CloudForge founders Christopher Holt, left, and Ben Marans developed their ERP, CRM and eCommerce platform specifically for service centers
July, 2024- “Metal service center software has not evolved in over 20 years,” claims Ben Marans, CEO of CloudForge, a comprehensive ERP, CRM and eCommerce platform. “Why is an industry that is fundamental to the entire industrial economy decades behind nearly every other industry?” he asks.
“With the exponential growth in software capabilities over the past few years and a workforce that is experiencing a generational shift, now is the time for service centers to embrace modern software, or risk falling behind,” notes Marans. Launched in 2022, CloudForge is a software solution designed specifically for the unique needs of service centers, distributors and toll processors. The platform is built to accelerate speed to quote, increase inbound RFQs, drive customer engagement, enhance win rates, improve throughput and traceability, and generate informed decisions across all operations via dashboards and analytics. “This results in higher profits and revenues, substantial time and cost savings, and enhanced overall efficiency,” Marans says.
From selling chicken sandwiches in high school to launching a hospitality payments app in college, Marans demonstrated his entrepreneurial talents early. He conceived CloudForge while evaluating industrial software at a venture capital firm. “Once I learned about the metal service center industry, it became almost an addiction for me. Visiting service centers invigorates and inspires me,” says Marans, who based the CloudForge platform on the voice and needs of the client. Marans and his co-founder, CTO Christopher Holt—who grew up in a steel family and watched the “Modern Marvels” television series as a child—aim to put service centers on a growth trajectory powered by CloudForge’s technology.
FOR SERVICE CENTERS
“A lot of software running at today’s service centers was designed in the 1970s and ‘80s. It hasn’t evolved and is rife with tech-debt,” notes Marans, referring to an industry trend of hastily releasing versions of software that require additional reworks. Marans spent a year visiting and meeting with service center owners and operators before launching New York-based CloudForge. “There are great businesses sprawled across America’s heartland, many family owned, that don’t have the resources to hire the world’s best software and product engineers. And, that’s where CloudForge comes in,” he states.
One service center smack-dab in the middle of America’s heartland is Fort Wayne, Indiana-based Paragon Tube Corp. Paragon CEO Phil Henry says CloudForge’s software is a perfect fit for his 35-year-old business. “We have stuck with the same antiquated software for almost two decades. Quite frankly, there were no alternatives that we saw that would clearly boost our productivity or efficiency in a meaningful way. That was before we discovered the suite from CloudForge. From buying to selling, and from inventory management to production, CloudForge performs like no software we have seen,” reports Henry.
Open quotes can be sorted in several ways with CloudForge for automatic follow-up.
ALL-IN-ONE
The CloudForge suite is a comprehensive solution for businesses like Paragon Tube. “CloudForge is the only platform that includes a fullbreadth ERP, customer management solution and eCommerce customer portal. There is a new realm of what software can do from AI to data querying, there are more opportunities for service centers to utilize software to win,” explains Marans. The CloudForge platform includes advanced inventory management, an integrated sales-toprocurement module, a robust CRM, visualized dashboards and other features.
“CloudForge’s platform fixes what’s broken. We help service centers, distributors and toll processors increase response times and provide data reporting in a dashboard that makes it easy for customers to take action,” explains Marans. With CloudForge, a lot of the manual and tedious operations become automated. “This automation drives efficiencies,” Marans adds.
Ben Marans, left, visiting client Steve Scott, president and owner of Tri-State Steel. The CloudForge platform is based on the voice and need of clients like Tri-State.
QUOTE SMART
Data-driven automation is incorporated into CloudForge’s quote and sales ordering management tool to enable swifter quote generation, response times, sales order creation, fulfillment, buyout handling and delivery. Because the CloudForge platform syncs ERP and CRM, customer follow-up is streamlined.
