Southwire: Creating a digital-first, world-class online experience through an innovative self-service portal
Explore Southwire’s journey with SAP
As a leading manufacturer of the wire and cable used in the transmission and distribution of electricity, Southwire Company LLC delivers power to millions of people around the world. To enable a better online customer experience, the company chose the SAP Commerce Cloud solution as part of its innovative, digital-first business transformation.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| Industrial manufacturing | Carrollton, Georgia | >9,000 employees |
in time savings from fewer customer calls and e-mails.
customer searches for inventory information in the first year.
automated delivery update notifications in the first year.
Business Transformation Systems Manager, Southwire Company LLC
Providing a high-value online experience while saving time in the call center
The roots of Southwire Company LLC extend back to a company founded by a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1937 for erecting power poles. Thirteen years later, in 1950, that entrepreneur opened the doors of Southwire with a workforce of 12 employees.
Still a family-owned business today, Southwire now has over 9,000 employees and is a leading manufacturer of the wire and cable used in the transmission and distribution of electricity around the globe. The company is committed to innovation, which it is achieving through digital-first transformation initiatives that include the development of its Customer Hub, a self-service online portal.
“Our business is very complex and fast moving,” says Kelsey Doss, the company’s business transformation systems manager. “Our external call center agents and internal business development team were inundated with hundreds of thousands of customer calls and e-mail inquiries each year regarding product information and order status. Responding to the calls was becoming a bottleneck. We needed to provide customers with a way to find everything they needed online, whenever they needed it.”
Southwire’s vision for the self-service portal was to provide customers with a world-class online experience that would deliver the functionality they needed to do business more easily with the company. “Our customers are at the forefront of our digital transformation,” says Rusty Hiett, director of SAP systems sales and distribution at Southwire. “We interview our customers extensively to find out what they need and how we can better serve them. We wanted to give them real-time access to product information, inventory data, and order timetables.”
Another equally important priority for this digital-first initiative was freeing up time for Southwire’s internal team and call center agents. “Because of the complexity of our offerings, our customer-facing teams were constantly tracking down information,” says Doss. “We have a wide array of assets—videos, spec sheets, and inventory data—that would answer a lot of questions for customers. However, it was a tedious and time-consuming challenge to get those assets out of manually managed systems and to the customers.”
With these goals in mind, Southwire started looking for a solution that would provide customers with an intuitive, user-friendly experience and fulfill its customer service requirements at the same time.
Director, SAP Systems Sales and Distribution, Southwire Company LLC
Building an agile self-service portal to meet customer needs today—and tomorrow
As a long-term SAP customer, Southwire chose SAP Commerce Cloud for implementing its online digital-first strategy for the Customer Hub. To enrich the innovative, robust online customer experience the company wanted to build, Southwire integrated SAP Commerce Cloud with other SAP software, including SAP ERP Central Component and SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). For its customer analytics, the company chose to use the Dynatrace Agent Activation service for SAP BTP to support its Google Analytics solution.
With SAP Commerce Cloud, the company has been able to customize the Customer Hub with all the features and functionality it needs to supply customers with a user-friendly experience. “We can now keep a pulse on what customers want and how they are using the Hub,” says Doss. “One of the key benefits of SAP Commerce Cloud is that we can easily add features with quick turnarounds as we find out more about what our customers want. This has been phenomenal and contributed greatly to the success of this engagement.”
While Southwire was initially concerned about the ease of use of the Hub for customers, the company is finding that it is highly intuitive and allows customers to easily gain real-time visibility into order histories and inventory. They can quickly get up-to-date order statuses as well as information on what’s in stock and if products are available for purchase. The Customer Hub also sends out e-mail notifications when customers subscribe with updates on status changes on their orders.
Customers also have access to the various types of information they need on their buying journey, thanks to the SAP Digital Asset Management Cloud solution by OpenText and the variant configuration and pricing option for SAP Commerce Cloud. The asset management solution feeds the company’s product catalog—which has over 20,000 SKUs—with real-time updates of content, images, spec sheets, and videos so customers get current information when they search products. With the variant configuration capability, customers can customize their searches based on the individual products or product bundles that fit their specific requirements.
Business Transformation Systems Manager, Southwire Company LLC
Delivering best-in-class customer service both online—and off
With a robust Customer Hub in place thanks to SAP Commerce Cloud, Southwire has been able to expedite its customers’ journeys. “We found out how our customers want to do business with Southwire and built that experience into the Hub,” notes Doss. “They can log in from anywhere at any time and get real-time information that is up to date, no matter if they’re in their office or on the job.”
“We’re giving our customers all the tools they need to find answers, get information, and fulfill and track their orders,” adds Doss. “There are no longer any bottlenecks, because customers can get what they need for themselves, when they need it, without having to wait for someone to respond to them.”
Thanks to the variant configuration and pricing option for SAP Commerce Cloud and the high level of flexibility it provides, customers can get information on the groups of products that reflect exactly what they need without needing to involve a live agent. “This is an exciting feature for us, because we have tens of thousands of SKUs and many of our products are configurable into bundles,” Hiett says. “So it’s a huge benefit that customers can order customizable parts that fit their requirements.”
Doss adds that through the trending analytics the company can now access, Southwire has been able to drill down into customers’ journeys. “We track the questions and queries customers ask in online searches, which helps the agents and internal teams build focused messaging and provide better service. These trends will also help us identify what features we want to add in the future.”
By giving customers the ability to be proactive and manage their own inquiries, Southwire is providing the world-class experience the company set out to achieve. In addition, the company saved its customer service teams an estimated 20,000 hours of work in the first year of launching SAP Commerce Cloud.
Not only are the internal team and call center agents able to focus on more important tasks throughout their day, but they also have been empowered by the knowledge the company is gaining from the analysis of how customers are using the Customer Hub. “We’re tracking the online activities of users and gaining insights into the value of the various features rolled out so far,” says Benjamin Hogan, manager for web and collaboration. “We have a network of change champions throughout our organization, and they are our expert superusers,” adds Doss. “Based on what is trending, these superusers train our teams on the most popular products and bundles so they can make sure that customers know about the wide array of assets that are available to support their needs.”
Manager, Web and Collaboration, Southwire Company LLC
Adding more value to an already dynamic experience
To extend the successful launch of the Customer Hub, Southwire has a long list of additional features it can build with SAP Commerce Cloud and other SAP solutions that customers would benefit from. “The customer service options on the site are information driven now, but we have plans to make them more transactional in the near future,” says Hiett.
For instance, Southwire plans to add a quoting component with the SAP CPQ solution, as well as provide more options for checking out and placing returns. “We’re also looking to develop APIs so customers can pull real-time inventory data directly into their own systems,” adds Hogan.