KING OF PRUSSIA, PA.—B2B commerce solutions provider supplyFORCE ™ announced that James Piraino was recently named CEO and president. Piraino was the CEO of BuildPoint, a provider of e-commerce tools for contractors, for two years.

His experience includes 20 years with "bricks and mortar" industrial distribution and manufacturing companies. Piraino began his career at General Electric Co. and was an executive with WESCO International, Inc. and W.W. Grainger, Inc. His move to supply FORCE is due in part to the company's plan for "building business relationships that will thrive in e-commerce."

"We've been focused for the last several months — and I am focusing at the start — on building relationships with our large national industrial accounts. We are creating and reinforcing those relationships now," he said.

"Internet success gets back to building a real business. SupplyFORCE is one of the survivors ... that has the right business strategy to make markets work," he said.

SupplyFORCE experienced layoffs in the last year, as did many e-business initiatives, and Piraino acknowledged there are challenges to address as he begins his tenure. His biggest challenge will be getting distributors involved in the initiative, something that has been slow in coming, he said.

"That's the trick to making all the systems work, and that is what supplyFORCE has going for it — connecting with distributors is the plan that will work. We have new systems in place now as well as leading systems from Commerce One, Eclipse and Ariba," he added.

Bill Weisberg, president of Affiliated Distributors and prior chairman of supplyFORCE, announced the appointment in late June. Weisberg and A-D vice president Chris Hartmann had been splitting the job of leading supplyFORCE in recent months.

"The board of directors is very excited about having an executive of Jim's caliber and experience lead the company. He has a superlative mix of industry and e-commerce knowledge and a proven record of success. We look forward to Jim having a positive and immediate impact and continuing to grow the business," Weisberg said.

"The economy has had an effect, particularly the Internet sector in the last year, but we're moving towards enterprise solutions that work," Piraino said.