Case Study: WESCO International achieves 20x faster analytics, improved margins and reduced inventory with Teradata

WESCO International - Customer Case Study

WESCO International is a Fortune 500 leader in electrical products distribution, serving over 130,000 customers through 350 branches and automated distribution centers. The company’s long-standing decentralized model—local managers handling purchasing, pricing, and inventory—relied on a distributed POS (WesNet) and an underpowered Informix data warehouse. The 2000–2001 economic downturn exposed limited corporate visibility and outdated information, causing inefficient inventories, margin erosion, and rising operating costs; an initial move toward Oracle was reconsidered after benchmarking.

WESCO deployed a Teradata data warehouse in December 2000, creating a multi‑year archive with frequent data loads and dozens to hundreds of new reports and analyses. The improved data consolidation and timely, granular insight drove better pricing and discounting, increased sales and margins, reduced inventory aging, and delivered millions in value—an outcome the CIO (now CFO) estimated at roughly $5–50 million and described as integral to how the company runs its business.

WESCO International