Dover Corp., a large and diversified manufacturer of industrial products, just closed out a big year for digital commerce.

And Dover—which manufactures products for engineering, fueling, imaging and identification, pumps and refrigeration, and food equipment—plans another big push for even more digital commerce in 2022.

In 2021, Dover, based in Downers Grove, Illinois, posted total sales of $7.907 billion, an increase of 18.3% from total sales of $6.684 billion in 2020.

Last year, digital commerce accounted for about $1 billion in sales, or about 13% of total revenue, CEO Richard Tobin told Wall Street analysts on a recent year-end earnings call.

With momentum building for digital sales, Dover is aiming to double its ecommerce business this year, Tobin said.

“We invested over $14 million in digital products and digital and ecommerce, which allowed us to reach our goal of over $1 billion in ecommerce revenue last year with no touch by customer service,” Tobin said “This represents over 10 times the volume we processed in 2018. And our 2020 goal is to double our 2021 volume.”

The company also is looking to ecommerce to help its internal diversification and efficiency, Tobin says.

“I think clearly the real benefit of moving to [an] ecommerce platform is the S&OP (sales and operations planning) process gets a lot slicker, inventory management gets a lot better, and you can centralize pricing rather than having distributed pricing around the world,” he told analysts. “So, yes, it’s a bit of cost savings, but the real benefit is operational over time and it’s not a kind of go-to-market platform and we expect to continue to sell through distribution.”

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