Cover Story
Digital growth and measurable benefits
Since launching their Digital Service Platform , MRC Global has seen significant customer adoption and numerous benefits . MRC Global CEO , Rob Saltiel , highlighted this digital progress in a recent earnings call , “ Our digital strategy that began several years ago continues to evolve and deliver great dividends in the form of additional sales and an improved customer experience . We have developed and deployed a user-friendly digital customer service platform that in addition to product ordering provides self-service features such as order expediting , order documentation and past order histories . This useful functionality drives efficiency and cost savings for our customers and for us while increasing customer loyalty and retention .” Kendall reported , “ Our digital initiative has significantly boosted our performance . In the U . S ., digitally transacted orders have increased from 45 % to over 66 %. Digital revenue has surged by 72 %, reaching more than USD 1.5 billion . Moreover , customers now manage thousands of post-order service inquiries online annually , reducing the need for direct engagement with our SSRs .” “ The strong gains we ’ ve generated in digital adoption aren ’ t solely due to the technical applications we ’ ve purchased and implemented . Our most valuable asset isn ’ t software , but rather the highly talented and committed cross-functional team of technical , commercial , and usability experts we ’ ve assembled .
Notably , we ’ ve embedded ‘ Digital Adoption Representatives ’ within our e-commerce team . These digitally-oriented individuals , often web-savvy SSRs , bring strong industrial distribution experience to the role . They evangelize our digital applications to both customers and internal users . Another key to our success is our extensive and continuous engagement with internal users and customers to tailor solutions to business needs . In our view , successful digital solutions require 40 % technology and 60 % persistent user experience tuning and training .”
“ Initially , e-commerce growth was driven by MRO-type orders ,” Kendall explained . “ Our utilities customers exemplify this trend . They typically purchase a set number of items at agreed-upon contract prices . We build them custom-tailored catalogs , including contract pricing and real-time inventory information . They can then reorder items via our website , a direct integration , or a custom punch-out to MRCGO™ . This process is tailor-made for e-commerce , resulting in nearly 90 % of orders from our utilities customers being transacted digitally .”
Leveraging AI for quoting
MRC Global knew they had opportunities in the more project-oriented aspects of their business . “ A quoting ecosystem was developed within the Digital Service Platform where quotes can be submitted and viewed by customers and responded to by SSRs ,” Kendall explained . “ Regardless of how the quote is received , it is ’ digitized ’ and uploaded to the system where it can be routed for responses , including breaking it into sub-quotes routed to the correct experts in the company . All of this is tracked via dashboards , which allows SSRs to see that they have a quote that requires a response . You can see where the quotes are , which ones have been completed , and how long the turnaround was ,” Kendall said . “ Next , we built an automated quote response tool using AI . Basically , once the customers quote request is uploaded , the
10 Valve World November 2024 www . valve-world . net