Lead photo: Nick Pericle moderates a panel discussion at NAW’s Executive Summit, held Jan. 27-29 in Washington D.C. (NAW photo).
MDM’s 2025 SHIFT Conference is set for May 13-15 in Denver, and our marquee in-person change management conference features more than 20 different speakers who bring a range of expertise and perspectives to deliver across the event’s 2.5 days.
This group is a collection of distribution executives, consultants who advise distributors day-to-day and strategic solution providers who specialize in tools that distribution leaders are infusing into their business strategies.
Over the next few weeks, we’re rolling out spotlight profiles on these speakers to preview them and their SHIFT session.
Next up: Nick Pericle
Pericle is the VP of technology strategy & solutions at ProfitOptics, where he specializes in AI for distribution and manufacturing. Since joining in 2015, he has developed custom software and data solutions to drive growth and profitability. Pericle aligns technology with business goals, leveraging AI to enhance efficiency, innovation and competitiveness.
Pericle has quickly become a distribution industry guru for practical AI use cases, with his ability to present detailed walkthroughs of using large language models showing the step-by-step process executives can follow to use tools like ChatGPT to get the information they’re looking for.
He has written a handful of articles for MDM over the past several years, including “Reduce the Noise Around AI: Think ‘Fit’ First for Your Distribution Business,” where he discussed the benefits of AI for businesses and provided a framework for evaluating its adoption in distribution companies.
In early 2024, Pericle wrote a three-part series that explored the current cybersecurity landscape for distributors and the preventative and reactive measures they can take:
- So You’ve Been Cyber-Attacked. Now What? (February 2024)
- How Distributors Can Fortify Against the Cyber Attack Onslaught (January 2024)
- Navigating the Cyber Threat Landscape (January 2024)
At SHIFT, Pericle will lead two sessions: “Benchmark Your Innovation & Transformation Levers Workshop,” where he will examine how to assess and benchmark digital competencies across sales, data and culture, and “Effective Change Management for Digital Transformation Leaders,” where he will focus on strategies to drive internal adoption of new technologies and ensure customer engagement with digital platforms.
Here’s a snapshot of Pericle’s background and what he plans to showcase at SHIFT.
Name: Nick Pericle
Company Name: ProfitOptics
Title: Managing Director
Bio: Nick Pericle has spent the last decade working with distributors, from branches to boardrooms. A Managing Director at the software consulting firm, ProfitOptics, Nick is best known for architecting bespoke solutions and spearheading large-scale digital transformation projects, which have both saved organizations hundreds of thousands of efficiency hours, and added multi-millions to their bottom line. With a deep understanding of distribution, combined with extensive experience across diverse tech stacks and ERP platforms, there’s scarcely a challenge he hasn’t personally rolled up his sleeves on. He’s a frequent speaker on GenerativeAI, from what it can do right now, to how it is going to change our industry.
SHIFT Sessions (2)
Benchmark Your Innovation & Transformation Levers Workshop
Session Description: One of the unique differentiators of SHIFT is the ability to benchmark your progress and exchange insights with industry peers in our individualized welcome workshop. Using our custom comprehensive assessment tool focused on Hybrid Sales, Digital, Data Analytics and Culture, attendees are equipped with the tools to help guide your discussions throughout the entire program. Led by subject matter experts, you will leave with the tools to build a more profitable business model for the future.
Why this SHIFT session matters: “At SHIFT this year, I’ll be leading a session on digital assessment and benchmarking, where we’ll take an honest look at how distributors can evaluate their digital competencies. We’ll talk through what’s working, what’s getting in the way, and how distributors of different sizes and in different industries are moving forward. It’s a chance to step back from the daily grind and think about digital as a core part of how a business operates. We’ll dive into everything from sales process digitization to data platforms to how company culture supports or slows digital progress. This opening session of the SHIFT conference is about sparking conversations, sharing insights, and helping leaders walk away with a clearer sense of where they are and where they want to go, and then to find some of those answers throughout the rest of SHIFT.” – Pericle
DIGITAL: Effective Change Management for Digital Transformation Leaders
Session Description: This session delves into the critical components of successful digital transformation, emphasizing the importance of change management and strategies to encourage customer engagement with new digital platforms.
Why this SHIFT session matters: “AI and new digital tools are creating massive opportunities for distributors, but success isn’t just about launching new technology. It’s about making sure employees adopt it internally and customers embrace it externally. Rolling out AI-driven automation, new CRM systems, or customer platforms can streamline operations and enhance the customer experience, but only if the people using them see the value. In this fireside chat, we’ll talk about what it takes to make these changes stick. We’ll hear from a distributor who has tackled both sides of the challenge: getting teams on board with new ways of working and ensuring customers actually engage with new digital tools. We’ll dig into what worked, where resistance showed up, and how they built momentum. AI is giving distributors new capabilities to improve efficiency, personalize experiences, and reallocate time to higher-value work. The real question is how to turn those capabilities into real-world results. This session will be about the strategies, missteps, and lessons that make technology adoption work inside and outside the business.” – Pericle
Other SHIFT Speaker Spotlights (more to come)
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