About Sonepar
Founded in 1969 by Henri Coisne and his brothers, Sonepar has grown steadily, while maintaining its entrepreneurial values. Over fifty years down the road, our Group is still independent. Sonepar has expanded with the support of its family shareholders, and by investing in the skills of its associates.
At a glance
Sonepar is an independent family-owned company with global market leadership in B-to-B distribution of electrical products, solutions and related services.
Through a dense network of 100 brands spanning 40 countries, the Group has an ambitious transformation agenda to become the first global B-to-B electrical distributor to provide a fully digitalized and synchronized omnichannel experience to all customers.
Drawing on the skill and passion of its 44,000 associates, Sonepar had sales of €32.4 billion in 2022. Sonepar makes its customers’ lives easier, over the counter, visiting customers, by phone or online, – however we’re needed.
Sonepar’s ambition is to become “La Référence” - the standard-setter for all its stakeholders.
Key Figures
2021 was the year of laying the foundations for our digital transformation.
The Digital Factory wrote the first lines of code in October 2020, and the first pilot was carried out on Cebeo for the eCommerce part of Spark in June 2021.
In a few months, we assembled a team of 200 people (in the Digital Factory and the OpCos), defined the working methods and made vast technological and business choices.
Fall 2021 was a tornado with three new pilots (France, Sonepar Italia and Norway); Spark Search went live in the US and Canada; and we added new features every two weeks.
Thanks to the mobilization of pilot countries, the involvement of OpCos and mature digital countries such as Technische Unie, the US and Canada, and the commitment of the omnichannel team, we have achieved our first objectives.
2022 will be the year of the digital turnaround for Sonepar
This is the moment that we need to start generating business impact by fostering, together with OpCos, the emergence of more market share within our existing customers and the onboarding of new customers.
Thus, the four pilot countries must switch all customers of the small & mid-size segment installers from the old eCommerce sites to Spark. This will be made possible by the features we continue to deliver every two weeks and the constant performance optimizations of Spark and source systems in OpCos.
At the same time, in June, we will open the solution for Sacchi in Italy and three other European countries in the fall. Our ability to have first-page visibility on Google will be extended (Search Engine Optimization).
But Spark is not just an eCommerce site...
Spark is an omnichannel platform offering a seamless experience to our customers between the branches, their PC, smartphone, and tablet. This is how we will help capture the additional market share.
Therefore, we must deliver the associate component of Spark. In September, we will open the first pilots in Norway and France.
The more traffic there is in Spark, the more data we will generate. With the data team, the Digital Factory can optimize the ergonomics of Spark and the OpCos to always better address the needs of our customers in terms of products and service offerings.
Behind the curtain, we are strengthening Cybersec protections ("DevSecOps") as well as the resilience of the platform in the event of a major outage from one of our technological partners ("Chaos Engineering”). Spark will cover the vast majority of Sonepar's revenue in 2025, in branches and eCommerce. These are millions of transactions to be supported daily, 24 hours a day. Everything must be done so that Spark does not stop or cannot be penetrated by a cyber-attack.
Finally, the Spark program is also an opportunity for Sonepar to work in a coordinated manner while still respecting our DNA. The digital teams within the OpCos collaborate and deliver together, to achieve a common goal that is executed in each OpCo. They quickly understood the Agile methods brought by the Digital Factory and began to use them on subjects other than Spark.
"I joined Sonepar in September 2020 and have never encountered in more than 20 years of digital projects, such a combination of talent, and global and local managerial willingness to move forward.
In 2021, Spark was born and took its first steps and will start running faster and faster in 2022. If you liked Spark in 2021 just think you haven't seen anything yet! Let’s make it real. Again."
Del Aguila Fabrice
SVP Digital Factory
