With dozens of customer experience measures available, CX practitioners in distribution frequently debate which metrics deliver the most actionable insight — and which ones quietly underperform. This guide cuts through the noise.

Distribution Strategy Group’s Customer Satisfaction Metrics: The Essential Four provides a clear-eyed assessment of the four most widely deployed CX metrics in use today: Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES), and Likelihood to Repurchase. Each metric is defined, scaled, and evaluated for strengths and weaknesses — with specific guidance on when and how to deploy each one in a B2B distribution context.

The findings are direct: no single metric captures the full picture. NPS remains the most widely adopted measure (~65% of companies), but it tells you nothing about where friction occurs. CES fills that gap — Gartner research shows 94% of customers who report low-effort interactions intend to repurchase, compared to just 4% of those experiencing high effort. CSAT captures transactional sentiment at specific touchpoints. Likelihood to Repurchase ties the whole picture to revenue retention intent.

The report maps all four metrics across a practical framework — by primary question, measurement level, optimal timing, and best use case — so CX leaders can build a layered measurement program rather than defaulting to a single score.

Download this report to understand what each metric measures, where it belongs in your customer lifecycle, and how to layer them into a CX program that drives continuous improvement.

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Customer experience has become the wholesale channel’s defining competitive battleground — and most distributors are losing ground without knowing it.

Distribution Strategy Group’s State of Distributor Customer Experience 2026 draws on two complementary data sets: a survey of distributor executives on how they manage and measure customer experience, and a benchmark of more than 30,000 customer responses across more than 50 distributors. Together, they reveal a striking conclusion: for distributors who sell the same brands at similar prices as their competitors, customer experience is the product.

The research maps 18 capabilities and touchpoints — from inventory availability and pricing to billing, returns, and technical expertise — and scores them by customer importance and satisfaction. It classifies distributors into three groups (CX Leaders, CX Passives, and CX Laggards) and finds that the defining difference between leaders and the rest is not effort, but measurement discipline. Companies that consistently track and act on customer feedback report higher satisfaction, stronger retention, and greater wallet share.

The report also surfaces a critical blind spot: across every capability measured, customers rate distributors more favorably than distributors rate themselves — meaning companies risk investing in the wrong fixes. It further shows that customer priorities vary significantly by industry, making a one-size-fits-all CX strategy unlikely to succeed for distributors serving multiple end markets.

This report is essential reading for distribution executives looking to understand where their customer experience stands, where the gaps are, and why closing them is no longer optional.

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Distribution Strategy Group’s AI Execution Gap brings together two pieces of research to explain why so few distributors are getting AI right — and what the ones who are have in common. The first examines DSG’s State of AI in Distribution survey of 233 wholesale distribution executives, including a majority of C-suite leaders, documenting the wide divide between AI ambition and AI execution. The second is DSG’s AI Top 25, the industry’s first evidence-based benchmark of AI maturity: a two-year evaluation of more than 300 North American distributors using earnings calls, executive interviews, customer case studies, and vendor documentation. Only 26 met the bar — production deployments with measurable business impact, not pilots or announcements.

What those 26 companies share is not better software. It is organizational discipline. Across the benchmark, the same six habits appear regardless of company size, ownership structure, or vertical market: clear executive ownership, a refusal to stay in pilot mode, data quality investment before AI deployment, cross-functional integration, outcome-based measurement, and patience over reactive adoption. The Platinum-tier companies — Grainger, Wesco, Sonepar, Fastenal, Ingram Micro, and ADI Global Distribution — are no longer asking where AI fits. They have embedded it into the operating model and are compounding the advantage with every deployment.

For distributors not yet on the list, the research documents a playbook rather than a closed door. The gap is real, but it is not permanent — and the disciplines that close it are available to organizations of every size.

Download this report to benchmark your organization’s AI maturity against the industry’s top 26, understand the six habits that separate execution from experimentation, and identify where your AI program stands against companies that have already moved from pilots to production.

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That was the central argument from Michael Biwer, CEO of Cavallo, and John Doffing, Senior Director of Field Sales at Epicor, during a Distribution Strategy Group webinar on using technology to drive profits and productivity. In this report, DSG Executive Editor Mark Brohan distills what the panel revealed: distributors routinely approve major software purchases without ever defining the business outcome the money is supposed to buy. The systems get installed, transactions process, and profit leaks anyway.

