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Software Engineering

Enhancing the Ferguson Counter Experience: A Frontline Tool Built Around Associate Expertise and Customer Relationships

Enhancing the Ferguson Counter Experience: A Frontline Tool Built Around Associate Expertise and Customer Relationships

An important part of Ferguson’s customer experience is the expertise of its associates and the relationships they build with trade professionals. UDig worked with Ferguson to build Sales Cockpit, a frontline tool that brings the systems associates use every day into one interface, helping associates spend less time navigating systems and more time applying their expertise to serve customers.

How We Went from Ideas to Impact

  • The Idea

    Ferguson associates’ industry expertise and the relationships they build with trade professionals are an important part of the customer experience. That helped shape the approach: technology should enhance the associate experience and make it easier to serve customers.

  • The Process

    Ferguson and UDig aligned on what makes Ferguson different at the counter, then built alongside associates in their branches, using AI-native delivery to get their input back into the product in weeks rather than months.

  • The Impact

    A frontline tool designed around the way associates work. And a path to modernize what sits underneath, one piece at a time, without disruption to daily operations.

  • Sales Cockpit brings the systems our associates use every day into one cohesive, intuitive interface, built around the workflows and flexibility our associates already know. Working with UDig, we moved quickly without losing that focus. I’m looking forward to seeing how these improvements help our teams serve customers with greater speed and build on the strong relationships that define Ferguson.
    Jeff WalbertSenior Vice President of Operations at Ferguson

The Idea

A Frontline Tool Built Around Ferguson Associates

Ferguson is a value-added distributor of commercial and residential supplies serving plumbing, HVAC, and other trade professionals. Ferguson combines the scale and capabilities of a leading distributor with a local customer experience grounded in associates who understand their customers, their businesses and the challenges they face. 

Trade professionals rely on Ferguson associates to help solve complex challenges and keep their projects moving. Which part, which valve, what to do when a job goes sideways at four o’clock on a Friday. That expertise, and the relationships built on it, is what makes Ferguson different at the counter. 

Serving a contractor, though, meant moving across several of the systems behind the counter. The opportunity was to simplify that experience, allowing associates to spend less time navigating systems and more time applying their expertise to serve customers.

Ferguson set out to close that gap, with two conditions. The counter could not stop running, and the answer could not be a rip and replace. They were looking for a partner to help shape the approach rather than a vendor with a product to install. 

The Process

Start With the Differentiator, Build With the Frontline

The work began before any code. UDig started by getting clear on what makes Ferguson different at the counter, the piece of the business a competitor cannot copy. The answer was the associate: deep command of the trade, and relationships built one job at a time with the professionals who depend on them. We call this digital differentiation, and it became the standard the product had to meet. 

Then UDig went to the branches. Designers and engineers spent full days on site across four states, returning every few weeks, putting unfinished versions in front of associates and asking them to run real transactions. 

Speed is what made that work. When the UDig team saw an associate hit friction during user testing, our AI-native delivery let them quickly build a fix before the next visit. Associates saw their own input show up in the product in weeks, which is what earns buy-in. People stop giving feedback when nothing comes of it. 

The question that shaped the product was not whether associates liked it, but whether they would rather train a new hire on this or on the old system. The answer was immediate. 

Underneath, the systems that run the business stayed in place. Sales Cockpit provides a unified experience layer, enabling a phased approach while minimizing disruption to branch operations. 

The Impact

Built for the People on Both Sides of the Counter

Product search, workflows, and transactions now live in one place. An associate can search, quote, and close an order without switching screens, which means less time working the systems and more time with the contractor waiting on the other side of the counter. For a contractor on a tight schedule, every minute at the counter is a minute not on the job site. 

For associates new to the counter, guided workflows and intuitive search replace code-based navigation, so early training can go toward learning the trade instead of learning the system. For veterans, the shortcuts and habits they had built over years came with them. 

During initial deployment, associates retained access to the systems and workflows they already knew.  This allowed associates to incorporate Sales Cockpit into their work as they experienced its capabilities firsthand. 

Sales Cockpit is currently in initial deployment at a limited number of Ferguson branches, with plans for continued expansion. Ferguson and UDig continue to explore opportunities to apply this approach to additional business needs. 

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