Ryerson Steel Main Image 2

Automating Supply-Chain Planning with Salesforce SIOP

Ryerson Steel is an online metal supplier, processor, and distributor with operations in the United States, Mexico, Canada, and China. They offer more than 65,000 varieties of stainless, aluminum, carbon, and alloys in all shapes and sizes.

  • Industry: Manufacturing
  • Location:

    Chicago, Illinois, United States

  • Scale:
    • Estimated annual revenue $6 billion USD
    • 3,500 employees
    • 100 locations in 4 countries
  • Salesforce Products:

    Sales Cloud, Salesforce Mobile, Platform

  • Integrations:

    ERP Systems -SAP and AS400

At a Glance


Ryerson Steel needed an experienced Salesforce partner to scale their custom-designed Salesforce SIOP (Sales Inventory and Operations Planning) tool. The GyanSys team was the trusted Salesforce partner to improve the supply chain approval flow and build upon the previously designed UI. Aiming to improve and streamline their processes the Groundswell team at GyanSys leveraged Salesforce Mobile and Platform to consolidate their business processes in one unified system.

Enhanced Supply Chain Management

80%

Faster Processing of Sales Orders
Improved Forecasting Metrics

Handling Complex Supply Chains

Ryerson partners with clients to deliver supply-chain solutions tailored to meet customer needs. They manage logistics across all phases of the supply chain. They needed a system that can display the unique hierarchies of their customer-specific product processing.

One of the main objectives for the Ryerson team was to make it easier to get the work done. GyanSys built various tools including an intuitive screen to provide greater visibility of data and the ability to submit requests for an enhanced user experience. The new platform now enables users to submit Order Requests for multiple items in a single action and the custom recall request feature can be used to stop an error message before the users get notified. These new features have improved real-time collaboration across users.

Only 22% of companies have a proactive supply chain network.

– Zippia
Ryerson Steel - Handling Complex Supply Chains
Ryerson-Steel-Handling-Complex-Supply-Chain-Mobile

Greater Visibility of Forecast Data

The new platform workflow also allows users to attach files to the forecast record for supporting the approval request. The team now has a dashboard with metrics of forecast error or change, as well as prompts for when orders need to be placed. We also helped to increase the number of months for forecasting, which is now more than 3 months, with the addition of two new sets of fields in the upgraded UI to capture the data correctly.

The Ryerson team also has improved alerts within their system to help automate and track issue resolution. Alerts will persist to inform internal users when approvals are not processed or when items are being flagged as over/underperforming. New overstock and cancel order alerts were created to capture the SAP error messages.

Only 6% of companies report full visibility on their supply chain. 69% of companies do not have total visibility.

– Zippia

Improve Inventory Metrics Performance

A big part of revamping the SIOP 2.0 instance for Ryerson was to improve inventory metrics performance and ensure the right inventory levels were captured at all times. This was especially important for Buyers to be able to easily utilize the new SIOP 3.0 to review inventory levels of SKUs they own and seamlessly communicate with Sales Reps and Approvers for issues related to their orders.

Ryerson Steel - Inventory Metrics
Ryerson Steel - Inventory Approvals

43% of small businesses don’t track their inventory. This can lead to more supply chain disruptions, costing a massive 62% hit to finances.

– Zippia

Ryerson Steel ERP System Integration

The integration between Salesforce and SAP empowered the Ryerson team to always have one single source of truth. Once an order is placed both the SIOP Salesforce instance and the DCR in SAP get notifications. The PO gets created initially in SAP, which automatically gets sent to Salesforce nightly for review, to confirm if new materials need to be purchased and inventory needs to be restocked. 

63% of companies cite the ability to easily add automation rules as one of the main benefits of system integration.

– Zippia
Ryerson Steel - ERP Forecast Submission
Ryerson Steel - ERP Order Requests Dashboard
Ryerson Steel - ERP Order Requests
Team Audit & Analysis

Streamlining Supply Chain Management

Ryerson Steel achieved their goal of reducing team hours performing low-value tasks. Thanks to GyanSys’ solution architecture, Ryerson Steel’s Salesforce investment is already achieving strong results and delivering ROI.

Learn more about our expertise in the Manufacturing Industry.