THE PROBLEM
Since 1979, Copps Industries has provided epoxy resins to civil engineering, mining, electronics and adhesive markets around the world. Its reactive polymers had countless applications, yet the company could only scale to meet market demand once it had strong process control and flexibility delivered by Deacom’s Managed Cloud Services.
Before adopting DEACOM ERP, Copps ran on dated technology coupled with a significant number of manual workarounds to fill in process gaps. A company with customers around the world, Copps relied on people to deliver scalable and repeatable processes and, as a result, had to limit the volume of SKUs so it was manageable for their small team. In addition, Copps was saddled with an outdated disk operating system (DOS) that no longer supported its business needs and employees struggled with managing a paper trail of documents.
Copps also endured the retirement of two 20+ year veterans, who took with them their skills and processes when they left the company. This led to issues with process control and even onboarding and educating new employees. Copps Industries needed a solution that would tighten process control, scale with its business, and centralize information so that anyone could access it, at any time.
In order to overcome these challenges, Copps needed to upgrade to a more robust cloud-based offering. The company was in search of a solution that would allow them to easily scale their business, ensure process control and centralize information. Copps outgrew the existing ways of working and needed a solution that would provide the flexibility they needed to improve productivity and efficiency
THE SOLUTION
Copps explored several solutions and, after thorough consideration, selected DEACOM ERP, a comprehensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for global manufacturers and distributors worldwide, in 2008. Twelve years later, the company upgraded their system to Deacom’s Managed Cloud Services (MCS).
Deacom’s MCS provides Copps employees with fast access to the data they needed to perform their jobs securely, reliably, and without worry. Copps began to migrate to the cloud and run a full DEACOM upgrade in October 2019 and was fully operational by February 2020. Better still, the switch to the cloud allowed Copps to completely eliminate the need for what was once a necessary expense: outside IT support
to maintain the server.
“We went live with Managed Cloud Services in February 2020, mere weeks before the world changed in March. Deacom’s MCS made it possible to transition to remote work without missing a beat. We were able to continue using the same functionality and data that we would have had at our office.”
Chris Wood, VP of Operations
With DEACOM, Copps employees now access everything they need digitally. Likewise, Deacom’s Managed Cloud Services solved a universal issue of how to best provide vital information to employees. Before DEACOM, this process was very people-dependent and relied on a bit of tribal knowledge. Now anyone on staff can get the answers they need when they need them without having to bog down a colleague with endless questions.
Today, Copps has relied on Deacom’s ERP solution for 13 years. Approximately 91% of the company’s staff uses DEACOM on a daily basis. The number of Copps employees who use the software has increased by 44% in the last two years.
In addition to all of the anticipated outcomes, Copps quickly learned that it had deployed Deacom’s MCS at precisely the right moment. The world turned upside down as the COVID-19 pandemic surfaced mere weeks after the cloud migration was complete. By switching to Deacom’s MCS, Copps not only prepared the company for further growth, but it successfully moved to remote work without scrambling or the need to deploy makeshift solutions.
“Deacom also offered outstanding training and support to make the transition to cloud very easy for us.”
Chris Wood, VP of Operations
THE RESULTS
Greater efficiencies have also delivered great success. Deacom has provided Copps with better process control to more efficiently scale their business and unparalleled savings in operational costs and IT expenses, including:
- Copps Industries’ sales have tripled since going live with Deacom in 2008
- Copps experienced a 20% reduction in outside IT support just by moving to the cloud version of DEACOM
- Copps now has peace of mind knowing that its DEACOM database and backups are in the hands of experts
- Deacom users within Copps have increased by 44% over the last two years
- Copps active customers have more than doubled (400 customers) in 27 countries since going live with Deacom in 2008
- Copps SKUs have increased by 500%, reaching 1500 SKUs today
“Before DEACOM ERP, employees could expect a pile of paper on their desk. Now everything is accessible in DEACOM, which allows all of us to know where every order is at all times.”
Chris Wood, VP of Operations
Deacom will also continue to power Copps as it expands to a new facility at the end of 2021 with the goal of bringing several functions under one roof. The facility will consolidate two current Copps facilities (manufacturing and warehouse) and two external third-party warehouses. Scanning and barcoding in DEACOM will be a key upgrade to help Copps become more efficient in the new plant.
