MetalForming Technologies is a supplier of galvanised steel coils and associated products to the rollforming industry across New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific region, the Middle East and Africa.
The company is both an importer and exporter, as well as operating as a broker when it sources products from offshore and sells to customers in other countries.
The company also provides rollforming machines that combine precision rollforming technology with design and control system software.
The company has recently rolled out an ERP system — SAP Business One — with the add-on, Workbench Job Costing. The system, which replaced the company’s old accounting software, gives MetalForming Technologies the ability to scale up its business, capture customer, supplier and product information in one system, and to use this information as a tool to improve business processes.
Workbench Job Costing allows the company to budget for, and measure, the profitability of each job transacted with customers. The old system did not offer an efficient way to record transactions, and did not support customer relationship management (CRM) recording and reporting.
To meet the growing needs of the business, MetalForming Technologies had a number of business requirements. These included centralising and securing business intellectual property; implementing a CRM system; delivering efficient reporting of job profitability; managing machine assembly; providing visibility of job status and sales cycle to the staff and producing more timely management information. The company also needed tools to track customer service support calls, and it wanted one system rather than multiple integrated systems.
The ERP system has met these requirements. It went live in October last year without disruptions to normal business transactions. The system has helped make MetalForming Technologies a more professional organisation in all areas from quoting, issuing customer statements, paying suppliers and sales reporting through to financial and management reporting, the company says.