In 12 months, Custom Industrial Coatings recouped the cost of Mar-Kov’s ERP platform by giving employees instant access to the accurate, real-time data they depend on to manage their business and improve their cash flow.

“With Mar-Kov’s financial reports and data, we’re never flying blind because we have the information we need for analysis, planning and forecasting – Mar-Kov provides precise, real-time numbers for sales, finished goods, orders, raw materials and more—everything that affects our company,” says Lymon Liu, director of operations /purchasing, Custom Industrial Coatings (CIC).

On a daily basis, employees use Mar-Kov’s reports and data to handle every aspect of CIC’s business from tracking raw material inventory to purchasing, production, shipping and invoicing. Employees see customer orders and raw material inventory, so they know exactly how much they need to manufacture and whether they have sufficient ingredients in-stock.
“Cash flow is better because we’re never out-of-stock or overstocked and we have what we need to produce and ship on-time,” says Lymon.

Since 2022, Mar-Kov has played a role in every CIC employee’s work life! Every day, employees use features such as the set viewers, and customized and standard reports to analyze costs, plan and forecast.
“Mar-Kov’s capabilities are all equally important to CIC and reflect the fact our departments are cross-functional and depend on each other and the reports we share to run the business,” says Lymon.

50% Less Time on Manual Data Entry

With Mar-Kov’s platform and single, centralized database, it takes CIC’s 35 to 40 employees just a few seconds and a couple of clicks to find the data they need to make business decisions. CIC also benefits because employees spend up to 50% less time on manual data entry which means they can focus on more value-added tasks.

“With Mar-Kov, we’re all on the same page because we’re using identical data from Mar-Kov’s one database rather than moving between different datasets and across multiple platforms,” says Lymon.

CIC and its employees really appreciate Mar-Kov’s straightforward, streamlined functionality and the intuitive user experience. Senior leaders assessed a variety of platforms, for example SAP, but quickly discovered they were too generic with broad rather than manufacturer-specific functionality. Some platforms were also prohibitively expensive for CIC with an extraordinary range of capabilities and features.

“Mar-Kov was obviously designed by people that really understand manufacturing and the features manufacturers need to run their businesses,” says Lymon. “To us, so many of their competitors’ features were just more fluff and we don’t want to pay for capabilities we don’t need and would never use.”

Mar-Kov replaced Sage, which handled formulations, batch tickets, purchasing and purchase orders but not shipping and invoicing. While CIC used Assaya for shipping, employees also used the various shipping carriers’ proprietary platforms/websites.

“Everything we could possibly need is in Mar-Kov where it’s synchronized and fully integrated – Mar-Kov connects the dots so our employees don’t have to,” says Lymon.