Business leaders, particularly those with years of experience in the roll forming and building material manufacturing industry, often have a ‘gut feeling’ or the simple intuition that business is going well and that customers are satisfied.
However, is it really safe to base business decisions on your intuition? Drive your business in the right direction by accurately tracking the four pillars of cost: materials, labor, overhead and outside processing. Base business decisions, and protect your bottom line, with a thorough understanding of material and labor costs and other financial data.
There are plenty of signals that business is heading in the right direction – the phone is ringing, customers are satisfied, and production is humming. While all these signals suggest business is good, what you don’t know could be a problem. Do you know whether scraps or remnants are being utilized or wasted, how much the cost of metal has fluctuated, or whether outsourced processing has increased in price? Any type of material or cost fluctuation could threaten already thinning profit margins. If you can’t access reliable, financial data quickly, you may not discover that profits are being lost until it’s too late.
Obtain Visibility Into Financial and Operational Processes to Boost Profits, Drive Growth
In order to continually monitor operational and financial performance, it’s important to have the right technology in place. As indicated in “Buried Costs: The Critical Answers Roll Forming and Building Material Manufacturers Get Wrong with Disconnected Data”, not many enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions can support the complex operations of the steel and metals industry. RealSTEEL is an affordable management solution designed to address the specialized requirements of the metals industry. Based on the powerful, flexible Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central platform, RealSTEEL provides user-definable, multi-attribute levels of management for all core operations. Managing purchasing, production, inventory, planning and sales from this single, integrated solution provides leaders with real-time, reliable insight into the various operational costs of doing business.
Dashboards and other built-in business intelligence features provide clear visibility into each financial transaction and each operational process. Armed with this insight, you can take back control over the four pillars of cost and make the data-driven decisions that not only protect profit margins, but also drive growth. While there is certainly something to be said about an experienced manager’s intuition, data will keep your business profitable. Contact The Wolcott Group for more information about using RealSTEEL to protect profit margins and your bottom line.
By The Wolcott Group, providers of RealSTEEL, a real-world solution for the steel and metals industry
