CDW Corp. wrapped up a good 2016 with a 7.6% increase in net sales to $13.98 billion. And, though the growth rate tapered off in toward year-end, fourth-quarter sales to small businesses gained momentum after the presidential election, rising 9% year over year.
And with its smaller clients particularly accustomed to using the internet to get information on CDW’s products and services—and to complete purchases—the company is driving a new focus on e-commerce for small businesses, CEO Thomas Richards said yesterday.
In a program that launched Jan. 1, CDW is dedicating an internal e-commerce team to further develop online resources available to small-business customers, a customer segment it defines as companies with 20 to 250 employees. Among those customers, compared with larger ones, “there is a much greater utilization of online digital resources both on the consultative end and on the purchasing end,” Richards said on a conference call with stock analysts yesterday, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha.
Without going into extensive details, Richards said he gave his e-commerce team a “clean sheet of paper” to devise better features on its e-commerce site for small businesses. CDW caters to small-business customers at CDW.com/small-business, where customers can browse and buy among computer hardware and software products; subscribe to cloud-based computing and data-storage services CDW makes available from companies like Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google; and view information and arrange for consultations with CDW technology experts about such matters as deploying cloud technology.
“If you think about people today and how we consume information, it’s not just talking to someone live,” Richard said. “We’re consuming it online. We’re actually consuming it verbally through devices and artificial intelligence. I think all of that eventually is going to be part of how you go to market with that segment” of customers.
In addition to business of all sizes, CDW sells online through dedicated parts of its e-commerce site to colleges and universities, K-12 schools, healthcare organizations and government agencies at the federal, state and local levels.
CDW doesn’t break out e-commerce sales, but is ranked No. 32 in the B2B E-Commerce 300, with estimated 2016 web sales of $5.61 billion.
For the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, which was one selling day shorter than the year-ago quarter, CDW reported:
Net sales of $3.492 billion, up 2.2% from $3.418 billion in the year-earlier quarter;
Gross profit of $577.9 million, up 3.6% from $557.6 million;
Net income of $103.2 million, up 15.6% from $89.3 million.
For the full year, CDW reported:
Net sales of $13.982 billion, up 7.6% from $12.989 billion in 2015;
Gross profit of $2.327 billion, up 10.0% from $2.116 billion;
Net income of $424.4 million, up 5.3% from $403.1 million.
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