The sheet steel manufacturing market is a growing industry, and with a global upward trend comes larger volumes of sales data which need to be handled. In this article, we look at the current state of the steel sheet manufacturing market, the challenges that you might be facing in this niche as you handle manual sales data management and move towards automation, and why Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software needs to be utilising to manage your leads, sales, and customer data.
The overall steel manufacturing industry has been seen a considerable amount of growth, according to an OECD report, there has been 5 consecutive years of growth which is outpacing the projections for steel demand, with 2024 seeing an increase of 57 million metric tons (mmt) translating to the highest annual volume increase (global capacity) in a decade.
When looking specifically at the sheet metal industry, the production is essentially split into steel sheet metal, galvanised steel sheet metal, aluminium sheet metal, and others. According to Precision Reports, the major players in the sheet metal market are:
and in the galvanised sheet metal, the industry is topped by:
Although considerable growth has been allowing more evolution and development in the steel sheet industry, there are still a number of challenges which these industries are facing, including:
For most manufacturing industries, with steel sheeting being no exception, orders are often considerably large, complex, and often covered under substantial contractual arrangements which require close attention to detail.
For these reasons, it is not surprising to find some businesses using a manual approach to their sales data and management, with the idea that doing it on a client-by-client and order-by-order basis is going to be more accurate and ensure full compliance with both data security, and contractual obligations.
However, whilst there is a time and place for manual sales data management in some industries, the process is not without its challenges, and these can often be more costly and inefficient than some businesses would initially assume or realise.
For sheet metal manufacturers, some of the biggest challenges they are seeing in managing their sales data manually include:
Companies who have not done much towards a digital upgrade might find the idea of automation and using technology to handle daily affairs to be difficult.
This might be due to having extensive legacy systems and manual processes that would then need completely overhauling (taking time and money). A level of uncertainty on the reliability of programs and concern that the day-to-day operations would be disrupted by introducing something that people are not familiar with. Or perhaps concern that the installation / upgrade and learning curve involved in using the new programs would be too disruptive to business activities.
There are many different reasons why, but for all the reasons and genuine concerns, there are significant benefits to using automation, tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), and using integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
TEB Apps offers a platform that works with your needs, and is designed for easy installation and integration, with a two-week training cycle, and support offered as you and your team need it. This digital infrastructure and support works behind the scenes in your day-to-day operations, and can help you with factory automation as well.
CRM software is not just a tool for keeping track of your customers (although it is great for that as well). The level of support and types of activities your manufacturing company can benefit from include:
The more data you have to work with, and the better structure you implement to manage it, the deeper you can look at your business, your customers, and your industry. Once you have this data, you can take more flexible actions in regards to material ordering, stock management, and identifying more sales opportunities.
You can even use the data you collect from your CRM to streamline your manufacturing processes, and ensure that your business is operating at full efficiency in every stage.
TEB Apps can handle millions of data points and scale with your business. Countless businesses all over the world are now using TEB Apps to manage and centralise their data to create a more efficient sales cycle.
Already, steel sheets manufacturing businesses are using TEB Apps to:
TEB Apps allows businesses to add multiple quotes, contacts, orders, and credit periods to the same company to make managing a large client data seamless and easy. Book your consultation today, and discover how your manufacturing business can gain a competitive digital edge.
