I spent years on the other side of the table — inside distribution businesses, closing books at midnight, trying to reconcile inventory that never quite matched, and juggling spreadsheets that only made sense to the person who built them.

If you’re a distributor growing fast (or trying to), you already know the truth:

Growth exposes every weakness in your systems.
Not all at once — but slowly, painfully, and always at the worst possible time.

In this recap of our recent session, I want to share the signs I see every day, why they happen, and what “future-ready” really looks like for a distribution business.

1. You don’t notice the system problems until growth turns up the volume

When I walk into a distribution company that has outgrown its systems, the issues aren’t usually dramatic. They’re subtle.

Things like:

• reporting takes longer
• inventory feels “off” more often
• one team has data another team doesn’t
• processes don’t match what’s actually happening
• turnover exposes gaps you didn’t know existed

And everyone thinks they’re the only one patching things together — until you zoom out and see the entire business is compensating for the same root problem.

As companies grow, systems don’t grow with them. Processes drift. People solve problems in their own way. Spreadsheets multiply. And leadership gets further and further from the real-time truth.

Recommended reading: Early Warning Signs You’ve Outgrown Your System

2. Spreadsheets aren’t bad until they quietly become your system of record

I’ll never forget the first company I worked with where a single spreadsheet held the entire product margin strategy.

It was brilliant. It was also dangerous. One mistake, one formula break, one forgotten step… and every quote for two weeks was wrong. I see versions of this everywhere:

• pricing sheets
• inventory trackers
• allocations
• landed cost calculations
• demand planning
• multi-warehouse workarounds

Spreadsheets start as a solution. They turn into a liability.

Recommended reading: The Spreadsheet Trap in Distribution

3. The biggest problems usually hide in the hand-offs

As a Controller, I used to think our issues were “finance issues.”

Then I realized the bottlenecks were actually:

• inventory accuracy
• purchasing processes
• sales hand-offs
• warehouse workarounds
• inconsistent units of measure
• manual adjustments

Every department was doing the right thing in their own world but the system wasn’t keeping them connected.

This is where most distributors start losing time, money, and visibility without realizing it.

Recommended reading: Why Hand-Offs Break (and How to Fix Them)

4. The Miron Violetglass story: What happens when you finally get connected

One of my favorite examples from the webinar was Miron Violetglass — a distributor that outgrew QuickBooks the way most companies do: quietly, and then all at once.

When they modernized:

• They expanded from one warehouse to two
• Grew 40% without adding headcount
• Finally had real-time margin and inventory data
• Eliminated manual reconciliation
• Ran operations across two continents with consistency

They didn’t “get more efficient.” They removed friction and grew into the space that opened up.

Read an overview of Miron’s success story here. Or, check out Miron’s success story page.

5. “We’re too small” and other myths I hear every week

Here’s what I want every founder, CFO, COO, and Controller to hear:

• You don’t have to be “big enough” to deserve visibility.
• You don’t have to customize everything.
• You don’t have to wait for the perfect year or quarter.

Most distributors aren’t struggling because they made bad decisions. They’re struggling because their systems weren’t built for the next stage.

6. So what does future-ready actually look like?

Future-ready doesn’t mean robotic warehouses or perfect data. It means:

• one source of truth across finance, inventory, and ops
• reporting that doesn’t require heroics
• workflows that prevent errors before they happen
• teams who trust the numbers
• leaders who can see what’s happening today, not last month
• the ability to add a warehouse, channel, or product line without breaking the process

You don’t have to boil the ocean to get there. Most distributors start with a foundational phase and build over time.

If you’re feeling that friction too… you’re not alone.

I’ve lived inside the chaos. I’ve seen the spreadsheets, the hand-offs, the workarounds, the late-night reconciliations. And I’ve also seen how distributors transform when they finally get visibility and connected workflows.

If you want to explore what’s possible for your team — whether now or next quarter — we’ve put everything from the webinar in one place:

Visit the Distribution Hub for resources, the full replay of the webinar, and practical next steps.

You deserve systems that support your growth — not systems that make you work twice as hard for it.