Agenda
One Day. One Room. The Full AI Agenda. A curated day of keynotes, sponsor-led AI solution sessions, and four dedicated networking touchpoints with senior distribution leaders.
9:00 – 10:00 AM
Breakfast & Networking
Foyer + Expo Hall
10:00 – 10:30 AM
Welcome & Table Sponsor Intros
Main Room
10:30 – 11:00 AM
Opening Keynote: What’s Really Working in AI
Jonathan Bein, PhD – Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Distribution Strategy Group
Every distributor has sat through the AI pitch. Far fewer have seen the systems running in production, on real order volume, inside real ERPs. Jonathan Bein closes that gap.
He walks through the five areas where distributors are getting traction today: AR automation, warehouse robotics, AI-powered CRM, quote and order automation, and inventory management.
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Each with the performance numbers real deployments are producing. He draws the line between generative and agentic AI, maps the customer service functions agentic AI absorbs by 2028, and lays out how to capture the labor savings through attrition instead of a headcount event.
McKinsey puts early adopters at a 122 percent cash-flow increase and late adopters at a potential 23 percent loss. The swift will beat the slow more than the large will beat the small.
Key Takeaways:
- Which AI applications are in production today, and which are still 12 to 24 months out.
- Where generative AI ends and agentic AI begins, and why that sets your near-term roadmap.
- How to capture AI labor savings without layoffs
- The efficiency, revenue, and customer experience gains to expect, and the assumptions behind them.
11:00 – 11:30 AM
AI Is Only as Smart as the Walls You’ve Built Around It
Distribution runs on context. A CSR needs to know what purchasing knows. Purchasing needs to know what operations is seeing. Sales needs to know what customer service already promised. This cross-functional flow is how distribution actually works – but when we deploy AI, we deploy it the way we built our software solutions: by department, by function, by team.
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Ben Firman draws on years working alongside distributors across North America to have an honest conversation about where AI is delivering – and where the way we’ve organized our businesses is quietly capping its potential.
This session will explore:
- Why departmental AI produces strong demos and mixed results, and how organizational boundaries are becoming the hidden ceiling on AI performance
- What it looks like when AI actually has full business context – and how different the outcomes are, and what to look for as you decide where AI goes next in your organization
- How reverse logistics – returns, warranties, and repairs – uniquely expose the cost of disconnected AI
11:30 – 12:00 PM
AI Solutions Session
25-minute sponsor presentation · Main Room
12:00 – 1:00 PM
Networking Lunch
Foyer + Expo Hall
1:00 – 1:30 PM
Featured Talk: The AI-Powered Distributor: Beyond the Chatbot
Brian Hopkins – COO, Distribution Strategy Group
If you are still using Large Language Models just to write emails, you are barely scratching the surface. AI has officially transitioned from simple chatbots into conversational reasoning engines that can revolutionize how distributors work, compete.
In this keynote, we are cutting through the hype to show you what modern AI actually does.
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We’ll break down how to choose the right tool for the right job—whether that’s the logic of ChatGPT, the workflow mastery of Claude, the multimodal power of Gemini, or the deep research of Perplexity. More importantly, you’ll learn why the future belongs to “AI Workspaces”—centralized hubs that unlock team-level productivity that individual prompting never could.
Get ready to see real distributor use cases in action. We’ll build prospecting dashboards in 5 minutes, model interactive sales commissions, and show you how to integrate AI notetakers to automatically extract process documentation and training materials before institutional knowledge walks out the door.
We’ll demystify the skill that separates mediocre outputs from game-changing ones: context-building. You’ll walk away not just knowing how the tech works, but how to lead the adoption from the bottom up, empower your team, and model the behavior that makes AI stick.
Key Takeaways:
- Navigate the Modern AI Landscape: Understand the distinct strengths of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, and when to deploy each for specific distribution challenges.
- Move from Prompting to Workspaces: Learn how to transition from siloed, individual AI use to centralized, team-wide AI projects that multiply productivity.
- Lead the Change: Master a practical, bottom-up framework for driving AI adoption, empowering employees, and building a culture of innovation.
1:30 – 2:00 PM
From Diagnosis to Deployment: A 30-Minute Walkthrough of the AI Strategy Roadmap
Brian Hopkins – COO, Distribution Strategy Group
This session takes you through a structured, facilitated methodology that moves distributors from AI readiness assessment to implementation oversight—in a single tool. We’ll cover the eight-step roadmap journey: diagnosing organizational readiness, generating a scored consideration set, filtering and bucketing initiatives into Pilot, Scale, and Sustain phases
Along the way, you’ll see how the diagnostic inputs drive recommendations, and how each stage produces executive-ready deliverables— Attendees will leave understanding both the methodology and how it translates into accountable, sponsored execution—and each will receive a copy of the roadmap.
2:00 – 2:30 PM
Kunal Barman, Co-Founder & CEO
2:30 – 3:00 PM
Networking Break
Expo Hall
3:00 – 3:30 PM
AI Solutions Session
25-minute sponsor presentation · Main Room
3:30 – 4:00 PM
AI Solutions Session
25-minute sponsor presentation · Main Room
4:00 – 4:30 PM
Closing Keynote: From AI Ambition to Enterprise Adoption: Lessons From a Global Distribution Innovator
Audreyanne Snow – VP of AI Program Delivery, Parts Town Unlimited
Parts Town Unlimited has grown into a global distribution leader by making AI, data and technology central to how it operates, serves customers and drives growth. In this keynote, UK and European wholesalers, merchants and distributors will hear practical lessons from a company already putting AI to work at scale.
Snow will take attendees inside Parts Town Unlimited’s AI journey – from early experimentation to production and enterprise-wide adoption. She will share how the company is applying AI across the business, including solutions that draw on millions of equipment repair records to help technicians identify the right parts faster, enhance the customer experience and enable team members to work smarter.
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But this session is not simply about individual tools or use cases. It is about execution – and how to make AI part of the way an organization works.
Snow will explain how Parts Town Unlimited identifies the problems worth solving, prepares its data and people, and determines what deserves to scale. She will also explore how leaders can build confidence in AI, encourage adoption across teams and create a better team-member experience by reducing friction, supporting better decisions and freeing people to focus on higher-value work.
Attendees will leave with candid lessons from Parts Town Unlimited’s experience, including what has worked, what has not and practical ideas for turning AI ambition into lasting organizational impact.
4:30 – 5:30 PM
Networking Reception
Refreshments served
