integral components in the supply chain arena. Inventory management becomes their specialty accelerating the rate of business using a plethora of products and invoices. This specialty becomes one of Knowledge Management. It applies the data distributors have to the business model then creating intelligent information and knowledge. Distributors connect through the Internet to a variety of customers to acquire data concerning demands. This data must be analyzed quickly and efficiently for it to be used effectively in order to provide a value-added transaction through supply chain execution.

When a virtual web store communicates to a distributor that a product has been ordered, they are paying a premium for both the warehousing fee and for the distributor to successfully stock that product at the time of the request. Knowledge Management allows lower warehouse costs over time and selectively stocking products have a lower turnover. Distributors can provide sophisticated services by collating large orders from a number of different sources before finally sending those orders out. This will ensure that customers see the logo of the virtual web store where they made their original purchase.