Customer Success Story : Holly Oak Chemical
How Deacom Helped Holly Oak Chemical Resolve Production Floor Bottlenecks
About Holly Oak Chemical
Holly Oak Chemical was founded in South Carolina in 1978 to provide custom-formulated products to a once-booming textile industry located in the Southeastern United States. As the textile industry started to move production out of the American market, Holly Oak Chemical adapted by taking on tolling contracts. Since then, Holly Oak Chemical has specialized 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.
pounds 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 connects 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, they chose Deacom ERP because of its transparent pricing, single-system design, and proven industry expertise in batch and process manufacturing.
“Deacom gave us exactly what we needed: 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, supported by a dedicated Deacom team that helped the company migrate data and create key workflows, including double-blind shipping and integrated safety data sheets, which are features now integrated into the Deacom platform for all customers.
The business results
Today, Holly Oak’s entire operation runs on Deacom—from managing over 80 vessels to tracking more than 2,000,000 pounds of monthly liquid production across disconnected facilities spread over three city blocks. With the single-system visibility, Holly Oak Chemical has significantly increased transactions, growing both production output and sales without the additional staff that would have been required with the old ERP system.
“Having this kind of efficiency has been a game-changer...We used to spend hours chasing paperwork or data in different modules. Now, I can see production, inventory, and accounting instantly—and everything matches.”
Why it matters for Holly Oak’s Customers
For a custom chemical manufacturer where flexibility and precision are essential, Deacom ERP provides both. Holly Oak now manages thousands of formulations per customer and keeps every document, from batch sheets to QC reports, linked directly to the job. If a customer calls with a question, James can pull up the lot record within seconds.
“With Deacom, we can call up documents on a lot number in a heartbeat while on the phone with our customers,” he says. “It used to take an hour just to find the right file.”
Beyond time savings, Deacom supports ISO compliance, strengthens quality assurance, and keeps the company audit-ready with accurate information tied to safety and quality documents.
From disconnected processes and data to unified operations, Holly Oak Chemical found the cure for production floor bottlenecks: an all-in-one Deacom ERP system made specifically for chemical batch manufacturers.
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