From my vantage point, 2017 has been another leap forward in HARDI's evolution toward becoming the best industry association possible.

With the 2017 summer season in the books, distributor management teams now focus on the execution of the winter logistics and sales plan, while studying the outlook for next year. While weather always provides the potential to adjust our sales, there is no doubt that when utilizing good data, effectively trained and supported management teams can design and execute better strategies to reach their goals.

The middle of summer brings opportunities for all. Your business strategies and systems are tested under the full load of the high demand of the cooling season, and so are the people. Our industry’s incredible people deserve hearty congratulations for providing an information, application and logistical system that plays an important part in delivering comfort to hundreds of millions of Americans every summer.

The arrival of summer's heat brings all of our business activity into high gear, as the months of learning, studying, planning and improvement evolve into pure execution for the busy months. Our industry continues to evolve and grow, and your association leads the way in so many crucial ways to ready our teams for this critical harvest period. 

Summer is here for much of the country, and the northern reaches will be there soon. Our industry’s peak demand period brings a host of opportunities as well as challenges. How well we actively manage these often determines our performance in all of those Key Performance Indicators for the year. HARDI members are able to see how they are doing by routinely comparing their performance to the industry as a whole with HARDI’s Benchmarking Pillar.

With the HARDI Annual Conference behind us and last year’s business in the books, it’s time to take our organizations to new heights this year. Our businesses today are complex customer service platforms that face constant pressure to innovate and excel in service delivery.