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How Spark delivered a smoother customer journey.
The platform helped Sonepar bring consistent experiences to customers.
months to MVP launch
operating companies integrated
Sonepar, the leading omnichannel B2B distributor of electrical products, solutions and related services, embarked on a five-year business transformation program to put digital at the heart of its operations and launch a centralized platform in an organization made up of more than 170 operating companies.
Together we launched Spark, a ground-breaking approach to delivering enhanced value and efficiency to customers in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Spark created a centralized platform for Sonepar’s operating companies while supporting the scale and complexity of its global business.
Because of the fragmented nature of their operating companies, Sonepar was not capitalizing on their scale to optimize investments, increase efficiencies and enable the kind of experience that would define new standards for B2B players as well as existing B2C players moving into B2B space. Their strategic objectives called for creating a friendlier omnichannel experience that would continuously propel customers to the next stage of their journey, regardless of touchpoint, as well as providing all of their operating companies with the opportunity to have superior platforms built on best practices across the group. What’s more, Sonepar recognized that creating meaningful relationships and loyalty requires a personalized yet efficient journey, which they aimed to achieve with the help of associates and sales reps as well as AI and automation.
By combining Publicis Sapient's digital expertise with Sonepar's industry knowledge and market presence, we launched Spark, a proprietary digital platform that fosters an environment of collaboration, knowledge exchange and co-creation. Our collaborative approach of operating closely together in mixed teams enabled maximum velocity, resulting in a robust agile delivery engine and knowledge transfer.
The platform facilitates scalable growth within the electrical industry with a modular architecture that accommodates growing data volumes, increasing customer demands and evolving business requirements without significant disruptions—all with a localized customer lens. Spark aggregates and analyzes vast amounts of industry data, providing the business with actionable insights to identify growth opportunities, optimize processes and improve performance.
With Spark, Sonepar continues its exceptional customer focus, providing a frictionless omnichannel experience throughout the customer journey—from online product catalogs to streamlined ordering processes, which improve over time with actionable insights from data and direct customer feedback.
Within Sonepar, Spark supports a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability, enabling more innovation and collaboration while making it easier for associates to fulfil customer needs.
Operationally, Spark uses state-of-the-art engineering with maximum automation and security, leveraging the cloud, the full power of agile, dev sec ops and an SRE model, as well as best-in-class tools to build, test and monitor the platform, bringing unprecedented efficiency to the supply chain.
Looking ahead, Spark will provide a sandbox environment to implement industry-leading IoT, plug-and-play solutions for “softwarization,” marketplace and AI-based marketing tools.
IDC Perspective
IDC studied Sonepar’s ambitious journey to leverage their global scale and deliver a truly omnichannel customer experience through a modern, agile, headless platform.
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Sonepar is transforming the relationship between its customers and associates by orchestrating a constant, omnichannel dialog (physical and digital) and delivering a perfect order through its synchronized omnichannel platform, Spark. We selected Publicis Sapient as our partner for their business capabilities expertise, driven by strong and committed leadership, extensive technical proficiency, and a global presence complemented by robust local knowledge.
"— Jérémie Profeta ,
Chief Transformation Officer, Sonepar
Lise Malbernard
Country Managing Director - Publicis Sapient France
