Westcon-Comstor’s Global SAP Platform Brings Benefits for Vendors, Solution Providers
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Leading distributor’s business platform now live in 54 countries
Westcon-Comstor, the leading value-added global distributor of security, unified communications, network infrastructure and data centre solutions, today announced that its global SAP roll-out has been completed and the company is running live on the new ERP platform in 54 countries.
Westcon-Comstor first deployed SAP in the United States in 2012 and embarked upon a global expansion project in 2014, starting in New Zealand. After a three-year transformation programme, Westcon-Comstor concluded its global rollout with the implementation of its Africa businesses earlier this month, creating a single, unified SAP instance around the world.
A common business platform across five continents gives Westcon-Comstor a cohesive view of its worldwide operations, providing customers with a complete, 360-degree analysis of its business in a more efficient manner. In addition, other benefits realised with SAP include:
- Global customer and order management – Real-time availability of global orders, inventory and system-based tax and invoicing capabilities.
- Professional services – Enhanced lifecycle management, including deferred revenue recognition and accounting automation of services transactions
- Trade and business compliance – Improved management of compliance activities such as validation of every transaction against a denied/restricted party list, and more
- Inventory management – More effective stock control and functionality across regions using SAP’s advanced planning and optimisation solution.
“Going live globally on SAP is game-changing for Westcon-Comstor. Over the past few years we grew our operations to every corner of the world, generating $6B in gross revenues for our vendors and customers. We could only scale further with a common business platform, which gives instant visibility in our operations with the data to make the best quality decisions,” said Dolph Westerbos, CEO of Westcon-Comstor.
“There have been challenges and we must continue to optimise, but we now have a foundation to run a truly integrated global business with much-improved analytics and data management that benefit our vendors and solution provider customers. We look forward to being even better business partners going forward.”
Building a Foundation for Success
Beyond ERP, the company has deployed an automated quoting engine in front of SAP, a move that has already led vendors and Westcon-Comstor’s sales teams to tout significant productivity gains in the business. In addition, Westcon-Comstor has also integrated its BlueSky cloud and services management platform onto SAP, and created a fully integrated ecommerce engine, now in global rollout.
“Frankly, our journey is not about SAP, although that is the gold standard ERP platform. For us it is the seamless business foundation that allows for common processes and execution, fast and improved decision making, and one-time development of new tools and integration with partners on a worldwide basis,” said Westerbos.
“At Westcon-Comstor, we pride ourselves on our entrepreneurial and can-do culture, and now we can harness that further with the tools to execute consistently, nimbly, and at an accelerated pace.”
“This project was a true collaborative effort between Westcon-Comstor and SAP. The culmination of all our work together enables significant business process improvements for Westcon-Comstor and its partners,” said Dave Spencer, senior vice president and managing director, East market unit at SAP North America.
“With SAP, Westcon-Comstor can better help its largest customers around the world, providing the right tools and resources to support them anywhere and everywhere.”
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