Now it all adds up for
W.W. Grainger

With $10 billion in annual sales, 1.2 million products and 2 million customers, W.W. Grainger is one of the largest wholesale distributors in the United States. Today, the company can handle high transaction volumes efficiently. But that was not always the case, particularly when it came to distributor chargebacks and supplier rebates.

The diversity of Grainger’s products, the complexity of its agreements and its large number of transactions — more than 500,000 per day — made these programs difficult to manage using spreadsheets. In addition, management had poor visibility into virtually every one of its processes. Change was necessary.

To automate and improve its chargeback and rebate programs, reduce total cost of ownership and improve the timeliness and accuracy of its data, Grainger implemented Vistex Solutions for SAP. To shorten the project timeframe, the Vistex solutions were implemented in parallel with the SAP ERP deployment. No system integration or interface development was required.

Vistex solutions leverage core SAP technologies and have access to real-time transactional data in SAP ERP and access to CRM. And, Vistex solutions are fully supported by SAP.

With the solution deployed, Grainger gained full lifecycle support for its complex incentive programs, including creation, participation, quotas, tracking, accruals and settlements. Going beyond these core functions, the solution enables transaction- and goal-oriented incentives, offers exceptional scalability and connects with a web portal to provide participants with up-to-the-minute program information they can use to see their progress, close gaps and achieve goals.