Geography used to define the boundaries of competition in electrical distribution. If you were close to a job site, you had an edge. But Aaron Roma, Director of Information Technology (IT) at State Electric Supply, knows that advantage has quietly eroded.
“One of the biggest challenges we face is staying relevant in a world where geography is no longer a limitation. You can pick up your phone and order from anyone, anywhere. Speed and accuracy are of utmost importance,” Roma says.
That reality—playing out across the 42-location, eight-state business that has called West Virginia home for decades—is what set State Electric Supply on an innovation journey with Infor™ Velocity Suite. What began as a single artificial intelligence (AI) use case has compounded into a company-wide transformation model, delivering measurable impact across logistics, pricing, sales and finance.
Results at a glance
| Use case | Before | After | Impact |
| Inventory rebalancing | Approximately 2 full-time equivalents (FTEs) spending 3 hours a day on manual analysis; rebalancing done once a year for select locations | Automated monthly recommendations across all 42 locations | Approximately 2,200 labor hours saved annually; 92% faster with monthly rebalancing instead of once a year; thousands of dollars in inventory rebalanced |
| Product recommendation | Counter staff relied on tribal knowledge; missed cross-sell opportunities | AI recommends top 10 complementary products at order entry | Approximately 50% adoption rate; approximately $25,000 additional revenue per month (about $300,000 or more annually) |
| Pricing recommendation | Static monthly pricing matrix; inconsistent pricing across branches; high override rate | Weekly AI-generated pricing updates with data-driven margin targets | 1% increase in average profit margin; 40% reduction in pricing overrides |
| Invoice processing automation | Five accounts payable (AP) clerks manually keying approximately 330 invoices per week; 5 or more minutes per invoice | AI-powered document processor extracts and validates invoices automatically | Approximately 1,500 hours saved annually; 80% reduction in AP resources (AP team reduced from five people to one exception manager) |
| Process mining | Process issues investigated manually; five people spending one hour per week for three weeks per issue | Automated insights into business process flows | 86% faster to identify issues; 50% reduction in resources for process issue investigation |
Built on a 25-year foundation and ready for what’s next
State Electric Supply has been an Infor customer for nearly 25 years and moved to Infor CloudSuite™ Distribution approximately three years ago. That long-standing relationship gave the company something valuable when Infor Velocity Suite entered the picture: trust in the platform, and confidence that new capabilities would be natively integrated rather than bolted on.
“What drew us to Infor Velocity Suite was the tight integration with our existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and the industry expertise Infor brings to the table. That combination meant we could deploy rapidly—and problems that had plagued us for years were being solved in a matter of weeks," Roma explains.
That tight integration is core to how Infor Velocity Suite is designed—as an all-inclusive AI package built for specific industries, including industry-specific AI agents, generative AI (GenAI), process mining and automations. It is backed by a team of forward-deployed engineers who build alongside customers in sprints. For State Electric Supply, this meant each new use case could be deployed in months rather than years, building on existing data and workflows without a separate integration project.
The starting point: Getting inventory where it belongs
State Electric Supply’s first step onto the Infor Velocity Suite journey was inventory rebalancing, a problem that had long frustrated the operations team. Two full-time employees spent roughly three hours a day on manual analysis that covered only a fraction of the company’s 42 branch locations. Dead and slow-moving stock had accumulated across branches, tying up working capital while also dragging down warehouse efficiency across every location.
“Before AI, we had dedicated members of our team trying to do manual analysis of our inventory and rebalancing that inventory across locations. It just took too much time, and we weren’t really able to fully realise the benefits,” Roma recalls.
With Infor AI Inventory Rebalancing, machine learning (ML) now examines purchase history and inventory levels across all 42 locations simultaneously, automatically recommending transfers between branches and flagging items eligible for vendor returns. The result: approximately 2,200 labour hours saved annually, a 92% reduction in analysis time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory rebalanced every month. Beyond the labour savings, rebalancing inventory means the right products are now available at the right branches, lowering purchasing costs and increasing revenue and repeat business with customers getting what they need, when they need it.
