Global Success for Howco with iMetal

Howco is the largest independent supplier and processor of steel, chrome moly, duplex, stainless and nickel based alloys for the Oil and Gas industry.  Howco’s worldwide investment in manufacturing and processing facilities enables them to provide an outstanding and cost-effective solution to metals and components supply around the globe.

To maintain their continued development as a leading global supplier, Howco required the benefits that a modern ERP system designed for the metals, distributing and processing industries would bring, thus allowing them to operate efficiently across many disciplines and locations.

Implementing Metalogic’s iMetal system has provided this.  iMetal is one of the leading specific ERP systems designed and developed by Metalogic explicitly to meet the unique requirements of stockholders, processors and metal service centres.

Implementation

The implementation of the metals ERP software solution, iMetal included sales quotations, purchase order processing, integrated costing, office management, process costing, production planning, stock forecasting, delivery and logistics planning, invoicing, and financials.

With iMetal, Howco now have at their disposal a flexible system that allows them easy and secure access from remote locations and the ability to create customized processes, data and documents that meet their unique business requirements. This includes custom applications and screens from within the iMetal application.  “One of our biggest challenges as a global manufacturing company was understanding our recoveries on the work that we are shipping out.  Whilst this did not impact our overall financial reporting, our previous ERP system did not give full visibility of our financial performance within specific manufacturing areas.  With the implementation of iMetal, we now fully understand our financial performance of each department and ensure all our costs are recoverable.  This knowledge allows us to focus on increasing efficiency within departments to increase profitability as well as expand in areas that are doing well.”

Through its multi-language user interface and forms iMetal has enabled them to improve their data management and maintain customer service levels.

iMetal was implemented in 14 locations in 8 countries including North America, Europe and Middle East and Asia Pacific. (MEAP). The first phase of implementation was in Canada which took place within 3 months followed by MEAP, North America and Europe within ten months.  Howco now operates over 240 licences across the group.

“One of the greatest cost savings that we saw from Metalogic came from its licensing.  Because we are a globally positioned company, we are able to have concurrent licensing allowing us to only pay for ‘active’ licenses rather than named licenses.  Initially during our RFP processes other ERP packages only allowed named licenses, which would have required 1100 user licenses.  The savings from this alone in concurrent licensing reduced our annual spend on our ERP by 50 percent”.

Howco has access to the support coverage provided by Metalogic which gives them access to a help desk from 9.00 am through to 5.30pm GMT plus out of hours support if required thus ensuring the benefit of Metalogic support services.  This effectiveness was tested recently following the severe flooding suffered in Houston earlier this year.  Should there have been a potential requirement to transfer operation from the live system to the business continuity system Metalogic staff were on hand at all times to ensure this could have been successfully completed.

Read more about the benefits of iMetal in issue 134 of Energy, Oil & Gas – July 2016

 

About Howco

Howco is the largest independent supplier and processor of steel, chrome moly, duplex, stainless and nickel based alloys for the Oil and Gas industry.  Howco’s worldwide investment in manufacturing and processing facilities enables them to provide an outstanding and cost-effective solution to metals and components supply around the globe.