With CloudForge, service centers no longer need to rely upon tribal knowledge to guesstimate the cost of a project. CloudForge brings actual and real-time replacement costs into the process. “Our platform can consistently quote jobs more quickly by automating a lot of the steps. This reduces the time to prepare and send a quote,” notes Marans. “Speed in sending a quote is a key indicator to winning the deal, so is the quote follow-up rate. At CloudForge, we help clients grow sales by increasing those metrics,” he adds.
Clients are starting to see the results of CloudForge’s combined platform. For Auggie Grimm, president of KWG Industries, a service center in Hillsborough, New Jersey, CloudForge has empowered his team to quote twice as fast, provide increased levels of customer engagement and win more business. Another CloudForge client, Fighter Jet Metals, in Lake Worth, Florida, had a similar experience. “CloudForge has been a gamechanger for us—dramatically increasing our quote win rate by over 50 percent and cutting quote-response times in half,” says the company’s president, Chris Krebs.
To accelerate follow-ups, the CloudForge system enables rapid dashboarding and sorting to open quotes in several different ways—by aging, size of deal, priority, etc. With one click, the user can follow up on hundreds of customer quotes instantaneously. “Currently service centers, on average, follow up on 10 to 15 percent of quotes—and that’s done manually. By automating much of this, service centers can achieve an unbelievable ROI with minimal effort,” Marans explains.
For Grimm at KWG, “CloudForge has brought our ERP system into the modern era with a software that is very easy to use, intuitive and loaded with powerful features.” Built on a flexible and cutting-edge technological framework, CloudForge can be configured to fit the distinct workflows of each client.
DO MORE
CloudForge functions include enabling customers to schedule jobs, manage production via a shop floor module, sell online, centralize material procurement, access customer history for informed business decisions, and more. Connecting the back office to the shop floor and leveraging the data in the ERP is key to service center growth, Marans points out. “Service centers can grow by hiring more people, expanding services or incorporating transformative software designed to spur growth. The latter is the easiest and most cost-effective way to drive sales and efficiencies,” he says.
With CloudForge, service centers can support—or establish—a customized eCommerce portal. “For on-line ordering to be effective, the ERP system must be integrated into the digital store. We anticipate eCommerce and customer portals will become table stakes for service centers in the future. This will boost inbound RFQs and ultimately sales,” says Marans.
GOING LIVE
For service centers to remain focused on customers during the ERP transition, CloudForge keeps the implementation easy. “ERP onboarding can cause anxiety. I get it. That’s why we have an automated and handson approach to implementation,” Marans says. Much of the on-boarding is automated with drag-and-drop data transfer and AI-based data validations. CloudForge integrates advanced AI tools to aid in rapid data import and migration during implementation. Step-by-step guidance, on-site training and in-app instructions support CloudForge’s implementation and mitigate the learning curve.
“The support from CloudForge has been incredible throughout implementation which has been a positive experience from training and beyond,” says Grimm. This high level of support is a cornerstone for CloudForge. “We remove as much as possible from the client side of the process. We are redefining what it means to go live with ERP,” says Marans.
Krebs reports that implementation and training for Fighter Jet Metals was surprisingly smooth and fast. For Paragon Tube, “The user-friendly interface and intuitive design, as well as the overall functionality and features, and finally the support behind the scenes are what make CloudForge miles above anything else that is currently available today,” says Henry.
Keeping pace and even getting ahead is a concern for Steve Scott, president and owner of North Carolina-based Tri-State Steel. “One of the great concerns of Gen X business owners like me, is being left behind in this crazy, rapidly changing world. CloudForge will help us solve those problems. CloudForge is the future in service center technology and we are excited about it.”
Indeed, the passion to keep service centers operating efficiently and winning business runs deep with Marans and at CloudForge. “Technology is evolving at a rapid pace. CloudForge is the only service center-specific software platform engineered to transition the industry to the next generation,” Marans says.
CloudForge, 201/888-6160, http://cloudforgesoftware.com
