Sonepar: AI Enhancing the Customer Experience
Quotes processed in seconds, product recommendations, and smart inventory management—all while keeping the carbon footprint under control… Sonepar harnesses the power of AI to optimize its database and accelerate decision-making.
Sonepar is the world’s leading distributor of electrical equipment to professionals. This industry giant generated more than €33 billion in revenue in 2025, including €12 billion from digital sales. With a presence in 40 countries, it employs 46,000 people and operates 180 distribution centers.
Sonepar’s international scope entails a vast array of products and a particularly extensive supply chain. At the same time, the group must meet rapidly growing customer expectations.
Furthermore, Sonepar has had to rethink its traditional methods to speed up decision-making and enhance the customer experience. To achieve this, the distributor is currently rolling out an artificial intelligence platform to process and orchestrate data on a large scale.
Sonepar: Enhanced Customer Experience Through a Data & AI Platform
To launch this transformation project, Sonepar began building a global Data & AI platform. Building on this solid foundation, the company established a structured data governance framework. The goal is to anticipate customer needs, recommend the right products, and speed up the processing of requests. These tools thus improve responsiveness in a market where installers’ time is at a premium.
Onepoint and Sonepar: Reinventing Performance Through Data
Our teams, leveraging Onepoint’s Data Factory approach, benefited from a framework designed to support the ramp-up of Sonepar’s AI platform. They demonstrated their ability to ensure robust data governance within complex international environments. The firm also showcased its expertise in making the most of the Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI Foundry platforms deployed at Sonepar.
As a true strategic driver for Sonepar, AI enables us to combine business performance, operational excellence, and environmental responsibility. Thanks to Onepoint’s expertise, Sonepar is deploying the world’s first global Data & AI platform—the most comprehensive and innovative in its sector. We are delighted to be working with a partner who shares the core values essential to the success of this transformation: expertise, agility, and a drive for innovation.
From Data to Operational AI: A Unified Platform
Modernizing Data Infrastructure to Scale AI
To scale its Data & AI Factory approach, Sonepar had a data lake that enabled data-driven decision-making on a global scale. The Group is restructuring this data platform to take it further by making it agentic-ready. Onepoint played a pivotal role in this decisive phase. Our teams first ensured the maintenance and reliability of the existing data warehouses.
They then worked with Sonepar’s teams to design a new target architecture based on Microsoft Fabric. Microsoft Fabric is a unified data platform that powers AI. It is designed to simplify data management and analysis.
Finally, our experts orchestrated the phased migration of data to this new platform. This modernization has now laid the necessary groundwork for the deployment of truly industrialized AI.
We are particularly proud to partner with Sonepar on this project, as it fully reflects what sets us apart: our ability to successfully execute large-scale data and AI transformations in complex, highly industrialized international environments. The ability to manage projects end-to-end—from designing the technology platform to integrating it into business processes—is becoming a key factor in a company’s competitiveness. And this is precisely where we support our clients.
Exceptional results across the entire sales funnel
The initial rollouts have generated significant benefits.
Guided omnichannel shopping experience
Personalized product and service recommendations have been implemented based on purchase history, the current shopping cart, and product similarities. This experience is complemented by an expert agent capable of understanding customer intent, answering their questions in natural language, and suggesting suitable alternatives, including more sustainable solutions.
Sales Efficiency
Sales teams are supported by intelligent agents that recommend “Next Best Actions” based on customer profiles, recently identified weak signals, and growth potential for specific product lines. AI also facilitates the capture and structuring of meeting notes to transform customer interactions into concrete, actionable steps.
Operational Efficiency
Operational optimization relies on better demand forecasting, driven by the analysis of website visits, to improve inventory management. Taking supplier inventory levels into account also helps enhance delivery commitments and strengthen the quality of service offered to customers.
When AI Turns Hours of Processing into Seconds
Whereas a sales representative used to spend an average of one hour preparing a customer quote, thanks to AI recommendations, they can now complete this task in just a few minutes. This allows Sonepar’s sales representatives to focus on high-value-added tasks, such as consulting and customer relations.
CSR Criteria Already Integrated into the Decision-Making Process
Using projections based on product characteristics, Sonepar enhances its CO₂ coverage to encourage responsible choices and support its sustainability goals.
An AI Roadmap Gaining Momentum
Building on these results, Sonepar plans to expand the use of AI into new areas. The Data & AI Factory, designed and strengthened with Onepoint’s expertise, will support this ramp-up across all of the group’s international markets.