WOMBLE

LEADING PROVIDER OF SPECIALTY PIPE COATING SYSTEMS GOES MOBILE

Founded in 1972, Womble Company, Inc. is a leading provider of specialty coating systems for steel pipe that ranges in diameter from one-half inch to 36 inches. Based in Houston, Texas, the company primarily serves clients in the oil and gas, construction, and industrial manufacturing industries. Womble receives shipments on trucks, rails, and barges, and it employs 500 people.

THE CHALLENGE

Four stockyards. 165 acres. 155,000 linear feet of pipe per day. Womble’s manual, paper-based processes made it impossible to keep up. Womble struggled to track customer inventory throughout its vast operations.

Man hours were lost, production was slowed and customer orders were delayed. Womble needed to close the gap between employees in open-air yards and their enterprise software. It needed to provide exemplary customer service in order to set itself apart from the competition.

To enhance operational efficiency and improve its customer service, Womble needed to automate and mobilize supply chain operations on their journey from analog to digital business.

THE SOLUTION

Womble turned to Cloud Inventory® for a complete on and off-premise, multi-lingual solution that would help it overcome its inventory visibility and accuracy issues. Womble selected Cloud Inventory due to Cloud Inventory’s validated integrations with Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne.

“Cloud Inventory is taking our customer service capabilities to an unprecedented level,” said Nick Stefanakis, Chief Financial Officer of Womble. “And at the end of the day, implementing a system like this allows us to enter an order faster and produce our product quicker so we can respond to our customer in a timely manner. This, in turn, allows us to invoice our customer and collect our money faster, so we can improve our cash flow.”

These optimized integrations allow Womble to seamlessly pull inventory and performance data into and out of EnterpriseOne. And Cloud Inventory’s multi-language functionality supports Womble’s English- and Spanish-speaking workforce.

Womble now has complete control over its extended supply chain processes. Should Womble’s business processes change or evolve over time, Cloud Inventory’s flexibility will allow Womble to manage or modify its solution with limited or no outside support, minimizing deployment times and costs.

THE RESULTS

Womble no longer allocates part of its workforce toward pen-and-paper tracking or toward manually searching for missing product. Serializing and barcoding the pipe that enters its facilities allows Womble to track its customers’ products from receipt through shipping using a series of simple barcode scans.

Since implementing Cloud Inventory, Womble has successfully coated and tracked more than 57,000 miles of pipe—enough to wrap around the earth twice—without losing a single piece.

Employees are free to focus on the pipe coating process and other value-added activities, creating a dramatic increase in Womble’s daily productivity. Becoming more efficient also empowers Womble to provide the level of service its customers have come to expect.

“Cloud Inventory is taking our customer service capabilities to an unprecedented level,” said Nick Stefanakis, Chief Financial Officer of Womble. “And at the end of the day, implementing a system like this allows us to enter an order faster and produce our product quicker so we can respond to our customer in a timely manner. This, in turn, allows us to invoice our customers and collect our money faster, so we can improve our cash flow. Womble has its sights set on future mobile initiatives, but it has already realized its goal of becoming a more efficient, productive mobile company.“

With more than 150 acres of open-air yards, we’re anything but a four-wall, brick-and-mortar facility,” said Bryan Brewer, IT and Operations Manager of Womble. “Our facilities are all outdoors, and Cloud Inventory is providing us the opportunity to be a mobile company.”

INDUSTRY

Manufacturing & Distribution

“Cloud Inventory is taking our customer service capabilities to an unprecedented level…”

“…at the end of the day, implementing a system like this allows us to enter an order faster and produce our product quicker so we can respond to our customer in a timely manner. This, in turn, allows us to invoice our customer and collect our money faster, so we can improve our cash flow.”

— Nick Stefanakis, CFO, Womble

ERP: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

HIGHLIGHTS

• Multilingual mobility solution helps business overcome its inventory issues

• Mobile Enterprise Management allows for controlling overextended supply chain processes

• Cloud Inventory’s flexibility gives the company ability to modify its solution with limited or no outside support