Molex—a global company founded in 1938 that specializes in designing and manufacturing electronic, electrical, and fiber optic interconnection systems enabling applications like 5G, IoT, and advanced manufacturing—recently recognized the requirement for an upgrade to its own systems for connectivity.
Tony Gainsford, Supply Chain Director at Molex, has throughout his career had a front-row seat to the challenges dated technology systems can cause, and what he’s experienced crystallizes everything wrong with how many global manufacturers tend to handle supplier communications.
After 29 years at Molex across three continents and five countries, Gainsford tells ASUG, he had seen the company’s supply chain evolve from simple point-to-point connections to an increasingly complex web spanning 65 sites worldwide.
With this evolution came obstacles. “There’s always something going on,” says Gainsford. “If it’s not a bridge or a strike or COVID, there’s always some disruption.”
10 years ago, the game was simple: make products wherever it’s cheapest to do so. In today’s world, companies face more nuanced decisions about where and how they manufacture and source products. Shipping costs and supply chain risks have entirely changed the equation for manufacturers like Molex, but it’s not just about where products are made.
“Think about what’s in this device, compared to what was in it 10 years ago,” explains Gainsford, gesturing to his smartphone. Every year, hardware parts get smaller, and designs grow more intricate. Within a complex global supply chain network connecting thousands of suppliers, including hundreds from whom Molex sources over 70,000 parts annually, that means more moving pieces to track and opportunities for things to go wrong.
For Molex, addressing challenges such as inefficiencies and delays started with taking a hard look at its legacy supplier portal. The homegrown system had historically worked well enough – with simple, cheap, point-to-point connections that got the job done. But only 30% of purchase orders received supplier confirmations.
In a world where supply chain disruptions hit weekly, this lack of visibility became an undeniable problem needing remedy. “We delayed and delayed replacing it,” recalls Gainsford. “Eventually, we said, ‘No, we’ve got to stop procrastinating. We need to do this.’”
Rewiring a Global Network
The company chose SAP Business Network to replace its aging supplier portal. But rather than just swapping one system for another, Gainsford and his team saw an opportunity to transform how Molex handled supplier relationships entirely.
This wasn’t a typical IT project. The Molex team ran their proposal through the supply chain organization, ensuring business needs drove every decision they made. Gainsford and others brought together buyers, materials teams, and stakeholders across the organization to design a global blueprint for the rollout; it was important to develop a framework for quick decision-making, knowing that the team couldn’t allow process questions to stall progress for weeks.
The project started small, with pilot programs in Mexico and China. When those sites were running smoothly, the team rolled it out across Asia — first Japan and Korea, then other countries — before bringing it to the United States and Europe. This step-by-step approach let Molex’s team work out kinks along the way.
Meanwhile, the technical foundation they’d laid proved crucial for the project’s overall success. Molex uses SAP’s Cloud Integration Gateway (CIG) as its middleware, enabling codeless integration between the organization’s SAP systems and SAP Business Network, which is essential for managing the massive real-time data exchange its operations require.
Molex’s IT team kept a close eye on the new system from the start, using a process-mining tool that showed them exactly what happened to each order, from the moment of its creation until final payment, allowing them to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement with precision.
The benefits of this data-driven approach were quickly evident. Before, only 30% of suppliers confirmed their orders. That number shot up to 90%. Orders that used to take nearly a week to reach suppliers could now go out instantly. Even better, the end-to-end process — from requisition to payment — became 10% faster.
“You might say, ‘Only 10%?’ But that’s a lot in the big picture,” says Gainsford. As the team’s understanding of how to gain efficiencies deepened, they evolved from tracking basic confirmations to measuring “quality of confirmation” — analyzing each order’s price, date, and quantity accuracy. This granular data now allows them to spot patterns in supplier performance and address issues proactively.
Molex’s process-mining approach reveals exactly when suppliers deviate from published lead times. “We can have a discussion with our suppliers, by supplier, depending on what we see,” explains Gainsford. “For example: ‘We’re giving you a published lead time, but you consistently aren’t delivering or confirming based on it.’”
This data-driven approach replaced Molex’s previous model of relationship management. Meanwhile, their KPI strategy evolved with the implementation. As metrics like confirmation rates and processing times stabilized, KPIs examining specific elements of supplier performance were added.
“If you want adoption, it’s got to be a great experience for the user.”
