AUSTIN, Texas -- Sit more than 460 retailers at 400 computers for four days and what will you get? The executives at Professional Datasolutions Inc. (PDI) and McLane Co. are banking on a lot of new learning and a lot of shared ideas. That's the goal behind the two companies' annual technology conferences held this week in conjunction at the Hilton Austin Hotel.
On the PDI side, the customers are really focused on either enhancing their current operations or getting more into advanced topics, Greg Gilkerson, president of PDI, told CSP Daily News. [[image-nocss] Our] customers are attending PDI/Enterprise classes, which is our new system that we've been working on for the past five years, and we're showing the system here for the first time with all the modules completed. So they're looking at decision-support and business-intelligence applications, as well as hand-held applications.
PDI delivers enterprisewide software and services that meet convenience store and wholesale petroleum marketers' specialized needs. Companies rely on PDI's systems to automate key business processes, from retail automation to decision support, fuel management, workforce support and financial reporting.
The PDI Users Conference and Training Seminar held Aug. 26 through 30 along with the McLane Retail Technology Conference offered retailers an opportunity to learn how to get the most out of their software and what other products are available to them.
It's really three or four days of pretty intense, hands-on training, said Gilkerson. We want both McLane and PDI customers to have the ability to put together a strategic plan that empowers their company to do business electronically and focus on what really matters in their business. We want them to be aware of where we are and where we're going so they can make a plan [for their company].
Roger Grogman, vice president of marketing for grocery distributor McLane Co., agreed. [Our goal is] to add value to the retailers associated with PDI and McLane Co. and to provide information about upcoming innovations that are applicable to their business success, he told CSP Daily News.
He added that McLane also comes away with quite a bit of learning from the dual-conference, which is now in its fourth year.
One of the things that's an outgrowth of the show is directional, and that is helping us understand what [retailers'] needs are so we can position our resources so that those needs can be better met in the future, he said. A lot of the thinking is that much of the low-hanging fruit has already been obtained, and now it takes a little more effort and a little better productivity and more insightfulness into the customer relationship and into the retailers' environment to really understand how to get to the next level.
The McLane show included such topics as the McLane Smart Handheld, an industry overview from Retail Forward, Demographic Profiling and Product Potential.
We're trying to drive our business into the direction that the retailer feels will provide them the greatest amount of benefit, Grogman said, so our resources are focused on being able to help them succeed, which pulls products through the system.
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