Westcon Opens D.C. Warehouse

The new facility should allow Westcon Group to more efficiently service customers, said Bernie Kelley, vice president of operations for Westcon Group North America. "This was a building that we designed and built the interior to our specs. The other three were all existing buildings that we leased and were not perfectly set up. For example, in New York there were mezzanines that did not allow us to stack racks to the ceilings," Kelley said.

The new building is adjacent to the freight entrance at Dulles International Airport, which allows Westcon Group to ship next-day orders as late as 8 p.m. EST, an improvement by more than an hour, said Anthony Daley, senior vice president and general manager of the Americas at Westcon Group.

"We looked at maximizing our allowable time to have orders shipped out to give customers as much time as possible to get orders out the door," Daley said. "We continue to look at how we can improve our efficiencies and processes as we look at new technologies."

The new facility includes a 5,000-square-foot area where engineers can do Avaya channel assembly and integration services for Cisco, Nortel and other vendors' products.

Solution providers said they look forward to the improved delivery from the new facility. "Salespeople always wait until 4 p.m. to get a contact in. It's great that we can still get stuff that comes in after [that time] delivered for the next day," said Tim Kubiak, vice president of national sales at STL, a St. Louis-based solution provider. "We haven't had any issues, but the later [the deadline] the better. Even if something goofy comes up later in the day, it's nice to know we can order online and still get it the next day."