Judy Lin, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES

Since becoming the world's largest semiconductor components distributor in 2015, WPG Holdings has been keen to pursue digital business transformation seeking to create a smart open platform to better serve its 15,000 customers, according to company CEO Frank Yeh.

Over the past four years, Yeh noted, WPG has reset its thinking model trying to learn, from the perspectives of clients, what customers want the company to do, what they really need and how to create extra values for customers, in order that the company can offer different service packages for different sizes of clients. 

Yeh said that over 90% of enterprises in Taiwan are operating on a small to medium scale and can hardly afford the establishment of its own warehouse. This has inspired WPG to promote the creation of an open B2B logistic platform in cooperation with peers, so as to deliver materials and components directly to production lines of all their clients. 

Yeh stressed the most important goal for WPG in the next 30 years is to join forces with peers to establish a collaborative ecosystem and jointly expand the market. 

In terms of digital transformation, enterprises have to follow three steps: changing the way of thinking; establishing cash flow, logistics and information flow architecture; and sourcing digitalization talent, according to Yeh, who stressed that the process needs support from the board of directors, high-ranking managers and IT division. 

To succeed in digital transformation, Yeh continued, enterprises have to weigh four major aspects: solutions offerings, ecosystem, IT structure improvement, and digitalization talent cultivation, for which WPG has readied its answers. 

Yeh disclosed that the firm's online C2B service platform, dubbed WPGDaDaWant, can offer customized solutions in line with real needs of customers, whether large or smaller. 

In terms of ecosystem, the company will move to set up a smart warehousing system that can be shared by peers to serve common customers. 

The company will also overhaul its IT structure, using the API (application programming interface) environment to set up a "Logistics as a Service" platform. 

As to talent cultivation, WPG is cooperating with some local colleges in the recruiting of digitalization talent while also stepping up retraining of its existing engineers. 

WPG Holdings CEO Frank Yeh
Photo: Michael Lee, Digitimes, October 2019
Source: https://digitimes.com/news/a20191028PD206.html