The Top Line
Titan Coatings International needed to replace their aging software. With Mar-Kov’s paint and coatings manufacturing software they now have:
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Fully supported, cloud based solution.
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All recipes securely stored and backed up.
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Full view of inventory and instant material requirements planning.
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Automatic data entry into QuickBooks.
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Instant generation of key reports to analyze the financial health of the company.
Our formulas are the very foundation of our business and we like knowing they can’t get lost or corrupted, Mar-Kov’s ability to store and instantly access everything from finished goods batch numbers to raw material inventory, and chemical specifications really sold us because it gives us complete control and transparency
— Stephanie Kelly, Quality Manager, Titan Coatings International
Mar-Kov MRP Delivers 24-Hour ROI & Boosts Profits by 30%
Stephanie Kelly, Titan’s quality manager, likes every single thing about Mar-Kov’s batch control MRP software, from the same-day ROI and 30% profitability increase to the peace-of-mind that comes with knowing the data Titan needs to operate is safe and secure in the cloud.
“Robust, reliable and fully supported, Mar-Kov effectively replaced our retiring office manager and allowed us to carefully control costs to maximize profitability,” says Stephanie, who had been spending two hours a day on data entry and backup before Mar-Kov. “No one knew how to repair the legacy software we’d purchased back in the 1980s and the peace of mind, control and efficiency I get with Mar-Kov really is priceless.”
With the QuickBooks-compatible Mar-Kov software, the entire Titan team has absolute faith in the accuracy and integrity of all of the data they need to run the company. Mar-Kov tracks the purchase orders, raw material inventory and production schedules and that information is accessible anytime, anywhere.
Cost Control Delivers 30% Increase in Profitability
On an ongoing basis, Titan uses Mar-Kov’s incredibly detailed sales reports to assess the cost of manufacturing its various products and analyze the resulting profit margins. Titan also customized Mar-Kov reports to highlight raw material costs and its 50 suppliers’ respective impact on its profit margins. As a result, Titan was motivated to source alternative suppliers and better manage drum deposits, price changes, freight and more.
Titan typically pays a $10 to $15 deposit per drum, with some deposits as high as $25. Mar-Kov sales reports tell Stephanie that drums need to be returned to get that cash back because drum returns sometimes slip through the cracks. Likewise, Mar-Kov shows Titan how freight charges affect total raw material costs so that Titan employees can make more informed purchasing decisions. With Mar-Kov, Titan can easily monitor price increases or decreases, which tend to fluctuate about 5%, because just a few cents per pound really adds up when you’re buying 515,000+ lbs of raw material annually.
“Fortunately, I can rely on Mar-Kov because even though I’m incredibly detail oriented, I don’t have the time or energy required to tackle what Mar-Kov can accomplish in seconds,” says Stephanie, whose five years in the military reinforced her already deep respect for the value of detail.
While Titan has focused on the cost of the raw materials and their impact on profit margins, Mar-Kov sales reports can also track revenue, cost to manufacture, and
margin/profit by customer, geographic region, product category and more. Companies can then opt to increase the customer price on a product, reformulate the product to reduce the cost, eliminate the product or as Titan did, source alternative raw material suppliers.
Mar-Kov instantly provides everything Titan needs for daily operations, including the batch tickets that Mar-Kov readily adapted to accommodate Titan’s highly customized formulas. After inputting every one of its 500+ formulas into Mar-Kov, Titan managers and employees know they’re secure and available in the cloud.
“Our formulas are the very foundation of our business and we like knowing they can’t get lost or corrupted, Mar-Kov’s ability to store and instantly access everything from finished goods batch numbers to raw material inventory, and chemical specifications really sold us because it gives us complete control and transparency
– Stephanie Kelly, Quality Manager, Titan Coatings International
Raw Material Management Guarantees Just-In-Time Production
Once production manufactures the batching orders, Mar-Kov automatically adjusts the raw material inventory to reflect the recent consumption. Titan, a just-in-time manufacturer, now depends on Mar-Kov to track raw material inventory and create replacement orders if future production demands it. As soon as the paints and coatings are shipped to Titan’s customers, Mar-Kov automatically generates and e-mails invoices based on the original purchase order.
“Mar-Kov makes sure we have the raw materials we need to accommodate our customers’ short lead times,” says Stephanie, who credits Mar-Kov with freeing her to fully focus on customers and product quality. “I can quickly check the Mar-Kov reports and get more detailed, accurate information than I ever could walking through our warehouse and plant every morning.
Because Mar-Kov and QuickBooks are compatible and fully integrated, Titan employees now enter the data into Mar-Kov which automatically exports it to QuickBooks. Employees no longer have to enter identical data twice, which was an inefficient use of employees’ time and capabilities and doubled the possibility of data-entry errors. While Mar-Kov will never replace QuickBooks, it handles everything but the “core accounting functions” such as accounts payable, accounts receive and general ledger.
With Mar-Kov, key records and transactions are integrated to QuickBooks, including: item records; vendor and customer records; vendor bills/invoices; customer invoices; inventory asset valuation, cost of goods sold. As importantly, Mar-Kov handles the Actual Costing and calculates the true value of the manufactured product. Mar-Kov also computes and tracks the inventory value movement from raw material to finished goods and posts it to QuickBooks. In addition, Mar-Kov automatically generates and emails invoices and Titan has found Mar-Kov’s invoicing is faster and easier than QuickBooks
“Mar-Kov invoices are more professional-looking than QuickBooks’ invoices and the Mar-Kov team customized our invoices to reflect our brand identity so that we didn’t have to do it ourselves as would have been the case with QuickBooks,” says Stephanie.
Titan decided to pay a monthly subscription fee per user for cloud-based services, which makes the best financial sense for companies that have reliable internet access but don’t have their own IT infrastructure and server and related support services. An enterprise software, Mar-Kov ensures all users are working with identical data, such as formulas and orders. It also records any changes made, the identity of the users that made the changes, and the time and date of the changes.
“Mar-Kov gives Titan transparency, traceability and accountability with everything from our formulas to our quality and environmental tests and results,” says Stephanie. “There are no surprises and that’s the way we like it.”
Stephanie and Titan also appreciated the fact Mar-Kov’s Canadian employees personally provide all of the support its clients will ever need rather than outsourcing to overseas call centres.
“That in-house, local support is crucial to Titan because we depend on Mar-Kov’s
software to keep our raw material inventory at the levels required to keep our production lines running so that we meet customers’ expectations,” says Stephanie.
“Mar-Kov handles the time-consuming, mundane admin tasks while we focus on running Titan. Coatings International ”
– Stephanie Kelly, Quality Manager, Titan