Doubling Revenue: How ASM Boomed After New Focus on Software
BIG LETTERS “American Sheet Metal” printed on an image of a welder. It only took a second for us to realize our customer, ASM, had won the cover spot for a Fulcrum favorite publication. The Fabricator magazine wrote a piece entitled, “How a metal fabricator doubled revenue in two years” — that metal fabricator was none other than Fulcrum customer, American Sheet Metal (ASM).
ASM is a custom sheet metal fabricator in Anaheim, CA. They specialize in creating parts for the construction, infrastructure, and architectural industries. ASM began implementing Fulcrum at the end of October 2022 with Fulcrum Launch Manager Katherine Gorey and went live at the beginning of December 2022.
“We jumped into this launch right away,” said Gorey. “They were live tracking jobs through Fulcrum in as little as a month, and from there on, we refined their use cases to make sure everything reflected what was happening in real-time.”
An owner/operator group called ISG acquired ASM back in 2021. Since then, ISG Founder/President Jules Brenner has ushered in a new era, citing a 3-step process to future-proofing ASM: 1.) Clean, 2.) Measure, and 3.) Grow.
“Like many small manufacturers, ASM relied heavily on pen and paper as well as dated and underutilized software,” said Brenner. “All this really couldn’t support the next phases of growth. The fabricator needed modern software tools to manage and organize data.”
In the article, Brenner lists several pieces of software ASM has moved onto, citing them as the “foundation for growth.” Brenner describes the business’s software stack: QuickBooks for accounting, Pipedrive for CRM, and “Fulcrum’s modern ERP software.”
“The ERP’s dashboard also eliminated the need to have paper drawings and job travelers on-site,” said Brenner. “It helped improve employee efficiency, maximized cost efficiency, and improved [ASM’s] entire brand image. After all, in the age of smartphones and tablets, no one should be sharing a computer terminal.”
Brenner talks about how the updates they’ve made have allowed ASM to quickly double its headcount without much shock. In years past, ASM focused on other means of growth.
“Like many small shops, ASM invested in productive equipment, like fiber lasers and press brakes with user-friendly controls, yet still relied on paper-based workflows,” said Brenner. “Today, everyone can access everything associated with a job, including prints and even architectural drawings, on their iPads.”
It’s a new era for metal fabricators, and manufacturers taking advantage of modern software are sowing seeds in fertile soil. ASM closed 2022 with a 100% increase in revenue and plans to continue growing into 2023.
Read the full story on thefabricator.com.
