Yesterday, parent company Datatec announced that annual financial results would be worse than expected. Earlier this year the company had been talking about a possible sale of Westcon but it is believed the negative impacts of the roll out had devalued the business for any potential acquirer.
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 program, 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.
“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 optimize, 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."
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 their business in a more efficient manner. In addition, other benefits realized 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 optimization solution
“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.”