We’re excited to share the journey of one of our metal supply clients based out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Metal Center is a metal roofing manufacturer and supply company that specializes in metal roll forming and full metal building kits. They also carry all the trim and accessories (like underlayment, ice and water shields, and screws) that are needed for metal roofing projects – making them a one-stop shop. Their customers love them because they often fulfill orders the same day!
“In the current market, it’s important that we’re not only able to deliver quality product, but able to deliver it quickly as well.” – Austin Johnson, Metal Center
Metal Center serves anyone with metal roofing needs, from weekend shed projects to larger commercial jobs – often fulfilling 10,000 sq. ft orders same day.
“We range totally across the board, which keeps it fun. You could go from talking to a guy who just needs three panels for his shed to helping someone who needs thousands of dollars’ worth of material. The variety keeps it fresh and exciting”
We sat down with Austin to ask a few questions about Metal Center’s experience as a client of Koble and how they use EBMS in their everyday operations.
Tell me about your process before and after using EBMS – what changed and how has it impacted the flow of your business?
"We opened six years ago with just a couple of employees. We wrote all of our orders on carbon copy paper and did physical drawings on paper. We used a simple accounting program for basic financials and relied on handwritten work orders for production.
A huge amount of issues came out of that process. We’d constantly write numbers down wrong – 7s would look like 4s and a 20 could be read as 29. These little human errors created a lot of confusion and chaos in our daily operations. EBMS has helped like crazy against that.
The fixes and process improvements we implemented with EBMS are more or less permanent. Once it’s done, it’s done and it’s working well. One of the biggest reasons we implemented EBMS is the awesome customer service. Right now, there’s no company out there that offers support like Eagle. We couldn’t be happier with that.
Our old process was repetitive, cumbersome, and inefficient. EBMS helped us get rid of dual entry and costly human errors – and then you tack on the great inventory and financial features like the powerful reporting capabilities – those things just added levels to our business.”
Product aside – how has working with the team at Koble been?
“It’s awesome. I’ve never seen any company better at it. When we implemented EBMS, I worked with a consultant named Gerry who was super smart and helpful. Since then, we’ve been able to work with many other consultants and support reps and they’ve all been phenomenal. Our Account Manager gets right on anything that we need – and service like that is so hard to find right now. I feel like everyone we’ve worked with knows everything about the whole system. Some of our employees have even texted me raving about how great the support was! And I’m no IT specialist so it’s really nice that they make the IT side of things a whole lot easier.
One day, me and some of the salesmen were working in the system and it crashed along with our computers. That never happened before and hasn’t happened since. When we opened it back up, it was working fine. It was no big deal – just a one-time thing. Ten minutes later someone from Koble called us up and wanted to check in because they recognized the crash. The guy jumped on it and was one of the nicest individuals I’ve talked to. It was awesome. Customer service like that is a breath of fresh air.”
How has EBMS been helpful to your company in regards to metal supply specific operations?
“We have a few integrations built in. We’re able to connect directly to our Variobend machinery on the production floor from the EBMS sales order. This allows us to draw the trim specifications directly on the screen instead of making a hand-drawing, which resolves a number of issues.
We also use Beck Automation’s Connects solution and EBMS has been great to work with through that. It saves a lot of double entry because we’re able to export our orders straight from EBMS. One second it’s on EBMS and the next it’s out in the warehouse ready to run. It’s saved a lot of data entry on both sides – creating work orders on the front and inputting work orders on the back. And the integration was fairly simple. Beck Automation actually said that the integration with EBMS was one of the easiest ones for them, which ended up saving us money.
I couldn’t be happier with EBMS across the board. It’s been great as a point-of-sale, as a CRM, everything. And the customer service is awesome. We’re really appreciative of the partnership.”
Are there any industry challenges that our partnership has helped your company to overcome?
“While the supply chain has gotten better recently, EBMS did help in managing limited material supply. It’s got a really good inventory management system, so we’re able to stay on top of it better than we could have otherwise.
We’re able to pull up forecasts based on previous years and quarters, which helps us prepare for what’s coming up. It’s been great to be able to lean on that.”
Thinking about the future - what’s on the horizon for Metal Center?
"We just started with the WebPay portal for our customers who pay on a monthly basis. So, I’d like to dive deeper into what can be done with customer accounts. I’d also like to learn how to use the SQL Mirror and get that set up.
But nothing really massive in scale – just looking at simplifying and perfecting our processes from start to finish. The biggest component of that has been EBMS.”
If you’d like to learn more about Metal Center, you can find them at MetalCenterUSA.com
To learn more about how a partnership with Koble can improve operations in your metal supply business, schedule a demo.
