TRENDS & TECHNOLOGY
Digitization Making Progress in the Gases and Welding Industry BY J.R. (BUZZ) CAMPBELL, KEN THOMPSON, MAURA GARVEY OF INTELLIGAS CONSULTING
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ver 700 GAWDA members have returned from May 2021’s Nashville SMC meeting highly motivated and charged with enthusiasm from an extremely successful reunion. This, after a challenging year of individual work and Zoom meetings. Over 240 distributors, 340 suppliers and more than 105 Contact Booths, all willing to face some continuing risk from COVID to bring normalcy back to GAWDA. In addition to handshakes and face-to-face exchanges, GAWDA delivered on its promise of content and a rich program. Utilizing the enormous amount of inside industry talent, the GAWDA Management Team offered 15 separate Learning Tracks, each choreographed by experienced and talented volunteers from our membership. Attendees were able to select three tracks, covering topics relating to family ownership succession plans and options, cultural growth, team building, and a cross section of managing disruptions of many varieties and descriptions. Fully a third of the offerings focused on the digitization of many aspects of our businesses. This article will be on those segments. All gases and welding (G&W) distribution verticals are under intense pressure to adjust to an increasingly automated economy that seamlessly manages all interactions from marketing and from production of goods and services, through delivery, administration & control, and financing through the supply chain to the end-customer. We have chosen the five Learning Track presentations demonstrating the digitization of our business to briefly summarize below. Will Roberts, President of Roberts Oxygen Company, presented “Make Your Computers & Machines Do the Work.” Will walked his audience through the Roberts journey to remove as much paper as possible from every transactional point and function. When automated internally as well as with those functions facing the customer and trading partners - hours saved, costs reduced, and efficiencies gained can all 98 • Summer 2021
be measured. Will convincingly showed that automating the wide range of processes in the supply chain improves every aspect of performance from order-taking, product delivery, invoicing, and payment. Red Ball Oxygen’s Craig Harris, Senior Vice President of Operations, presented “Keeping Score in Distribution” discussing the role of digital technology in successful filling, mixing, delivering, and recording complex elements of gases operations. Fill room operations, specialty gases formulations and recipes, blending and incubating data are all integrated into the new Red Ball ERP Platform. That includes telemetry at the user site tied to perpetual or vendor managed inventories, cylinder and asset tracking, as well as distribution software managing delivery driver/truck routing and a service disruption occurrence. Craig showed some experiences from a trucking safety view and some interesting software tracked examples of distracted driving that led to improved distribution management. Colleen Kohler, President of Noble Gas Solutions said, “We Now Get CRM!” and described a litany of benefits gained through implementing a sophisticated CRM (Customer Relations Management) platform. She stressed the fact that data is key to any successful business understanding and operation; and that recording the information regarding customer preferences, responses, and actions and then displaying it across our company’s organization permits the entire team to better focus on quality customer service and often reducing costs. It also creates more effective market intelligence and keeps the sales team geared up for retention of existing business and the creation of new profitable accounts. Dave Healzer, Cee Kay Supply’s Director of Procurement, addressed the daunting task of “Changing Your ERP Without Taking Years Off Your Life.” Selecting and implementing a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Platform is never a pleasant experience even under the best of circumstances. However, Cee Kay management recognized that their business model
