Wholesale distribution and logistics
Distributors: fill rate should not need three exports and a phone call.
Distribution lives on margin and service level, decided across systems bought at different times. We take the CIO role: the plan, the spend, and who directs the MSP. Then the operating numbers sit in one place leadership owns.
Typical setup for this industry. Not a client count.
The setup
What we usually find in wholesale distribution and logistics.
Wholesale distribution is an inventory and freight business with a sales team attached, and the reporting that matters crosses all three. The ERP (the system that runs orders and operations), the warehouse system, and finance each hold part of the truth. The weekly service-level number is often assembled by one person who is also doing three other jobs.
Thin margins make small errors expensive: a mispriced freight lane, dead stock no one flagged, or a customer whose orders keep shipping late because the pattern was never visible.
What leadership gets
Three reports worth having first.
- ✓Fill rate, order cycle time, and late shipments by customer and lane
- ✓Inventory turns, dead and slow-moving stock, and reorder exceptions
- ✓Freight cost per shipment set against margin by customer and product
Report names are typical for the industry. Yours come from the systems the applications assessment finds. The base dashboard also shows what your technology costs, so license and vendor spend sits beside the operating numbers.
The method, in your terms
How the work usually runs.
- AI Use Policy adopted first, with pricing and contract data protected
- AI security assessment counts the tools bought department by department
- Applications assessment maps the ERP, warehouse, freight, and accounting systems for connection
- Base dashboard set up with service level, inventory, and freight margin views
- Microsoft 365 review: licensing, account settings, and Copilot readiness for sales
- Monthly watch: maintenance, AI security reporting, and automation on the exceptions
The order is fixed. Where you start is a decision, and the first meeting is where it gets made.
Where this has run
A profile from this industry.
A capable IT firm with no one directing its work.
Regional wholesale distributor · ~90 staff
They had a capable IT firm and no one setting its priorities. The Program tier rather than Embedded: a monthly meeting with a plan, a scorecard, and the AI program owned under the policy. A weekly place would have been attendance, not work.
Start here
What this industry buys first.
- AI Use Policy · Advisory review
- Applications assessment · Assessment
- Base dashboard deployment · Deployment
- Dashboard maintenance · Monthly watch
- vCIO Solutions · Advisory · monthly agreement
- Outsourced help desk · Daily support · through a partner
- Onsite IT support · Daily support · through a partner
Where we work
Wholesale distribution and logistics firms across the Carolinas.
Questions
Questions from wholesale distribution and logistics
Fill rate is already in our ERP. Why a dashboard?
Fill rate lives in your ERP, but the question leadership asks crosses systems. They want fill rate by customer against freight cost and margin, read from the ERP, the warehouse system, and finance at once. One system rarely answers that on its own. The dashboard puts the three side by side.
Would AI forecasting help us?
AI forecasting can help, and it is the wrong first step. Forecasting on top of inventory data no one trusts produces a more confident wrong answer. The order that works is the AI Use Policy, the assessment, connecting the systems, and then forecasting on numbers that have been checked.
Our MSP runs the network. Where do you fit?
Third Shift does not replace your IT firm. We own the AI policy, the reporting platform, and the technology plan, and we set the priorities your IT firm carries out. Day-to-day administration, computers, and the help desk stay with them. You get one more owner, not one more vendor doing the same job.
Start here
The first step is the same in every industry.
Advisory first: a written assessment of your environment, the AI Use Policy, and a recommendation you own whether or not you continue with us.