Universal Steel America Successfully Implements STRATIX, the Metal Industry ERP Software from Invera

Universal Steel benefited from:

Universal Steel has implemented a full complement of STRATIX ERP metal software features, including Quote and Sales Order steel plate burning pricing, multi-step processing, production scheduling and on-line shipment planning. To provide better visibility of warehouse production capacity, the production schedule is used to schedule the burning and plate rolling jobs to a machine, date, and sequence of production. 

Tim Garcia, General Manager at Universal Steel, added, “Our visibility benefited from the Order Status Desktop, which shows a comprehensive status of the customer order at a single glance.”

For a faster and easier sales process, STRATIX provides features that allow sales to enter a Quote or Sales Order and choose from a list of custom plate burned shapes. Once the shape is entered, STRATIX computes the estimated processing time, cost, and charge for plate burning/cutting. For rolled plate cylinders, STRATIX calculates the stretch-out width and length of the plate that needs to be cut, based on the ID/OD and length of the cylinder. The stretch-out length incorporates reduction factors inherent in the rolling process.  

Universal Steel’s Management and Sales personnel utilize INVEX mobile applications to expand the ERP functionality.

INVEX-Go, a real-time mobile sales app, keeps track of business activity, and helps to make well-informed, data-driven decisions from mobile devices. Outside sales personnel use the Customer 360 functions to review open quotes, bookings and sales before, during, and after customer visits. Once the visit is complete, outside sales can log CRM activities through the app, rather than having to wait until they are back in front of their computer to log their CRM activities. Using Order Status, sales can review the status of specific customer orders in real-time as well. 

In the warehouse, Universal Steel utilizes the INVEX-OPS mobile application. This allows warehouse personnel to use the app to record pick steps in real-time without the need of a desktop computer. Universal also uses the attach photo feature in the INVEX-OPS mobile app to take photos of loaded trucks, and attach them directly onto the shipment, for easy within STRATIX from the Order Status module. 

Universal Steel chose the STRATIX ON-DEMAND hosting service to allow them to focus on their core metal operations and outsource their technology operational requirements. With this service, all software applications and data are hosted at the Invera Technology Center. This hosting service is used by two-thirds of Invera’s INVEX customers today.