Month-end close cut from 15 days to about 3.
International Pipe & Supply managed sales, inventory, and finance across three companies and 15 pipe yards using a difficult legacy ERP and separate spreadsheets. After moving to Acumatica Distribution Edition, the company reported faster access to financial data, shared sales tracking, and a substantially shorter month-end close.
- Company
- International Pipe & Supply
- Industry
- Steel pipe distribution
- Headquarters
- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
- Replaced
- SouthWare ERP + sales spreadsheets
- Solution
- Acumatica Distribution Edition
Company & challenges
International Pipe & Supply, a family-owned steel pipe distributor headquartered in Oklahoma City, sells prime and non-prime carbon steel pipe and offers welding, cutting, and cleaning services.
The original study described three related businesses—International Pipe, Bison Pipe, and BigFoot Pipe & Piling—and 15 pipe yards.
The group had used SouthWare ERP for about a decade. Chief Strategy Officer Scott A. McCalla described a difficult interface that required staff to memorize function-key codes, while basic financial and sales reporting took too much manual work.
“SouthWare was incredibly difficult to use.”
Scott A. McCalla, Chief Strategy OfficerSales representatives kept separate spreadsheets for prospects, calls, and notes. Managers struggled to share leads or see consistent customer activity, while inventory required another spreadsheet outside the ERP. Pipe may be new or used and is sold using dimensions such as length, diameter, and weight. Descriptive inventory part numbers helped the company identify stock in its yards.
The solution
The team evaluated several ERP options and selected Acumatica Distribution Edition because it wanted a single platform for finance, inventory, sales tracking, and customer management rather than adding more disconnected applications.
“If you’re going to upgrade, make it all the same package so you have one place to go for help.”
Scott A. McCalla, Chief Strategy Officer“Acumatica allows me to uncover pinch points quickly. Now, I’m just a log in away from everything I need. The time savings is significant.”
Scott A. McCallaChief Strategy Officer, International Pipe & Supply
The benefits
Faster financial reporting
Finance leaders could review cash balances and accounts receivable in dashboards instead of moving through codes and consolidating figures from different companies manually. In the earlier Acumatica case study, the monthly close for two companies decreased from roughly 15 days to about 3 days.
Shared sales lead tracking
Acumatica Customer Management gave sales teams one place to record prospects and the notes attached to them. It replaced individually maintained spreadsheets and made it easier to follow each lead through to a customer.
Usability and cloud access
McCalla said staff found Acumatica easier to learn than the old code-based system. Executives visiting the pipe yards could access company information remotely rather than relying on printed reports or the earlier difficult VPN process.
“With Acumatica, one of the big changes is that we can now track a lead to a customer with all the associated notes along the way so we can capture that information.”
Scott A. McCalla, Chief Strategy Officer- Reduced month-end close from roughly 15 days to about 3 days, according to the earlier Acumatica case study.
- Gained shared tracking of prospects, customer interactions, and sales notes.
- Improved visibility across three operating companies and 15 pipe yards.
- Used dashboards to access cash, receivables, and financial information more quickly.
- Reduced reliance on separate spreadsheets and difficult code-driven ERP navigation.
Solution stack
Source: Acumatica Customer Success — International Pipe & Supply.
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