This focus on data doesn’t mean ignoring human factors. For instance, when evaluating the platform’s performance in Asia, Molex’s team has worked closely with SAP to address latency issues and improve user experience. “If you want adoption, it’s got to be a great experience for the user,” Gainsford emphasizes. “If it’s slow and funky, they’re not going to adopt – and then there’s no value for us.”
The new platform transformed how Molex’s suppliers can collaborate. Instead of emailing spreadsheets back and forth each week, suppliers now handle everything through SAP Business Network. Integration with Microsoft Excel has proven especially valuable for Asian suppliers who prefer batch processing. “I don’t want to key [data] into this,” said Gainsford, summarizing supplier feedback. “I want to put it into Excel and upload it.”
The platform streamlines even basic tasks. Suppliers can update multiple orders at once through the workbench interface, which feels more like Excel than a traditional web portal. When questions arise about specific items, they can launch a chat directly within the context of the purchase order. “Hold on, I’m looking at this line here – what about this?” Gainsford notes that a given supplier might ask. The buyer can respond in the same thread, maintaining all communication in one portal. “‘Okay, let me push it up three days,’” a supplier might reply to an inquiry about lead time, says Gainsford. “‘Good chat.’”
This emphasis on the human element proved crucial. “At the end of the day, it’s about people, processes, data, and technology,” he adds. “None of these buyers report to me, yet I have to influence them, bring them along, and explain the value clearly. It’s all about orchestrating and building that knowledge — and keeping the excitement and focus.”
The Human Links in the Chain
The shift in systems required training 2,000 users across Molex and its supplier base. Rather than write traditional manuals that often go unread, Molex created short video tutorials – 3-4 minutes each, styled after TikTok and YouTube content. The team packaged 25-30 of these videos into their learning management system, letting users train at their own pace.
“We haven’t delivered a single instructor-led training class. Not one.”
“We haven’t delivered a single instructor-led training class, not one,” says Gainsford, discussing modern learning styles and mediums, as well as the need for employer flexibility in building professional curricula. Users instead can access training when convenient, between the constant notifications and distractions of daily work.
The results validate this approach. Beyond the dramatic improvement in confirmation rates, Molex now processes $1.6 billion in transactions through the SAP Business Network, with 70% flowing through automatically. They’ve onboarded 1,200 suppliers; and 90% of the suppliers they invite to the network agree to join it.
As more suppliers join, the platform’s true value has multiplied. Like social-media networks, its utility grows with each new participant. Suppliers can now manage multiple customers through a single interface, checking order status and payment information across their customer base with just a few clicks. For smaller suppliers especially, the real-time visibility into invoice status and payments helps manage cash flow more effectively.
While the platform handles complex operations for major corporations like Siemens and Apple, Gainsford pointed out that “90% of our supply chain are mom-and-pops.” These smaller suppliers need streamlined interfaces showing just the essential information, an area where he thinks SAP could stand to improve. “Suppliers are in a rush,” he explained. “They have lots of things to do. This is another portal they need to log into — just show me what I need to do, so I can move on.”
Gainsford sees this transformation as foundational for future improvements in global supply chain connectivity. And while AI and advanced analytics dominate headlines, he emphasizes the unglamorous work of first getting the basics right. This focus on standardization makes sense, given today’s manufacturing trends. As companies shift production closer to customers to reduce logistics risks, ensuring consistent processes across all locations becomes increasingly essential.
Through this network, Molex provides a single source of truth, whether a supplier works with Molex’s facilities in Asia, Europe, or the Americas. For now, Gainsford’s team focuses on expanding the platform’s use cases, while rolling out base capabilities like purchase orders, quality notifications, and invoicing across the organization.
Looking ahead through 2025, Molex plans to tackle more complex capabilities. Scheduling agreements will handle regular orders more efficiently. Supply-managed inventory features will give suppliers more direct control over stock levels. And forecasting tools will help predict and prevent disruptions before they impact production.
Molex’s implementation of SAP Business Network was a technical success, but one in which technology, process, and data all played central roles. The widespread adoption of this technology is what made it stick, and the human element is one of the main reasons for Gainsford’s enthusiasm as he calls this initiative “the best project” of his career thus far.
This interview was conducted at the 2024 edition of SAP Spend Connect Live, the company’s annual spend management conference, which was held Oct. 14-16 in Las Vegas last fall.