Every day in distribution, leaders make decisions without the information they need in the moment.
- A Chief Revenue Officer wants to understand how changing sales compensation will impact margin.
- A CEO wants to understand which competitors are acquiring regional players, and why.
- A CFO hears about a tariff change and needs to know how it could affect costs.
The answers exist, but they are buried across decades of research. The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) has assembled one of the richest knowledge bases in the industry:
- Books
- Benchmarking data
- Market insights
- M&A research
- Compensation studies
- Economic trend analysis
- Operational best practices
The problem: Executives don’t have time to dig through hundreds of pages across multiple systems. So, NAW asked a bold question:
“What if our members could simply ask – and get trusted answers in seconds?”
The question sparked the creation of Nucleus™, a trusted advisor for distributors.
ProfitOptics partnered with NAW to turn the concept into reality. We spent multiple whiteboarding sessions with NAW in Washington, DC, to shape how the tool would work, what content it would bring together, and how members would interact with it.
Together, we transformed NAW’s vision into an AI-powered experience for their members.
Nucleus™ connects leaders directly to verified NAW and MDM intelligence using secure Retrieval-Augmented Generation technology. Here’s what happens when a member asks a question:
- Understands the question. Nucleus™ interprets the prompt using natural language processing. The tool keeps member trust by keeping identities anonymous.
- Retrieves trusted content. It searches a vector database built from NAW and MDM sources, not the open web.
- Generates a contextual response. The system builds a clear answer in seconds, cites sources, and suggests relevant follow-ups to the member. In other words, it’s not just answering, but helping members know what they should be thinking about next.
- NAW learns from the engagement. Anonymous usage data reveals what members care about, helping the association to prioritize programming and advocacy.
NAW previously offered a form-based “Ask NAW” tool on their website where members could submit questions to the community, but had limited engagement. Because AI powers it and delivers answers in real time, Nucleus™ delivered more engagement in a single week.
In its first phase, Nucleus™ answered over 3,500 prompts from 136 users at 82 companies across multiple distribution segments. The users represented a cross-section: executive leadership, HR, operations, sales, IT, and association partners.
NAW’s plans to expand Nucleus™ with additional data sources, deeper benchmarking capabilities, workflow integrations, and member-driven improvements.
Nucleus™ is a powerful example of what happens when AI is applied with purpose. But the larger story is not about a single tool. It is about making sure technology decisions support the business, not the other way around.
Across distribution and manufacturing, leaders are being told they need AI for everything. In reality, the smartest organizations are stepping back and asking a more practical question: where will AI actually create value, and where will it not?
That is often where our work begins.
At ProfitOptics, we are brought in early to help leadership teams think through the opportunities and the limitations, to identify where AI genuinely accelerates decisions, where data needs structure before automation, and where a tailored software workflow is the more effective path. Sometimes AI is the right answer. Sometimes it is not. The value comes from having a partner who knows the difference.
Nucleus™ is one outcome of such disciplined guidance. It shows what is possible when the right business problem meets the right technology and when teams have a trusted advisor shaping the solution from the beginning.
If you are exploring how AI, data, or custom software should fit into your strategy for the coming year, our team can help you evaluate options, design a clear path forward, and build solutions that deliver real outcomes, not buzzwords.
Your business does not need more technology.
It needs technology that works for the business.
Talk to our experts about what that could look like for your organization.