A guided path to value: One use case leads to the next
The success of inventory rebalancing didn’t just deliver return on investment (ROI); it created momentum. State Electric Supply’s experience illustrates one of the defining principles of Infor Velocity Suite’s prescriptive AI use case packs: guided journeys that provide a clear starting point, ways to compound business value and fast ROI with AI that fits naturally into existing workflows.
With the inventory use case live and delivering results, State Electric Supply moved to product recommendation. The challenge was familiar to anyone managing a multigenerational salesforce: institutional knowledge about which products belong together was walking out the door as veteran employees retired.
“As our salesforce has become younger and younger, we’ve lost a lot of that tribal knowledge. The newer employees were having a difficult time knowing what products needed to be sold with other products—and that’s not just a revenue issue, it’s a customer service issue. You want to ensure customers have everything they need to complete their project, so they don’t have to make a return trip,” Roma explains.
Infor AI Product Recommender replaced that tribal knowledge with basket-history-based cross-sell suggestions surfaced automatically at order entry. The result: roughly 50% adoption and approximately $25,000 in additional revenue per month. Veteran employees benefited, too. What once required looking up and typing individual product codes now takes a single click.
From product recommendation, the team moved to pricing. State Electric Supply’s pricing team had been working from a static monthly matrix that left pricing data stale within days, created inconsistencies across branches and generated a high rate of override-driven margin erosion.
“Our pricing team was relying on old or inaccurate data, and once they set pricing, we were having challenges with sales representatives in the field overriding it, which led to a decrease in margin. You might have a single customer going into multiple locations and receiving different pricing—that’s a problem,” Roma says.
An AI-driven pricing recommendation replaced the monthly matrix, incorporating current market conditions, customer history and competitive signals, with pricing segmented by customer and product. AI-driven pricing is displayed during the order-entry workflow, with sales representatives making fewer overrides and customers experiencing more accurate and consistent pricing at every interaction across branches. Since going live, State Electric Supply has seen a 1% increase in average profit margin and a 40% reduction in pricing overrides, with AI continuously learning based on accepted and overridden prices.
Finance transformation: From five clerks to one exception manager
The most recent chapter in State Electric Supply’s Infor Velocity Suite journey has been accounts payable (AP), and the results have been among the most dramatic yet. Before automation, five dedicated AP clerks were manually processing approximately 330 vendor invoices per week, spending more than five minutes per invoice.
“There was a lot of time being spent on manually entering vendor invoices, and there were accuracy challenges because this relies on a person to manually type in invoices—there’s always the risk of miskeying information. That leads to delays in processing and ultimately delays in payment to the vendor, which means we risk late penalties or not receiving early payment discounts,” Roma says.
Infor Invoice Processing Automation, powered by Infor Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), changed the equation entirely. The AP team has gone from five dedicated clerks to one exception manager, saving approximately 1,500 labor hours annually while improving payment accuracy and enabling earlier capture of vendor payment discounts.
Process mining: Surfacing issues you didn’t know existed
Underpinning every phase of the State Electric Supply journey is Infor Process Mining, the tool that identifies where to act next and measures whether it worked.
“Process mining is one of the key elements of the Infor Velocity Suite journey. Not only does it initially help you identify areas in your process that need improvement, but you use it as a tool moving forward. As you implement changes, you revisit process mining to see how those new processes are actually affecting your overall time and having a real-world impact on your business,” Roma explains.
Shortly after deployment, process mining revealed that 40% of State Electric Supply’s purchase order lines were not following the correct workflow: invoices were being generated before purchase orders were created, bypassing approval controls and creating compliance and audit risk. The issue had gone undetected until process mining made it visible within days of going live. Identifying process issues is now 86% faster, with a 50% reduction in resources tied up in process issue investigation.
What’s next
What makes State Electric Supply’s story worth telling isn’t any single use case; it’s the guided approach. Infor Velocity Suite gives you the flexibility to start where the value is highest and expand at the pace your business demands. Looking ahead, State Electric Supply is already planning its next moves: order entry automation and Infor Industry AI Agents.
Learn more about Infor Velocity Suite.
Mona Patel
Industry & Solution Strategy Director, Infor