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Article Excerpt
Unlike smaller companies, the sheer size of Russel Metals Inc. and Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. present special challenges to managing information. Though the two industry leaders have adopted different strategies toward software development and corporate integration, both have achieved comparable results.
Reliance, based in Los Angeles, is a $2.9 billion full-line metals distributor with 105 stocking locations and a workforce of 5,400. Competitor Toronto-based Russel Metals, with $2.4 billion in annual sales, operates 70 locations with 2,700 employees.
Most of Russel Metals' service center facilities in Canada and the United States are tied into a Toronto data center, explains Maureen Kelly, Russel's vice president of information systems.
Russel's enterprise resource management system runs on IBM AS400 hardware. The software is an in-house adaptation of a program originally purchased in 1998 in anticipation of Y2K. Russel's 31-member IT staff has continually adapted and customized the software into a system that is unique to the company. The ERP program handles everything from order to cash, Kelly says, including order management, purchasing, shipping, invoicing, collection, credit, accounts payable, physical inventory, processing, and more.
The new ERP software replaced an old internally written system that was very different, forcing a painful but necessary learning curve on Russel employees.
"We had no choice because we needed to be Y2K compliant. But it was a major change for everybody," Kelly recalls. For example, salespeople had to relearn vendor numbers, customer numbers and part numbers that they had come to memorize, adding a layer of inconvenience to everyday tasks.
"Yes it was painful, as any change is. But the big difference is it was supported by senior management, with user involvement," Kelly says.
Russel set...
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