By Barney Beal, Content Director

PODS, the provider of portable moving containers that can be seen across the country, only seems to get more ubiquitous. The company’s iconic white and red containers were even seen on the White House lawn recently, when President Donald Trump had some remodeling done and elected to use the containers for spare storage.

PODS was founded in Clearwater, Fla. by Peter Warhurst, a fireman who was inspired to provide a storage solution for families whose homes were impacted by fire. He thought, “Let’s bring the storage center to them.”

But, in many ways, it started as a technology company. Co-founder Bob Timberlake had written a system in Visual Basic for Florida’s Emergency Dispatch that allowed the state to dispatch technicians and route them to the right location. That technology was later used to request and route containers as part of the PODS system.

“Tech has always been a part of our platform,” said Bill Tingle, PODS’ CIO.  

As PODS redefined the moving and storage industry with portable containers that could be left onsite, it underwent tremendous growth. It now has a network of more than 190,000 PODS containers and 230 secure PODS Storage Centers in North America alone – and has fulfilled more than 3 million deliveries.

PODS continues to grow and has, expanded into new geographies and has branched out into the commercial market. Aware that the technology that contributed to the company’s initial growth was not going to support further expansion, PODS determined it needed a new ERP software platform.

After a rigorous evaluation process that included a requirements matrix with 3,000 line items, according to Tingle, PODS selected NetSuite. NetSuite’s flexible platform built for the cloud will allow PODS to not only support the company’s ambitious growth plans but also support continuous business process improvements. It plans to implement the system in 2018.

 “I’m excited about the opportunities NetSuite will present in customer service,” Tingle said. “Having a single view of the customer will give us the ability, when a customer reaches out to us, to recognize who they are and the business they’ve done in the past so we can provide a personalized, relevant contextualized experience.”

Learn more about how companies like PODS are using SuiteSuccess to move their business forward.