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Right on the Money
September 11, 2009
InfoSystems develops a customized Microsoft SharePoint application that meets Southern Tool Steel’s needs more cost-effectively than commercial software solutions.
Many organizations have unique processes that aren’t well supported by commercial software solutions. Southern Tool Steel is a perfect example.
Although steel seems like a pretty straightforward substance to the layperson, there actually are countless ways to combine iron with carbon and other alloying materials to create various grades and types of steel. The chemical makeup of a particular casting, or “heat,” is described in a document known as a “cert.” As a service to its customers, Southern Tool Steel keeps track of the cert associated with the material the customer buys.
“It’s an analysis of the elements (%) that make up the content of the mill product. Ie. carbon, nickel, and other alloys,” said Philip Holt, Controller, Southern Tool Steel. “Customers frequently need this information, so steel companies have to keep these certs on file.”
Manually tracking the cert documents was inefficient, costing Southern Tool Steel time and money. The company needed to automate its paper-based processes but was dissatisfied with the commercial software that was available. That’s why Holt called InfoSystems.
“InfoSystems developed an application that allows us to scan in the certs and then index them so that they can be searched,” he said. “Instead of heading to a filing cabinet to find a cert for a particular material, we can readily find the PDF by using various search criteria. InfoSystems created this solution for us very cost-effectively utilizing Microsoft SharePoint Server.”
Tooling the Right Solution
Southern Tool Steel is an international distributor of high-quality tool steels, carbon steels, alloy steels, aluminum, stainless steel, brass, bronze, copper, flat ground and drill rod, metrics, nickel alloys, high temperature alloys, titanium and specialty metals and plastics. The Chattanooga-based firm stocks both common and hard-to-find tool steels and metals, in a wide variety of grades, finishes and shapes.
“As that material sells, any one of our sales people may need the cert associated with a particular mill run,” Holt said. “One day we had a situation in which five people spent 45 minutes each looking for a missing cert. It was not in the filing cabinet, it was not in the stack to be re-filed. They finally found it on someone’s desk.
“It was no one’s fault, but do the math. Three hours and 45 minutes were burned. And if you pay people X amount per hour, that kind of inefficiency can really add up quickly. That’s what prompted the call to InfoSystems.”
InfoSystems has been providing Southern Tool Steel with a wide range of system implementation and network support services for many years. Based upon that long relationship, Holt was confident that InfoSystems would come up with a viable solution.
“At the time we were considering other ERP solutions to replace our current accounting software, so we were hesitant to buy a cert indexing program that might not be compatible.” Plus, the commercial indexing solutions are pretty pricey,” Holt said. “I approached InfoSystems and explained that the documents needed to be scanned and indexed, and that the system needed to be accessible company-wide. InfoSystems recommended the SharePoint platform.”
Dollars and Sense
Windows SharePoint Services, available as a free download for customers with Windows Server licenses, provides built-in document management and search capabilities. InfoSystems developed a SharePoint application that streamlined the scanning and indexing workflow and allowed Southern Tool Steel’s staff to search for certs by various criteria from anywhere on the network.
“The certs are scanned via copy machine into a holding folder on the server, and then uploaded into a SQL database. The original scan is deleted to avoid duplication,” Holt said. “The SharePoint application InfoSystems developed lists all the certs that have been uploaded and need to be indexed. Once they’re indexed they’re sent to a document data base that everyone can access, and the originals are filed in a filing cabinet.”
Although the system does not integrate with Southern Tool Steel’s ERP application, it solved a perplexing business problem economically. The commercial solutions Holt had looked into were prohibitively expensive. By leveraging features within SharePoint and consulting with InfoSystems, he was able to save considerable money.
“It has made us much more efficient and eliminated wasted time spent looking for certs,” Holt said. “We knew that it would pay for itself in no time.”
Southern Ingenuity
Southern Tool Steel was so pleased with the solution that Holt asked InfoSystems to take it another step. InfoSystems added a module that allows sales people to generate POs for special orders.
“When we get a request for material that we do not stock, we leave it up to each sales person to source it. And for various reasons we don’t use the PO generator from our ERP system,” said Holt. “We used to have a PO book but the sales people would have to walk over and get the next sequential PO and fill it out manually. This system automatically generates the next sequential PO number and allows the sales person to enter the information. Plus, the system is fully searchable. It allows us to work the way we prefer to work, versus what our ERP system requires, and has saved us a tremendous amount of time and money.”
Like many businesses, Southern Tool Steel had a unique problem that could not be solved by off-the-shelf software. The Microsoft specialists at InfoSystems combined the SharePoint platform with custom code to create a better solution.
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