Customer Success Story : Holly Oak Chemical
How ECI's Deacom ERP helped Holly Oak Chemical resolve production floor bottlenecks
About Holly Oak Chemical
Founded in South Carolina in 1978, Holly Oak Chemical developed custom-formulated products to a once-booming textile industry in Southeastern US. As the textile industry shifted production out of America, Holly Oak Chemical evolved its business practices by taking on tolling contracts. The manufacturer now specialises in custom toll manufacturing for some of the world’s largest brands producing lubricants, coolants, adhesives, coatings, and specialty blends for industries ranging from automotive to water treatment.
formulations digitally managed in one secure place.
vessels managed across three city blocks.
litres of liquid production tracked monthly.
The business challenge
As Holly Oak Chemical grew, so did its complexity. With every new formulation came new spreadsheets, siloed modules, and countless manual steps between production, accounting, and quality control.
Before Deacom, Holly Oak had invested in software that forced them to use some manual processes, requiring data to be printed, scrubbed in Excel, and re-entered. This inefficiency underscored their need for an all-in-one ERP system that connected sales, production, shipping, and finance.
“We were living with a broken system for years,” recalls James Cashion, III, Executive Vice President of Holly Oak Chemical. “Departments couldn’t talk to each other, and we were spending valuable time re-entering data instead of managing production.” The older, disconnected system slowed the team down and limited their ability to scale, creating costly “bottlenecks” on the production floor.
The Deacom ERP Solution
When it came time to replace their aging system, Holly Oak Chemical sought an ERP that could connect the entire business: from purchasing and inventory to formulation and production, all-in-one automated solution.
After comparing multiple platforms, Deacom ERP was chosen due to its transparent pricing, single-system design, and proven industry expertise in batch and process manufacturing.
“Deacom gives us exactly what we need: a single system that sees everything...accounting talks to inventory, inventory talks to production, and all the numbers add up.”
Implementation took approximately 18 months and was supported by a dedicated Deacom team that supported the migration of data and created key workflows, including double-blind shipping and integrated safety data sheets, which are now features integrated into the Deacom platform and available for all customers.
The business results
Today, Holly Oak’s entire operation runs on Deacom—from managing more than 80 vessels to tracking more than 1M litres of monthly liquid production across disconnected facilities spread across three city blocks. With single-system visibility, Holly Oak Chemical has significantly increased both production output and sales without needing additional staff.
“This kind of efficiency is a game-changer...we used to spend hours chasing paperwork or data in different modules but now I can see production, inventory, and accounting instantly—and everything matches.”
Why it matters for Holly Oak’s Customers
Deacom ERP offers flexibility and precision, both of which are essential capabilities for custom chemical manufacturers. Holly Oak now manages thousands of formulations per customer and maintains every document, from batch sheets to QC reports, linked directly to each job. This means that Holly Oak can pull up the lot record within seconds if there is a customer query.
“It used to take an hour just to find the right file. With Deacom, we can call up documents on a lot number in a heartbeat. ”
Beyond time savings, Deacom ERP software supports ISO compliance, strengthens quality assurance and control measures, and ensures audit-ready information that's tied to safety and quality documents.
From disconnected processes and data to unified operations, Holly Oak Chemical resolved issues with production floor bottlenecks by adopting the all-in-one Deacom ERP system made specifically for chemical batch manufacturers.
Want to see what Deacom can do for your business?