Walk into any large distributor today, and you’ll hear the same phrase:
“We’ve got a modern ERP.”
And yet, most of those same companies still rely on spreadsheets, manual workarounds, and disconnected systems just to get through the week.
It’s not because they lack data. It’s because they can’t make it useful fast enough.
At ProfitOptics, I’ve worked closely with one of the largest medical and dental distributors in North America. They’re a blue-chip company with thousands of sales reps, deep product catalogs, and decades of operational history.
Their ERP? It’s not modern.
But here’s the reality: even if it were, most of the pain points would still remain. That’s because most ERPs—even the latest cloud-based platforms—aren’t designed to address the day-to-day decisions that drive margin, retention, and growth.
They manage transactions well. But they weren’t built to support fast, nuanced business decisions in a high-volume, high-complexity sales environment.
Through our work, we’ve seen this pattern again and again: an ERP gives you about 60% of what you need to operate. The other 40% is where distributors win or lose ground.
That 40% includes:
These insights live across systems, files, and teams. Without the right tools, they never come together in time to make a difference.
To solve this, we partnered with our client to build a tool we now call the Consolidator. It connects directly to their ERP and other systems, but adds something those platforms don’t:
A single, intuitive interface that helps sales reps act.
With Consolidator, reps log in each morning and see:
It’s not just a dashboard. It’s a decision-support system that helps front-line teams do the right things faster.
Most distributors don’t need more software. They need smarter solutions that make the systems they already have more useful.
The best tools don’t replace your ERP. They work with it. That’s how we’ve helped clients transform legacy infrastructure into a competitive advantage.
If your team is still relying on spreadsheets, disconnected dashboards, or manual reporting, there may be more value hidden in your systems than you think.
ProfitOptics offers a free assessment to help you identify opportunities to improve data usability, pricing logic, and sales enablement, without a full system overhaul.
Contact us to schedule your assessment or to learn more about how we help distributors turn complexity into clarity.
