Wesco Co., a leading public distributor of industrial supplies, electrical products, lighting systems and power distribution equipment, has invested $270 million toward its $500 million digital transformation initiative.
The company’s digital transformation began with significant investments. Initially, it set out to upgrade its ecommerce platform, modernize its supply chain and pursue other critical initiatives, according to CEO John Engel.
How Wesco is investing in digital transformation
“The next phase will focus on advancing new technologies, including artificial intelligence and other digital innovations,” Engel announced at Wesco’s 2024 Annual Investors Day conference. “We are positioned for sustained outperformance, with strong growth driven by secular trends such as AI-powered data centers, increased electrification, IoT [internet of things], automation and the re-shoring of global supply chains.”
Engel highlighted several achievements. They included the integration of generative AI analytics and automation of order fulfillment processes. Wesco also put resources into the development of new digital tools aimed at improving working capital efficiency.
“We are now more than halfway through building out these new technologies and capabilities,” he said.
Wesco’s results so far
Chief digital and information officer Akash Khurana added that the initial phase of the transformation focused on hiring specialized tech talent and consolidating backend systems.
“Over the last 3.5 years, we’ve doubled the size of our technology team and added expertise in artificial intelligence and data science,” Khurana said. “We’ve also expanded geographically, allowing us to support customers and suppliers 24/7 using agile methodologies.”
Khurana shared that Wesco is on track to complete the first two to three phases of the transformation by the end of next year.
“We allocated $500 million for this transformation and have used about 55-60% of that investment,” he explained. “As we transition from building technology and capabilities, we are now focused on deploying these tools across our ecosystem.”
The ecommerce upgrades aim to enhance the omnichannel experience for suppliers and customers. Wesco wants to achieve these goals by providing greater transparency and tools for easier purchasing. Khurana highlighted recent successes.
“We deployed a new digital commerce solution for a major food manufacturing client across all channels, significantly improving their spend management,” he noted. “Additionally, one of our large global software providers utilized our integration stack to enable same-day order processing and delivery, resulting in a notable improvement in fulfillment capabilities.”
In 2023, Pittsburgh-based Wesco reported sales of $22.39 billion. That’s up from $21.42 billion in the previous year.
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