Welding customers rarely think in your part numbers. A manufacturer has its own item numbers for every spool of wire and box of tips in its ERP. A fab shop calls things by the job: "the wire for the trailer frames," "the tips for booth three." A contractor's purchasing department buys off a material list written by an estimator who may never have struck an arc.
The easier you make it to order with their language, the more they'll order from you, and the fewer wrong items you'll ship.
Order with the customer's own numbers
With customer part numbers, the customer orders using its own item numbers and the app matches each one to your item. The plant's buyer types the number from his ERP. The shop's foreman pastes a list from a job's bill of materials. Your counter never has to translate.
For multi-plant manufacturers, set the cross-references on a master account and every location inherits them. A location can override the master when one plant runs a different wire or gun.
My Catalog keeps the exact item
Welding consumables look alike and aren't interchangeable. A contact tip for one gun won't seat in another. A nozzle with the wrong bore or stick-out spatters up and shortens tip life. Wire from one manufacturer might run differently in a robotic cell than the one the procedure was set up with. My Catalog shows everything the customer has ever ordered from you, so the reorder is the item that's been proven on the job, not the one that looks the same.
It's also how a new foreman or buyer learns what the shop actually uses, without asking the welder who's been there twenty years. When that welder retires, the shop's proven list of wire, rod, tips and cups doesn't leave with him.
Convert a competitor's cabinet by scanning it
A lot of the welding business you want is sitting in a competitor's consumables cabinet or vending machine, with their labels on every drawer. Converting it usually means a rep writing down every item and building a cross by hand.
The app lets your rep scan another distributor's bin label, from Fastenal, Imperial and others, and get your matching item. The cross-reference table holds every competitor part number matched to yours, and cross-reference progress shows how many items are crossed to each competitor and what's in progress.
A conversion that works:
- Scan the competitor labels on the highest-use drawers first: tips, nozzles, wire and abrasives.
- Let the app match what it can, and have your counter expert cross the rest by hand, checking gun model and thread.
- Where a filler metal swap affects a welding procedure, confirm with the shop's welding engineer or supervisor before switching.
- Print your own labels for every converted drawer, with the customer's item numbers on them.
When an item can't be matched, it goes to purchasing as a quote request instead of a guess.
Why this wins accounts
Welding customers don't switch suppliers just for a lower price on tips. They worry about the job that's welding fine today and about anything that could cause a failed weld or a rejected part. A conversion that keeps their numbers, matches their proven consumables and respects their procedures takes most of that worry off the table, and makes you the easy choice.
Want to see it with your own welding catalog? See how it works.