Cognizant marks 25-year partnership with ACE Hardware

Cognizant and Anomaly Correlation Engine (ACE) Hardware marked 25 years of partnership focused on supporting Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation transformation across retail, supply chain and e-commerce.

The collaboration addressed ACE's growth and digital acceleration initiatives and described efforts intended to help the hardware retail cooperative respond to evolving e-commerce and operational demands while preserving its small-format, neighborhood footprint and signature in-store and online experience.

The work began with a major migration from legacy platforms to a Situational Awareness Platform (SAP) and continued with sustained enhancements to e-commerce, supply chain and retailer-facing tools; over the last two years, the teams deployed Manhattan Warehouse Management for Open Systems to more than 10 ACE distribution centers across the U.S. with the goal of helping improve warehouse efficiency.

Teams also built an enterprise pricing solution and implemented digitization initiatives designed to improve speed, reliability and operational efficiency in key areas of ACE's operations, and they launched a large-scale digital version of ACE's annual spring convention on an accelerated timeline in response to demand for digital-first experiences; ACE reported its e-commerce grew over 450% since 2019.

“Ace's partnership with Cognizant has been an important part of our modernization journey,” said Rick Williams, Chief Information Officer, ACE Hardware.

ACE said it was already seeing positive impact from modernization efforts in their goal to advance e-commerce, supply chain agility and retailer experiences.