In Mattoon, Illinois, surrounded by cornfields and simple living, Hershey's Metal Meister, a leading metal forming manufacturer, is making an impact in the trim-folding world. They have accomplished an impressive feat: in just a few years, they have grown their revenue to 28 million, and don’t show signs of slowing down.
Embracing Rapid Growth
Hershey’s was founded to fill a service gap in the trim folding industry. Their founder had his start in metal forming shop himself, but became increasingly frustrated with the lack of service quality, making it difficult for him to deliver to his customers the metal components they needed, when they needed it.
With long wait times for European parts and messy communication with farmed-out service teams that often did not understand the need, the industry was ripe for disruption.
With that in mind, Hershey’s took a different approach. By bringing European technology to American soil, they’ve ensured their customers have quick access to parts, and with an in-house service team their customers know that when a call comes in someone is ready to hop in a van and get out to their location. Their team has deep knowledge about all aspects of trim folding, and they prioritize innovative design and excellent customer service.
That level of customer focus is difficult to maintain, especially with aggressive growth. Knowing they were not going to slow down, Hershey’s made the decision in 2011 to partner with Koble.
“As we grew, we found that we could no longer just yell across the hall to get the information we needed. With the addition of so many employees, EBMS has helped us keep everyone informed and up-to-date.” Jake Hoenes, COO.
Choosing an ERP Partner Early to Support that Growth
Hershey’s knew they needed a strong and comprehensive business management system to connect their processes and bring their business data into one spot. They learned about Koble from some of their other business connections who also worked with EBMS, and knew that they’d be getting a tried and true system that would eliminate tedious manual data entry and unify their business processes, so their employees could stay focused on serving customers.
“The reason EBMS is perfect for us is that it keeps all the information the same from the proposal all the way through the manufacturing batch and final delivery. No one is copying anything down from sheets of paper. Everything is done in one piece of software.”
However, for Hershey’s, it was not enough for the software alone to be robust. A top ERP partner also needed to train and support the Hershey team to ensure their employees had what they needed from the system to bless their customers.
“Koble’s mindset for serving their customers is as high a priority for them as it is for us. With Koble there’s always a friendly voice, someone that’s being incredibly helpful with a servant mentality to take care of our needs quickly and accurately.”
From 10 to over 40 Employees
When they initially partnered with Koble in 2011, Hershey’s was still a pretty small shop. At first, they primarily used EBMS to manage their back office and accounting. But they had their eyes on a much bigger future, and their early investment in EBMS proved to be a strategic move – as their growth ramped up they didn’t need to slow down operations to make a massive systems change. They had what they needed already with EBMS. And with over 40 employees, using a system that is already familiar means less training time and more time spent doing the work for their growing customer base.
From proposal to delivery, EBMS now supports their employees through their entire workflow and in every customer interaction. Where before they would have to hope that the sales representative was quoting correctly, they now are able to reference specific products and current data to quote with confidence. Where before employees who needed that information from various departments would have to go through several different people to find it, all employees are able to access the raw data for themselves, empowering employees to get their work done better and faster. No time wasted trying to read someone’s chicken scratch, reduced opportunity for human error, and what used to be a long process of checking and calling and double checking now is whittled down to the click of a button.
From job costing support, to inventory management, to dashboards and reports that help them make data-driven decisions about the future, EBMS was able to grow with them, helping them build momentum at a crucial stage of their business journey.
“We’ve learned that EBMS can do everything that we need it to do as an all in one ERP system.”
Taking Effectiveness and Efficiency to the Next Level
But they’re not done yet. While EBMS custom fields allow them to independently shape the software to their needs and their specific processes, Hershey's also appreciates the closer partnership with Koble consultants who are eager to partner with customers to ensure the software is working for them, and not the other way around.
“We don’t know what we don’t know, or even the questions to ask. So the visit from the Koble Consultant helped us identify areas for improvement and got the ball rolling on addressing them with the software in ways we weren’t previously doing.”
They recently had a Koble Consultant join them for an on-site to dive more deeply into their current processes. Following that visit, they are excited to roll out some additional features that will solve some process pain points. As a result of this visit, they now feel confident they can move payroll into EBMS (allowing them to stop paying for an additional third party vendor) and are excited to implement mobile barcode scanners to ensure that every piece of inventory that comes in or out of their warehouse will be scanned in or scanned onto a work order, giving them confidence in their inventory counts.
“I’d love to give a shout out to several [Koble] people that have helped us. Couldn’t have done it without them, and they continue to be a big part as we grow our organization.”
A Bright Future Built by Strong Values
Hershey’s Metal Meister’s commitment to service and integrity is second to none. From their customer interactions, to their hiring processes, to their vendor choices, they have built a business that delivers on promises, directly resulting in incredibly strong growth numbers. Their foresight in 2011 to build out a system that would support their growth has given them the internal infrastructure they needed to keep the momentum going, allowing them to speed up through a growth stage where a lot of companies would have had to slow down for a systems change.
They are continuing to push forward, investing heavily in their service teams, in the software that runs their machines, and in research and development to ensure that they stay ahead of customer needs. At Koble, we are blessed to serve them and excited to see what they do next!
