A core part of FEDA’s mission is to provide members with relevant educational programming, services and tools that directly and positively impact distribution companies. Additionally, FEDA aspires to align these learning activities and resources with the association’s overall strategic goals.
On-Demand Courses, Live Webinars and Programs
In 2023, FEDA will continue to focus on specific strategic skills areas that include distribution operations, digital marketing, sales, young industry leadership development, and product education. FEDA will offer on-demand courses, live webinars and conference programming in these areas, with additional attention on supply chain topics such as overseas sourcing, procurement and logistics. Digital marketing programs will overlap with FEDA’s Data Portal and Support Center training, including links to e-commerce cross-training. Further, the successful 2022 eight-part webinar series on value-added selling will be available to all members as on-demand courses.
Leadership development for young industry professionals remains a priority and will be offered through expert-led open forums in April and June. These sessions will address short- and long-term goal setting and good practices and tools for an effective onboarding process. Young professionals will also participate in hands-on shared leadership experiences during the FEDA annual conference, where they will work and learn alongside industry CEOs in data governance presentations, boot camp sessions and topical roundtable discussions.
Essential Services and Tools
FEDA’s product education efforts will reach a new level in 2023 with the updated version of the FEDA Video Marketing Center (VMC). The VMC, a long-overdue service for both dealers and manufacturers, is a platform that allows foodservice equipment and supplies manufacturers to seamlessly share product video content with distributors and dealers for the creation of customized marketing campaigns for foodservice operators, as well as dealer sales team training. Manufacturers can upload unlimited product videos and collateral into a virtual library where they can be conveniently accessed by dealers. Dealers can then pick and choose from the product videos in the virtual library to create branded marketing or educational campaigns that can be shared with operators or sales teams through a link to a microsite or embedded into a web page.
Product videos and the corresponding collateral that are part of the VMC may not be modified by dealers, ensuring that messaging remains consistent from manufacturer to dealer to end user. Additionally, participating manufacturers will have special promotional access to an easy-to-use web-based solution for creating videos.
The improvements to the VMC are only the beginning of FEDA’s digital upgrades. As discussed throughout the network in 2022, one of the most fundamental services FEDA provides is the new FEDA Data Portal and Support Center, which will be fully accessible for members in 2023. With augmented price, product and asset management features and new analytics tools, the portal and its support center team will allow dealers to access significantly improved product data to use to meet their sales needs. This service is included as part of every FEDA dealer or manufacturer membership.
Finally, in 2023 FEDA will resume conducting its well-regarded profit survey and will publish the results in the associated profit report for dealer members to share with their investors and other stakeholders. The 2022 Profit Survey and Report will be easy to use as an online survey and tool and will provide full data privacy and security during and after data collection and reporting.
The 2023 lineup provides opportunities for industry supporters, as well. Companies interested in co-hosting or sponsoring FEDA educational programs, services or tools should contact Tracy Mulqueen at [email protected].