Why Metals Direct uses E-conomic

Metals Direct are traders and distributors of non ferrous metals and plastics. The business was established in 2009 by Lennie Gent who, with 40 years in the industry, knows what he’s doing.

Gizmo Man

Lennie’s a self-confessed technophile, affectionately known as Gizmo Man by friends and customers alike. He’s joined in the business by his daughter and puts his success so far down to her excellent influence, his well-established industry reputation and the innumerable ins and outs and tricks of the trade he’s picked up in his time.

As he builds his customer base, Lennie’s opted for external transport and doesn’t maintain a warehouse so is astutely working the low overheads card to the maximum. His customers are in engineering but are a very diverse group, ranging from food factory maintenance operatives to engineers making their own equipment.

He relishes his wide variety of clients, projects and the depth of knowledge he has to call on to meet their exact needs. For example he’s recently been working with stainless steel to create parts for tills at Tesco and with brass to make ball bearings for use on naval fire boats – shopping to shipping in one day!

What is the size of your company?

Currently it’s Lennie & Daughter.

Is an online accounting function important for your business? Why?

Lennie is obviously on the road a lot and needs to keep up to date so the fact he can access E-conomic from wherever he is, whenever he wants is a huge advantage. As is, he adds, the comparably cheap price for a very good system.

In his view E-conomic is small and flexible but big and capable! It also gives him the confidence of knowing he could offer a product range of half a million different stock items and E-conomic would take it in its stride.

What level and which of the available functions do you use on the system?

Metals Direct is live with 33 customers at the moment.

What has your experience been of using E-conomic – the positives and the negatives?

Because Lennie can be on his computer a lot whilst out of the office, he appreciates the fact that the system times-out if you’re not active on it for a time, a welcome and necessary security point.

E-conomic has proved to be flexible enough to offer everything Lennie needs.

For example, he must have traceability in his supply chain and provide certificates to customers. All metals have individual part and group numbers and the system allows him to continually assess how products are moving and because he doesn’t carry much stock, buy in at short notice and with accuracy. He also points out that opening a new group couldn’t be simpler.

Asked about negatives, Lennie couldn’t put his finger on any but wanted to add that when it comes to remote usage, he felt his hotel in Cape Verde from where he’d happily accessed E-conomic, was about as remote as you might get and the system still worked perfectly.

Have you made savings using E-conomic?

Having worked for the past 10 years with Richard Sullivan, his accountant Lennie first came across E-conomic when he asked for suggestions for a reasonably priced, easy to use, accessible accounting system and E-conomic was put forward.

The fact that E-conomic has its own back up and that the system is constantly updated are winners in Lennnie’s opinion as is the fact that Richard can access the system remotely which cuts out office visits and consequent expense. Lennie’s had some experience with Sage but finds E-conomic both more useable and user-friendly.