Stainless Metals, Inc.

Stainless Metals is a custom fabrication shop that’s been open since 1927. It’s a family-owned business, and they pride themselves on being able to make whatever their customers want, whether that’s awnings for Bloomingdales, the Christian Louboutin Christmas Tree of shoes, or anything else. Charles Diaz, Shop Supervisor, has worked at Stainless Metals for 15 years. As he said, “I started out sweeping the floor, and now I run the factory.”

Although their shop was doing well, they knew it could do better. It happened occasionally that a job would get lost on the shop floor, but they had no way to track that. They also wanted to make their shop more efficient and make estimating jobs easier. They decided E2 SHOP on the cloud was the solution. As Charles said, “By far, you guys blow everybody else out of the water when it comes to what your company can do. What really sold me on it is no other company out there wanted to convert or deal with Sage. Everybody is QuickBooks. Your company said, ‘Oh you got Sage? No problem. We can convert that. No problem.’” Excited to make their shop better, Stainless Metals got E2 SHOP in March 2020. Then COVID-19 hit.

When they were able to get back in the shop and back to work, Charles started watching the training videos for E2 SHOP. He got all the important information entered into the system, but he needed something more to be able to run the software for his shop. That’s when he started virtual training. It was exactly what he needed. As he said about his trainer, Karine, “From one class, she taught me on how to start from an estimate, to a quotation, to an order, to a job traveler, to running it through the factory, with my tablet and my barcode scanner.” Doing custom jobs means that Stainless Metals runs their shop a little differently than most.

The virtual training was perfect for Charles to get E2 SHOP to work for them. Charles is learning how to do everything in E2 SHOP, and the training classes made that exciting. As he said, “Doing these live classes, speaking with Jeremy and Karine, I was like, ‘Wow. I can’t wait to go to work tomorrow, so I can figure something else out.’”

The classes themselves were great, but Charles was also blown away by how responsive his virtual trainers were. Charles remembered one morning, “I emailed Jeremy at 9:12. I figured, ‘All right. He’s busy. He’ll email me back in a couple of hours.’ 8 minutes later, I get an answer.” Getting an answer that quickly helps Charles keep his shop running and makes sure he’s doing it right.

Charles has been so impressed with his experience, that he’s looking at how his shop handles customer service. As he shared, “I wanna restructure my customer support. Because seeing three people that I’ve spoken to, and they’ve helped me out remarkably. I asked so many questions and I’m sure they’re probably sitting in the back like, ‘Ugh, another question,’ but you never hear it in their voice. They don’t seem bothered. They answered every question. They asked me if I had more questions, which I always did.” Charles knows first-hand how important it is to be taken seriously when you have questions, and he wants to be sure that his customers feel the same way.

Now that he’s gotten such great training, Charles is excited about using E2 SHOP at Stainless Metals. He knows their occasional problem with missing jobs will disappear. As he said, “There’s no way we can miss a job because the second [the estimator] puts an estimate in there, I can see every estimate. I can see what we won, what we didn’t win… Now there’s no chance to miss a job and that’s gonna be amazing.” He’s also confident that E2 SHOP will help them be much more efficient and will help their estimator, especially with routing times. All their shop’s data will be in E2 SHOP, where it’s easy to find and use that information.

Charles is thrilled Stainless Metals decided to go with E2 SHOP. He knows E2 SHOP will help them grow and improve, but he’s also confident in the company behind the software. As he said, “I would recommend this company to anybody because customer service is the backbone of the company.” Charles’ virtual training was done by thorough and responsive people, and he’s confident that as he learns the last few things about the software, that pattern will continue. As their shop gets better and better, Charles knows Shoptech will help them with whatever they need along the way.