Highett Metal is a role model in the industry for organisation and cleanliness. Their success is due to strong dedication to service, honesty and integrity. In a highly competitive industry efficiency is key and there is rarely much lead time between an order and a delivery. If a customer needs a product the same day, one of their numerous trucks is sent out to locations right across Australia Arrow financials supports this efficient offering and plays a crucial role in stock management. With daily changes on the London Metal Exchange, Arrow is flexible enough to cope with rapid changes in prices and stock quantities and allows for a revaluing of prices at the current exchange rate at any time.
Tony Brosnahan, General Manager at Highett Metal, is constantly referring to Arrow throughout the day. “Arrow is ideal when you need flexibility in stock management. In this type of business where you’re not tracking 3 items in and 3 items out, but dealing with kilos and tonnes, Arrow is sophisticated enough to cope with complicated stock control.”
Highett Metal has been using Arrow since 1999 in anticipation of GST. Before that, everything was done manually. They realised that in order to grow and be globally competitive, their processes needed to be computerised. As they have grown from strength to strength they have utilised an increasing number of Arrow modules to improve efficiency.
Highett Metal uses a variety of modules – Debtors, Creditors, Cashbook, Purchase Orders, General Ledger and Payroll. The information provided by the Arrow technology is also easily transferred into other programmes such as Excel in order for Tony to map business processes. The Highett Metal system is also compliant with the complex ATO requirements for the scrap metal industry. This provides Tony with the ongoing reassurance that tax information is correct and up to date.
Arrow shows its mettle
Arrow has also made invoicing a simple process.“As a value add for our clients we can be responsible for both ends of the paper trail and provide recipient created tax invoices for customers who are not sure what the metal is worth when they bring it in. Not many systems can do that!”
“Our ODBC driver allows Arrow to talk to The Metal Manager, our purpose built front end programme. The information feeds back each way instantaneously. That’s really what is great about Arrow – it’s so easy to access and utilise the information. We have instant access to sales to date to a particular debtor and the General Ledger provides us with a quick overall picture, with profit and loss right up to the current day.
We need to be able to respond quickly to orders so that we can take advantage of a rapidly growing need for metal products. Arrow is the best-fit for this type of situation when you need instant access to stock and client information. Countries such as Chinarequire enormous amounts of metal due to the fact that their economy is booming and they are building like crazy for the Olympics. We need to offer fast, quality service to retain their business (and the Foreign Currency module has been a great help). Our Arrow software has enabled us to build these international business relationships.”
