MAREK is a Houston, Texas-based interior construction company that conducts operations throughout the southeastern United States. In business for 80 years, MAREK specializes as an interior contractor providing commercial and residential services to major office, healthcare, retail, sports and entertainment, arts, education, and institutional clients. Once MAREK realized they needed to upgrade their business, they turned to DSI's Cloud Inventory® platform to improve their inventory optimization. MAREK has team members and specialized tools out in the field daily, and their leadership highlighted that processes were bogged down by a manual tracking system. Oversight of their supply chain was done solely through manual inputs, which required MAREK's foremen to travel between warehouses and worksites to collect information. Their tool-tracking process was also antiquated: an employee would come into a warehouse and check out a tool by filling out a paper ticket. Since the paper tickets were the only record of tool location, it was impossible to know where inventory was in real-time. Lastly, MAREK needed a solution that would work seamlessly with their JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP system to avoid piecing together a convoluted mess that would become unmanageable in years to come.

Executives at MAREK said they ultimately chose Cloud Inventory with Field Inventory^TM - Tracker enabled because of the standard app features, mobile application development capabilities and the ability to integrate with MAREK's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP system. This allowed them to streamline their processes by establishing better supply chain visibility and increasing the oversight of asset and tool management. With Cloud Inventory, MAREK has the ability to develop and personalize apps for their specific business problems. Coupled with Field Inventory - Tracker, Cloud Inventory's two-way tool assignment confirmation stood out to MAREK leadership as a differentiating factor from other solutions. It was crucial for MAREK that employees in the field have the option to check out tools for themselves rather than have tools assigned to them. Other available solutions lacked this flexibility; they only allowed for the warehouse to assign tools to employees. With this solution in place, MAREK's employees in the field can assign tools themselves to achieve autonomy off-site.

Implementation spanned just three weeks before Cloud Inventory's tool tracking software ran smoothly in MAREK's first location. Due to the low-code platform, MAREK was then able to install the product at their other locations largely on their own. Helping enable their team to use this new platform, MAREK chose to deploy iPhones to each of its field employees to run Cloud Inventory's apps. This remedied issues stemming from the paper-based system that MAREK had previously used and put steps in place to prevent human error. Cloud Inventory also enabled MAREK to better manage the entire life cycle of their equipment. After timing the Cloud Inventory app rollout to correspond with deploying iPhones to field employees, the biggest learning curve for MAREK's employees was actually learning a new device rather than learning a new app. User adoption was almost instant once employees began working within the app, and many intuitively understood how to use the iPhone app before completing their training.

Following the implementation and successful training, MAREK is convinced Cloud Inventory with Field Inventory - Tracker was the right solution. MAREK's Procurement Director, Dan Schnippert, has claimed "We make a significant investment in new tools every year as our fleet ages and requires repairs. Managing the effective life of the equipment does have a tangible financial impact for us, and we're very excited about the opportunity to better manage that financial impact through better visibility that we'll have by using the solution."

With the implementation of Cloud Inventory apps, MAREK's ability to visually assess inventory becomes more accurate every day. MAREK has gained insight into how their employees can better manage their workforce with the ability to track which tools are in the field in real-time. Additionally, MAREK is using Cloud Inventory insights as a means to collect and use data across all branches. Branches usually operate independently, but when managing insights they will understand processes from branch to branch making more informed business decisions that will directly impact MAREK's bottom line.

For more information, visit: cloudinventory.com/ and for more success stories, visit: https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/press-release/detail/4261/Data-Systems-International-Inc