Custom CRM for Steel Trading Operations
Omnia Steels · Steel Trading & Distribution · 9 weeks · 2025
Client
Omnia Steels
Duration
9 weeks
Industry
Steel Trading & Distribution
!The Problem
Omnia Steels was managing their entire sales cycle — from receiving material requests to coordinating vendors, transport, quotations, and payments — across email, WhatsApp, and spreadsheets. No unified system existed to capture, automate, or track any stage of this cycle.
✓The Solution
We built a custom CRM purpose-built for steel trading. It captures enquiries automatically from email and WhatsApp, uses AI to parse material requirements, sends RFQs to matched vendors, generates comparison sheets, calculates landed costs, and tracks payments with automated follow-ups.
Results
- 80% reduction in manual data entry
- RFQ turnaround from 4 hours to 15 minutes
- Full enquiry-to-payment lifecycle tracked in one system
- Automated WhatsApp and email follow-ups for payments
- AI-powered material parsing from unstructured messages
Tech Stack
The Challenge
Omnia Steels operates as a steel trader and distributor, receiving material requests from construction and industrial clients via email and WhatsApp. Their workflow involved:
- Manually copying enquiry details into spreadsheets
- Calling or messaging vendors one-by-one for quotes
- Comparing vendor responses in Excel
- Calculating landed costs (material + transport + GST) by hand
- Tracking payments and credit periods across multiple spreadsheets
- Following up on overdue payments manually
Generic CRMs like Zoho or Salesforce couldn’t handle the steel trading workflow — no vendor RFQ flows, no route-based transporter mapping, no landed cost calculation, no material-wise vendor matching.
The Solution
We built a purpose-designed CRM with these core modules:
Enquiry Capture & AI Parsing
Emails and WhatsApp messages are automatically captured. An AI parser extracts material type, quantity, grade, and delivery requirements from unstructured messages — even when clients send requirements in different formats.
Vendor RFQ Automation
The system auto-matches vendors by material type and sends RFQs via WhatsApp and email directly from the CRM. Responses are tracked in a comparison sheet with landed cost calculations built in.
Transport & Logistics
Route-based transporter mapping fetches available transport options. Costs are auto-calculated based on distance, weight, and vehicle type.
Payment Tracking
Every invoice is tracked with credit period monitoring. Automated reminders fire via WhatsApp and email on due dates. Payment reconciliation is built into the enquiry timeline.
Conversation Timeline
Every WhatsApp message, email, vendor response, and internal note is logged against the enquiry. Full history visible in one place — no switching between apps.
Results
The system went live in 9 weeks. Within the first month:
- The team stopped using spreadsheets entirely for enquiry management
- Vendor response time improved dramatically with automated RFQs
- Payment follow-ups became automatic — no more missed due dates
- Management gained real-time visibility into the pipeline for the first time
Tech Decisions
We chose Supabase for the database to get PostgreSQL power with real-time subscriptions (the team sees updates live). Twilio WhatsApp was integrated directly via Meta Cloud API for the lowest per-message cost. OpenAI GPT-4 handles the unstructured message parsing — it correctly identifies material specs from casual WhatsApp messages with 95%+ accuracy.
The entire system is deployed on Cloudflare Workers for low-latency access from any location, with Brevo handling transactional email delivery.
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