Vulcan Steel One Domain Project

“Information Technology is fundamental to our progress. As a trading business, we must be able to monitor working capital continuously. Vulcan Steel has developed its own software modules for trading, coil processing, plate service centre, long product cutting and management accounting. The cost efficiency in this unique in-house system is substantial”. Peter Wells, Vulcan Steel CEO

Vulcan Steel, one of New Zealand’s largest privately owned companies, has enjoyed substantial growth in market share, not just in New Zealand but in the highly competitive Australian market.

Some of this growth was due to acquisition. This meant that along with new companies, Vulcan Steel also acquired legacy IT infrastructure, applications and domains.

During 2009 Vulcan embarked on a new domain project to simplify and standardise their network. The goal was, in conjunction with a hardware upgrade; deploy a single domain to replace four domains that existed within the network.

The decision was made to build the domain from the ground up. This provided an opportunity to ensure that historic decisions and policies, that no longer had relevance, would not be present on the new domain.

Vulcan Steel has a lean in house IT structure, relying on partners like Kinetics to provide support where necessary.

The domain was designed and deployed over a five month period, across six sites in New Zealand and Australia. Vulcan Steel sent Kinetics engineers to all sites, including Australia, to ensure this deployment went smoothly.

“Kinetics worked seamlessly with our IT staff, going the extra mile to make the deployment transparent to our users”. James Wells, Vulcan Steel.