The data behind the argument is hard to ignore. Distributors running 500 orders a day are sitting on roughly 1 billion transaction data points by year end — most of it untouched. A single enforced pricing rule saved one distributor $350,000 a year; a comparable rule saved another seven figures annually. Yet Biwer regularly shows owners 5,000 transactions where purchase costs rose and prices never moved — and they had no idea. That is not an analytics gap. It is a profit gap that better-instrumented competitors are not carrying.

The report covers where the clarity gap originates (the boardroom, not the software), why enterprise value is the one metric that resists manipulation, how margin erosion compounds quietly at the order level, and what it takes to fix it — from naming two or three margin targets before evaluating any vendor, to assigning a pricing czar and a data czar to monitor margin daily rather than discover erosion after the period closes.

Download this report to diagnose whether your technology spending is anchored to a defined business outcome — and what to do if it isn’t.

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In this research brief, Distribution Strategy Group presents findings from a survey of more than 200 wholesale distribution executives across vertical markets and ownership structures, examining where profitability is won, lost, and left on the table.

The central finding is structural, not cyclical. Top-quartile distributors adopted price optimization and rebate-management discipline years ago — and the advantage compounds. Meanwhile, 40% of distributors investing in AI cite profitability as the goal. Only 4% measure whether it delivers. The gap between intent and measurement is where strategy goes quiet.

What the data surfaces is not a pricing problem. It is an operating discipline problem. Margin leaks through override habits, cost pass-through timing, the 0-and-5s rounding effect, and SPA reconciliation cycles that run three to six months. None of it requires a single customer price increase to fix. The dollars are already inside the building. The leaders found them. The rest of the field is still looking.

The report maps the four recurring margin leaks, defines the end-to-end handoffs that let money escape across departments, and sequences the investments — from this-week moves requiring no software to an AI detection layer that finds the needle-in-the-haystack transactions no analyst will catch consistently.

Download this report to benchmark your profitability discipline against the industry and identify the highest-yield margin moves available to your organization right now.

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In this benchmark report, Distribution Strategy Group presents findings from a May 2026 survey of 146 North American wholesale distribution executives, assessing where the industry stands on agentic AI — not in theory, but in production.

The central finding is not about adoption. It is about timing. Procurement-side AI agents are projected to channel more than $15 trillion in B2B purchasing decisions by 2028. That timeline belongs to distributors’ customers, not to distributors — and it moves regardless of whether a catalog is machine-readable or not. Three out of four distributors in this study are not scaling agentic AI today. They are exploring, piloting, or watching.

What separates the leaders from the rest is not revenue or headcount. It is vision. The data reveals a 62-point gap in 24-month investment conviction between Strategic Adopters and Cautious Observers — and shows that a $50 million distributor with an invested CEO and clean product data can outrun a $500 million distributor stuck in committee.

The research segments the industry into four distinct cohorts, identifies the capability gaps that predict who scales, and defines the governance, talent, and sequencing decisions that determine whether agentic AI deployments survive or stall.

Download this report to benchmark your organization’s agentic AI posture against the industry and understand what separates the distributors that are deploying from those still deciding.

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The Next Competitive Advantage in Distribution Isn’t a New Tool. It’s Integration.

Most distributors have already bought the systems they need to compete. Far fewer have connected them.

In this report based on a Q1 2026 survey of 233 North American wholesale distribution executives, DSG assesses adoption across 54 technology categories alongside AI activity, governance structures, and self-assessed digital maturity. The findings are unambiguous: 55% of distributors have invested in ERP, CRM, ecommerce, and analytics — but have not integrated them. The competitive gap in distribution is no longer about which tools a company owns. It is about whether those tools are talking to each other. High-maturity distributors deploy and integrate an average of 28 technologies. Low-maturity peers average five. That 23-technology gap does not close with a purchase order.

Key insights include:

• Why digital maturity — not the technology itself — is the strongest predictor of technology ROI, and how three distinct maturity profiles map to very different adoption patterns
• How 55% of the industry sits one connectivity project away from unlocking the ROI they have already paid for, and why moderate-maturity distributors deserve the most strategic attention
• Why the warehouse remains distribution’s most universal unfinished business, with WMS adoption at 50%, RFID at 13%, and AI-driven WMS below 2% — even as 49% of respondents name warehouse automation as a top AI use case
• How an ambition-execution mismatch is the silent risk inside 18% of the industry — distributors who rate themselves as high maturity but deploy fewer than seven technologies
• Where distributors are investing next, why ecommerce and analytics top the priority list across every maturity tier, and why those investments mean different things at different stages
• Five structural risks every distribution executive should benchmark against, from the integration deficit to the skills-first bottleneck

The report provides a practical framework for distribution executives ready to evaluate where their technology operation stands — and what it would take to move to the next level. The 23% of distributors successfully scaling AI did not get there by chasing the newest capability. They built the platform first, then layered intelligence on top.

