Global Supply Chain Restructuring

Background

Steel & Pipe Corp operated SAP Business One alongside a custom warehouse management system, four departmental spreadsheets, and a legacy procurement tool. Data moved between systems via nightly CSV exports.

The operations team spent an estimated 12 hours per week reconciling inventory counts across platforms. Finance closed monthly books with a 9-day lag. The original assessment report outlined these gaps in detail — see the full audit on our blog for methodology.

Challenge

Three core problems surfaced during the discovery phase:

1. Inventory visibility was fragmented — no single source of truth across 3 warehouses and 2 production sites.
2. Order-to-cash cycle averaged 14 days, with manual handoffs between sales, warehouse, and accounting.
3. Existing WMS could not support the planned warehouse expansion in Jeddah without a full rewrite.

We were spending more time reconciling data than acting on it. Every decision carried a 48-hour information delay.

— VP Operations, Steel & Pipe Corp

Approach

TDM X led a 14-week phased migration from legacy systems to Odoo 17 Enterprise:

Phase 1 — Discovery & data audit

Mapped all data flows, identified 47 integration points, and flagged 12 critical data quality issues in the existing SAP export pipeline. Built a migration plan with rollback checkpoints at each module boundary.

Key deliverables

• Data flow mapping across all 6 systems
• Integration point inventory (47 connections documented)
• Data quality scorecard with 12 critical issues flagged
• Migration plan with module-level rollback checkpoints

Phase 2 — Core ERP deployment

Deployed Inventory, Sales, Purchase, and Accounting modules. Migrated 84,000 SKUs, 11,000 customer records, and 3 years of transaction history. Ran parallel operations for 2 weeks before cutover.

This phase also included custom workflow automation for the procurement approval chain — a requirement unique to Steel & Pipe's multi-entity structure.

Phase 3 — WMS & manufacturing

Replaced the custom WMS with Odoo Barcode + Inventory. Configured manufacturing routes for the 2 production lines. Integrated IoT weight-check stations at receiving docks.

Results

Six months post-launch, the measurable impact:

• -45% inventory holding costs — real-time stock visibility eliminated safety-stock overordering
• Order-to-cash: 14 → 4 days — automated flows from quotation to invoice
• Monthly close: 9 → 2 days — unified chart of accounts with automated reconciliation
• 6 systems → 1 — eliminated SAP B1, custom WMS, 3 spreadsheets, legacy procurement

The migration paid for itself in the first quarter. That almost never happens with ERP projects this size.

Technical notes

For those evaluating a similar migration, a few lessons learned:

1. Parallel operations are non-negotiable — run both systems for at least 2 weeks before cutover.
2. Data quality must be addressed before migration, not after. Garbage in, garbage out.
3. Change management is 60% of the effort. The technical migration is the easy part.

Read more about our implementation methodology or explore Odoo capabilities.

What's next

Steel & Pipe Corp is now evaluating Odoo Manufacturing MES integration for real-time production tracking, and a Slimstock overlay for demand forecasting across their distribution network. Both projects are scoped for Q1 2027.