Each month, Tony Uphoff, visionary CEO of Thomasnet.com, joins Cloud Wars Live for a recurring segment. “Uphoff on Industry” will explore the innovations, upheavals, and breakthroughs reshaping the world of manufacturing and industrial markets. Join Tony and me as we discuss disruptive new trends in the digital-industrial world. These include how we design, source and manufacture products. And also the new ways in which industrial companies are getting up to speed on marketing, sales and customer experience.

Episode 13

In this episode, Tony says Thomas made a full pivot for about 350 employees spread across two locations – one in New York City, and one in Horsham, PA. He says the first step was how smoothly it all went, and how prepared Thomas was to go remote.

Tony says he has so many suppliers that just bring tears to his eyes. He says they have to shut down for the foreseeable future. Although, he says he’s heard from hospitals, organizations, city and state governments that found incremental suppliers. And he says you can use it on ThomasNet.com – and he says Thomas did it in 48 hours, not nine to 10 months.

He says Mark Andreesen of Andreesen Horowitz – who created the modern web browser called Netscape – wrote a post recently that says it’s time to build. He called out in a positive way that US manufacturing has never had a higher output.

Tony says ThomasNet rolled out a new badging system, rolled out version 5.0, rolled out business unit called Thomas Industrial Data, rewired all our financial systems, rolled out a new order entry system, and 450 seats of Salesforce – all in 30 days.

He says we are going to have a little turbulence here, but he thinks we’re going to get through this, and for many companies, they can come out of this stronger than before.

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