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Computerworld - Many companies still haven't recovered from last year's hurricanes. United Pipe & Supply Co., however, managed to keep growing despite supply shortages.

The storm shut down chemical plants along the Gulf Coast that produce the plastic resin used for making PVC pipe. For most pipe dealers, that meant coping with soaring prices, if they could even find pipe to buy. United Pipe & Supply, however, found it could use its business intelligence software to maintain its supply lines by ordering only the exact items it needed at a given point in time.

United Pipe & Supply Co.

This privately held wholesale pipe, pump and hardware distributor is based in Portland, Ore., with 31 branches in the Pacific Northwest and $200 million in annual sales. •  Project champions: Ed Kolasinski, president; Cheryl Summers, controller; Mike Green, CIO and vice president of operations •  IT department: 10 employees •  Payback: By conducting critical-item analyses of its inventory and supplying that data to its suppliers, United Pipe & Supply was able to continue serving its customers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

"I did some quick analysis in FileMaker and made some decisions on how much product to purchase, from whom, where to ship it from and how to keep track of that," says Dan Kraxberger, purchasing vice president. He customized a report to generate a critical-items analysis. He then sent the analysis to each vendor, so they knew exactly which items were most needed. The data was continually updated based on vendor feedback. "Where everybody else was asking to just ship them everything, we were saying that if you can just ship us these items, it will work out," Kraxberger says.

As a result, while competitors were running out of stock, United Pipe was able to keep its regular customers supplied. Instead of a disaster, the company had record-setting months during that time period.

United Pipe & Supply has transformed many aspects of its business operations using BI software. The company's pretax profit margin increased from 1.5% in 2003 to 4.7% in 2005, and in the past two years, its income before tax has risen from $2 million to $8.2 million.

"We have raised the bar on the performance of the company," says Mike Green, United Pipe's CIO and vice president of operations. "We are growing the company, but we are also squeezing more to the bottom line through the use of these tools." While he doesn't attribute the improvements solely to the