The 2017 ISA Annual Convention took place at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver on April 22-24. We were glad to meet and network with some of our distributors over these few days. For those of you who did not attend this event, we thought we would give you a quick summary of what it was all about.

This year’s event aimed at helping attendees “elevate their business.” This message was first kicked off by Jeremy Bout, Executive Producer and Host of Edge Factor, during the opening session on Saturday night. It was clear and simple: our industry is changing rapidly and the digital world as well as other technologies such as 3-D printing are becoming inevitable. Companies that are able to embrace this change and surf on the innovation wave will be the ones succeeding and taking their businesses to new heights. This isn’t anything we haven’t heard before. But the goal was to draw everyone’s attention to a true sense of urgency: the industry’s transformation is already happening, and we all have to get on board now.

The Convention organizers made sure to sprinkle reminders of this message as often as possible through the following two days, starting with three topic related professional development sessions on Sunday morning. Brandon Smith, Workplace Communication Expert, Founder of the Workplace Therapist, took us on a practical and humorous journey about Workplace Dysfunction. Overcoming change requires purpose, courage and faith in every company and communication is key: in the lack of communication, people always assume the worst. Michael Marks, from the Indian River Consulting Group, led a reflection for all distributors in attendance: when becoming a digital distributor, is the gain worth the pain? According to Marks, our future resides in service businesses and the IoT (Internet of Things). He presented a series of facts aimed at helping distributors decide if, when and how to take the plunge. One thing is sure, if you dive into the digital world, you will need to establish a solid multi-channel strategy. Tony Smith, Regional VP of Sales at The Brooks Group, focused on talent acquisition and management. The technological revolution brings another challenge to all of us in the industry, which is to hire the next generation of thought-leaders and innovators. Solid onboarding programs, established employee career paths and a developmental approach to new hires will help us stay ahead of the game.

The message of change carried on at lunch time, during the so-called ISA 360 speaker series. Phil DeSimone (1), Jason Hein (2) and Arijit Sengupta (3) shared their visions and advice on how to best handle the changes we face. DeSimone explained why 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing cannot only be viewed as a threat to our industry but as a new world of opportunities we should embrace. Hein, who once helped launched Amazon’s industrial and scientific business platform, insisted on the importance of traditional distributors to have an ecommerce strategy as well. Sengupta, using live demos, showed how powerful predictive analytics can be to our companies. Reports compiled in a few clicks and easily available to all users turn data into insights and help boost productivity.

Alan Beaulieu, President of ITR Economics, tied it all together during the closing keynote on Monday, offering his take on what we can expect the economy to do over the next few years. He predicted a strong business climate for the next two years with a slight dip in 2019. He also mentioned that North America has enough oil for the next 300 years, meaning no future dependence on foreign oil. This should give us even more opportunities to position and elevate our businesses in our changing industry before facing greater challenges in 2030 as foreseen by Beaulieu.

Footnotes

1. VP Business Development of Carbon 3D
2. Principal Consultant, Codifyd Inc
3. CEO at BeyondCore, a Saleforce Company