Success Stories
Recycled Materials Company, Inc
A pioneer in recycling construction throughout the United States and around the globe, Recycled Materials Company, Inc. (RMCI) has tied producing recycled aggregate with utilizing value engineering to gain acceptance from government agencies. In addition to offering construction services, RMCI takes recyclable rubble and, with it, produces specification recycled aggregates. RMCI was started in 1987 with one portable recycling plant and five employees. Today, the company employs 70 managers, supervisors, and craftsmen and operates a fleet of portable and mobile recycling plants.
Challenges
RMCI needed specialized software that could provide financial information in a timely manner and handle multiple companies, material billing, and product costing.
Solution
For instant access to the information that matters most RMCI chose StreetSmarts. This industry-specific software solution for heavy construction increases visibility into the Companys daily operations.
Results
With StreetSmarts, RMCI gained control over production costs and improved insight into the sales, inventory, and materials components of their operations. StreetSmarts lets RMCI access the specific information they need, when they need it.
Business Insight Possible through Industry-Specific Solution
As a growing company in a growing segment of the construction industry, Recycled Materials Company, Inc. (RMCI) needed a job cost accounting software solution that provided industry-specific functionality. This dynamic company takes materials from existing jobsites and crushes the material into specification aggregate for use on future construction projects. So when it outgrew its accounting software, RMCI looked for a software solution that could handle multiple companies, material billing, product costing, and manufacturing controls.
Ann Sims, CFO for Recycled Materials, explains why RMCI chose Maxwell Systems StreetSmarts® to manage its operations.
“With our previous system, Recycled Materials couldn’t get timely information. We had to wait until the end of a fiscal period in order to find out information,” says Sims. “But with StreetSmarts, you can get a snapshot of where you are at any given moment.”
For RMCI, StreetSmarts provides cost savings through gains in productivity and accuracy. To illustrate, Sims explains that Time and Material projects were manually billed in the old system, and the user was responsible for making sure that all items were billed.
“But with StreetSmarts, even if you enter something in a prior period after the cutoff, it’ll play catch-up and include the items.”
Gaining Control Over Production Costs
Due to the nature of its business, product cost capabilities were a major requirement when it updated its construction business management solution. RMCI found that StreetSmarts Product Cost provided the necessary tools for managing this critical part of the business.
“StreetSmarts Product Cost allows us to capture production information and costs so we can drill down on the cost to produce materials,” Sims explains. “Product Cost gives us valuable information that helps us to be more strategic in the pricing of our materials.”
Flexibility and Accessibility for Information: “Must Haves” for RMCI
Another one of StreetSmarts’ features valued by RMCI is the ability for management and for users to quickly access the system and generate queries as needed.
“With StreetSmarts, people can look up information for themselves instead of going to accounting and asking for a report,” says Sims. “Management uses it to query data, and yard managers use it to check inventory and look at sales. It’s used throughout the organization.”
Sims went on to explain how RMCI management uses StreetSmarts to view sales information. “Since we do just in time production, we can isolate information for the prior week—such as how much was sold and what needs to be produced—to handle the demand coming down the pipeline.”
RMCI is also using the new Maxwell Systems Analytics product, which provides critical operations and financial information for an entire construction company in a single, browser-based window. As time progresses, RMCI employees will be able to log into StreetSmarts Analytics to easily view Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
In the end, the real value behind StreetSmarts includes the industry-specific features and business intelligence that gives RMCI immediate insight into its operations.
“We value the amount of data that can be captured, and the ability to get it out of the system at any given point in time,” says Sims. “StreetSmarts gives us better control over costs and helps us see where the money is going. It provides information at a high level as well as a granular level to help us run our business.”
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