Grainger: Simplifying customer buying experiences with integrated, intelligent procurement technology
Connecting buyers to millions of Grainger products
For the past 90 years, Grainger has served as a trusted source for MRO supplies and industrial products. The company serves more than 4.5 million customers worldwide with products delivered through innovative technology and deep customer relationships. Grainger uses SAP Business Network to offer customers a simplified buying experience, including fast access to data on millions of stocked products.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Industrial manufacturing | Lake Forest, Illinois | ~26,000 employees |
documents automatically transacted yearly through SAP Business Network.
customers transacting on SAP Business Network.
Director of E-Commerce, W. W. Grainger Inc.
Simplifying the buying experience while increasing efficiency and lowering costs
As one of the world’s leading industrial suppliers, Grainger continually seeks to improve customer experiences. Buying Grainger products and services must be as simple and efficient as possible. This required a procurement platform that’s both unified and integrated.
Grainger needed this platform to enable the empowerment of sales and service representatives with inventory management solutions, technical support and services, and procurement tools that can connect directly to buying systems its customers already own.
This combination of capabilities had to come from an intelligent procurement technology and partner.
Using intelligent technology to increase efficiency and convenience
Grainger chose SAP Business Network to align with customers already using the technology. This made buying from Grainger easier, faster, more efficient, and more convenient for customers. The intelligent capabilities of SAP Business Network allowed Grainger to integrate its catalogs with its customers’ procurement systems, making the purchasing and fulfillment process faster and more streamlined.
Automated order fulfillment and invoicing with SAP Business Network enables electronic purchase order processing and invoice management, saving time and money on administrative costs.
Visibility afforded by SAP Business Network grants access to detailed data on millions of Grainger products. This capability along with electronic document processing creates a smoother buying experience for customers and helps Grainger reduce costs by improving efficiency, accuracy, and timeliness.
Delivering exceptional customer experiences and boosting efficiency and accuracy
Grainger has integrated inventory data with customer procurement systems using SAP Business Network. Managing buyer-customer relationships on a single platform led to improved operational efficiency, including increased productivity and lower costs through electronic document processing.
Speedy access to information about Grainger’s millions of stocked products gives buyers greater product options and a simpler buying experience.
With SAP Business Network, Grainger can further promote itself to buyers as an industry leader in the maintenance, repair, and operations sector that offers collaborative and innovative solutions for customer-specific challenges.
Automating electronic document processing supports Grainger’s sustainability efforts by eliminating paper-based processes. SAP Business Network helps Grainger as a sustainability partner for its customers. The digital solution reduces customer process costs by drastically reducing manual, paper-based communication, cutting the carbon footprint when doing business with Grainger. A customer that enables Grainger’s catalogs has access to thousands of environmentally preferred products.
Adapting, improving, and streamlining the customer experience
By building on the functionality of SAP Business Network already in place, Grainger can enable even greater transparency across systems to further enhance efficiency and productivity internally. It plans to lean into the existing consultative nature of the company’s culture as well to lower costs and deliver excellent customer experiences at scale.
Sean Foran, Grainger’s director of e-commerce, says that the company has benefited from automating operations using the digital platform on which customer engagement takes place. Combined with transparency and visibility, automating e-procurement processes drives operational speed and efficiency as well as providing the digital space and tools to facilitate strong customer relationships built on trust, delivering exceptional customer experiences.