Founded in 2003, Cladtek has grown to become the world’s largest manufacturer of weld overlay corrosion resistant alloy (CRA) products, and a global leader in CRA mechanically lined pipe (MLP). Cladtek products are used around the globe and by some of the world’s most respected operators in the oil and gas industry including Adnoc Group, Aramco, Chevron, Exxon, Petrobras, and Shell. Cladtek counts most of the world’s leading oil and gas industry contractors and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) as its customers.
With headquarters in Singapore, Cladtek’s global operations include production facilities in Batam, Indonesia, and Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. A new production facility is currently being established in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Cladtek also has a major regional of ce in the UAE.
Cladtek originally utilised a number of home-grown systems to support financial, procurement, and production functions. As systems were largely developed in-house and relied on manual data entry, they worked independently with no built-in integration across operations and were growing increasingly difficult to manage and maintain. It was difficult to access data and the systems were not used efficiently. With further growth targeted, the company recognised the need for a consolidated and integrated system and the benefits that better access to and use of data would bring.
Paul Montague, director of Cladtek Group, says, “Having expanded our business beyond initial facilities—and with multiple projects, processes, and products running in parallel—we recognised there were many opportunities where more or better data would offer improvements in quality and production across the business. We needed a system that would allow us to better control our operations, give us greater access to data, and allow us to make informed business decisions from any location at any time.”
The company knew its global expansion plan was not sustainable without a comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that would provide the management team with insight into every aspect of the business. The decision to implement an ERP system capable of integrating the data generated by all departments and geographies of the company in one single place was fundamentally important to the company’s future.
“Epicor made a huge effort to understand our individual business needs—giving us the con dence that it was able to implement the system in line with our specific requirements. The user-friendly interface and adaptability of the Epicor ERP system were also appealing to us, as user adoption is critical to the success of the project,” says Montague. He adds, “Epicor also offers access to a good support team who are committed to the process of implementation and who are proactive and flexible with regards to managing costs.”
The eight-month implementation period for the Epicor ERP solution allowed Cladtek and the Epicor team to ensure the ERP system was integrated across all its locations and departments. As a result, information is now available in real time, online, and integrated across all departments—allowing staff to foresee potential problems and prevent them from occurring in the rst place. In addition, they are able to respond quickly when changes are necessary, so they can be twice as responsive to ever-increasing customer demands, market changes, and 24/7 business pressures.
Financial information is more accurate and transparent, and allows the management team to have better visibility of the overall business operations. Montague explains, “With real- time financial data and full visibility into the organisation, our management team is empowered to make better decisions and achieve sustainable growth. We are also more con dent in meeting the global demands of our customers.”
The latest support features for multiple data sources in Epicor ERP are expected to realise even further bene ts for Cladtek. With the means to publish dashboards on mobile devices and Microsoft SharePoint sites for improved collaboration, different departments and locations are able to better work together to deliver first-class performance and standards across the business. Montague says, “Real-time global knowledge and collaboration is part of our future success and we look forward to working with Epicor to deliver optimised technology that really supports our business requirements.”
“With Epicor ERP software in place, we can focus on our customers and our business, con dent that our underlying systems and data management can be relied on to fully support our goals,” concludes Montague.