Background:

There are many different service levels that commercial blasting companies deliver to their customers, ranging from the sale of products up to total load service and rock-on-ground. Blasting companies often sell raw materials and products to customers as they arrive at the site but remain responsible for the customer-owned stock until consumed in blasting.

Challenge:

Once products are sold to customers, most blasting companies cannot track stock levels in their primary ERP systems. They then must resort to Excel spreadsheets which are prone to errors. Data is often not validated during data entry, and discrepancies can go undetected for weeks. This can result in product stockouts or issues with regulators, potentially severely affecting the customer’s operation. Lastly, users on-site find it challenging to identify and separate business-owned and customer-owned materials, which makes stocktakes and material reconciliation very challenging. Arrowtail had to design a robust and auditable solution that allows streamlined reporting and integration with primary ERP systems for the blasting company and its customers.

Solution:

The Arrowtail team developed the solution around essential business processes with a daily reconciliation of key site materials independent of the service model. This was further enhanced with an extensive suite of reports to ensure complete reconciliation of all on-site materials, including bulk raw materials and customer-owned materials. Custom-made reports, such as End-of-Shift reports, allows full compliance with contractual and regulatory requirements.

Benefit:

The Arrowtail team applied its extensive experience blasting material stock management to deliver an out-of-the-box stock management process. This, in turn, allows onsite resources to focus on providing an outstanding service instead of repetitive administration tasks and reports. Every transaction is fully auditable across the system and provides a single source of truth for all stakeholders. Additional integration is possible with any other business system capable of integration used by the blasting company and its customers.