Wolseley is the UK's largest specialist merchant in plumbing, heating, and cooling products, supplying a wide range of goods to customers across the domestic, commercial, and industrial sectors. With over 560 branches nationwide, Wolseley is committed to delivering exceptional service and operational efficiency. As the business continued to scale, it recognised the need to diversify its order processing operations across internal teams and the wider supply chain to enhance speed, accuracy, and the overall customer experience.
Wolseley offers multiple ordering channels, including its website, a suite of in-house APIs, and traditional EDI systems. However, some of their customers either lacked the technical infrastructure to integrate directly or relied on systems that couldn't easily connect to Wolseley's platforms. These customers often produced standardised purchase orders but had no way of submitting them automatically.To bridge this gap, Wolseley partnered with Open ECX. Today, approximately 20% of Wolseley's orders are processed digitally, while the remaining 80% still come through manual channels. The integration with Open ECX supports Wolseley's ambition to grow digital ordering by offering a simple and effective route for customers without technical capabilities to automate their transactions.
Customers without technical infrastructure had no route to submit orders digitally, forcing manual keying at Wolseley's end. With 80% of orders still arriving through manual channels, the gap between digital ambition and operational reality was significant.
Complex, high-volume orders of 80 or more line items required hours of manual input per order. Manually inputting these was time-consuming, error-prone, and impossible to scale sustainably, particularly during seasonal peaks in demand.
Specialist support teams set up to centralise service for key accounts were processing orders spread across up to 100 different branches, with no centralised automation to bring consistency and control to the process.