For leaders who want to understand not just what high-maturity distributors do — but why the sequencing works — this is the benchmark to measure yourself against.

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Most distributors have a pricing approach. Far fewer have a pricing system.

In this report based on the DSG Best Practice Webinar, pricing expert Lee Nyari, Managing Partner of The Innovative Pricing Group, joins DSG’s Jonathan Bein, Ph.D., to examine what separates distributors who rate their pricing as effective from those who don’t. Drawing on a 2026 survey of 128 distributor respondents, the research reveals a stark divide between distributors who treat pricing as a strategic system and those who treat it as a back-office function and identifies exactly what the effective ones do differently.

Key insights include:

• Why effective distributors diversify their pricing logic across cost-plus, value-based, list-discount, and elasticity-based methods — matching the approach to the selling situation rather than applying one method across the board
• How value-added services and technical expertise — not customer service or on-time delivery — are the primary drivers of pricing power in distribution
• Why 36% of distributors still lack any structured segmentation, and how the three pricing personas — Advanced Modeler, Structured Pricer, and Reactive Pricer — map to very different performance outcomes
• How effective distributors use KPIs such as price realization and override rates at the product, customer, and price-segment level — not just by sales rep
• Why 30% of effective distributors are already using or building AI pricing capabilities, while no ineffective distributor reported any AI use
• How non-price value capture strategies — from order consolidation to documented value reporting — allow distributors to protect margin without relying solely on price increases

The report provides a practical framework for distribution executives ready to evaluate where their pricing operation stands and what it would take to move to the next level.

For leaders who want to understand not just what effective pricers do — but why it works — this is the benchmark to measure yourself against.

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Most distributors measure profitability. Far fewer act on what they learn.

In this report, Distribution Strategy Group and Cavallo examine a pervasive but underaddressed crisis in wholesale distribution: the gap between knowing where margin is lost and doing something about it. Drawing on survey data from 84 industry participants, the research quantifies four sources of margin erosion — incomplete supplier price pass-through, manual pricing errors, small order losses, and unasked-for discounts — and provides a practical framework for closing each one.

Key insights include:

• Why 69% of distributors measure customer profitability but only 34% provide sales teams with real-time access to that data — and what it costs them
• How the execution gap translates to an estimated 3-5% of revenue annually, or $750,000 to $1 million in recoverable margin for a $50 million distributor
• Why volume-based customer segmentation actively destroys value, and how profit-based ABCD tiering changes the math
• How 38% of orders requiring manual pricing intervention creates compounding errors that no amount of strategy can overcome
• Why 63% of distributors still rely on Excel for profitability analysis — and the four-stage technology path to move beyond it
• What immediate actions distributors can take in 30-90 days to begin recovering margin before these practices become industry standard

The report provides a staged action framework — from immediate wins to advanced predictive capabilities — designed for distribution leaders ready to move from measurement to execution.

For executives who know their numbers but are ready to change them, this is the operational roadmap for turning profit intelligence into profit results.

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Most distributors have e-commerce. Far fewer have an e-commerce platform that truly works.

In this in-depth report based on the DSG Distribution Leader Panel, experienced practitioners from DiversiTech and ARG Industrial join DSG President Ian Heller to examine what separates revenue-driving digital platforms from expensive underperformers. The discussion moves beyond storefront features to focus on architecture, integration, data governance, sales alignment, and total cost of ownership.

Key insights include:

• Why architecture decisions—not platform brand names—determine long-term scalability and flexibility
• How API-first, composable design protects distributors from costly replatforms
• Why poor data governance is the single fastest way to erode digital customer trust
• How sales compensation design directly influences e-commerce adoption
• What leaders consistently underestimate about total cost of ownership over a five-year horizon
• Why AI integration and extensibility must be part of today’s platform evaluation

The report provides a practical framework for distributors revisiting their current platform or preparing for a new implementation. It outlines the structural, operational, and financial decisions that must be made before vendor selection begins.

For executives who view digital commerce as infrastructure—not marketing—this is a strategic guide to getting it right the first time.

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