All about integrity

Scrap processing company Metalico Inc., headquartered in Cranford, New Jersey, has been owned by Total Merchant Ltd., a Malaysian company affiliated with China-based secondary aluminum producer Ye Chiu Group, since 2015. Before the purchase, Metalico was a public company. As a public company, data integrity was a key requirement of its operations software. That remains the case under Total Merchant, which is why Metalico continues to rely on software from Shared Logic, Holland, Ohio.

Metalico was founded in 1997 and went public in 2005. David DelBianco, the company’s vice president of business development, joined Metalico in 2004 and was tasked with assessing operating software. “We had a lot of growth planned,” he says. “I went with Shared Logic because it preserved data integrity for accounting more than any other program.”

During its time as a public company, compliance with Sarbanes- Oxley (SOX), the federal law establishing auditing and financial regulations for public companies, was a key consideration for Metalico. DelBianco says Shared Logic’s software provided the data integrity required under this law as well as the “bells and whistles” that scrap yard operators find beneficial, such as capturing images of material coming over the scale.

Metalico also looked at large SAP and Oracle software providers for accounting and determined that Shared Logic’s accounting module had everything the company need, he says.

While Shared Logic’s software would assure SOX compliance, Metalico’s auditors had some special requests for the company. DelBianco and a Metalico auditor visited the Shared Logic offices near Toledo, Ohio, to request the implementation of key controls that would allow the auditors to make certain assumptions about the data security, he says.

“Our auditors export our data and do everything electronically,” DelBianco says. “Their approach is based on examination and manipulation of raw data.

“The structure of Shared Logic fits perfectly with what they like,” he explains.

Metalico has grown in part by acquiring a number of recycling operations, including those of Annaco Inc., Akron, Ohio, and Youngstown Iron and Metal, Youngstown, Ohio. These two operations and others the company acquired already used software from Shared Logic for their day-to-day operations, which made integration “seamless,” DelBianco says.

He says Perry Jacobs, president of Shared Logic, helped Metalico convert the data from the acquired companies to provide consistency with account numbers and material codes that Metalico uses. This conversion gave Metalico “instant history that we could look up” in the general ledger and for customer accounts, DelBianco adds.

Today, Metalico operates 20 facilities that use Shared Logic software, which is run off six physical servers. A seventh server is cloud-based, replicating all the data contained on the other servers, DelBianco says.

“It allows management located anywhere to have live consolidated information and automated reporting,” he says of Shared Logic’s software. “They are able to streamline and standardize how information looks and mine the information to learn about the company and make improvements.”

DelBianco adds that Metalico has been able to work with Shared Logic to make adjustments to the software as needed. He says these custom changes become part of the overall package that Shared Logic offers its clients.

“The support is great,” he says, commenting on the accessibility of Jacobs and the Shared Logic staff. “It is as if they are local. I don’t think you could get that from a bigger house.”

DelBianco says he has and will continue to recommend Shared Logic software to other recyclers. “If you grow with this software into a larger private or publicly traded company, it has all the data integrity and bells and whistles you need.”

Shared Logic, 877-865-0083, info@sharedlogic.com