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K-Factor: Conversations with C60’s Ramy Sedra
Scaling up with C60
C60 CEO Ramy Sedra catches up with Croell co-owner Jeramy Croell about the concrete producer’s transition to digital workflows.
In August 2023, ready mixed concrete producer Croell selected C60 as its data analytics platform to maximize profitability, optimize operations and meet continuous improvement objectives. I recently caught up with co-owner Jeramy Croell to see how C60 is working for them.
Croell was founded as a one-plant operation in 1968 in Lawler, Iowa, by Jeramy’s great-grandfather (Richard) and grandfather (Roger). In the late 1990s, the family business expanded into South Dakota and Wyoming. Today, Croell has 120 locations in 11 states. The company’s fast-paced growth over the past 10 to 15 years required a move to digital workflows.
“We had processes that were good when we were smaller, but they included manual data entry and scanning tickets with handwritten notes,” says Jeramy. “To keep track of everything now, we’d have to hire a lot more experienced people or find more efficient ways to do things. We decided to automate as much as possible.”
For Jeramy, “everything” includes not just job ticketing but also the financial information used for goal setting at each plant.
“We need to dig below the surface to uncover where we're making progress, how we got there and where we need to improve. It's not a guessing game—we need the actual numbers to show what’s happening, and to validate what’s happening,” he told me.
Adding C60 to Optimize Performance and Insights
As the company grew, Croell began using cloud-based software to manage day-to-day operations, including dispatching, e-ticketing, GPS tracking and delivery management. In 2023, the producer implemented the C60 platform to integrate with those systems and pull their data into user-friendly dashboards.
“The C60 dashboards provide insight into a variety of areas that we wanted to optimize, including batching accuracy, design yields, trucking and customer service. The main dashboard home page puts everything in terms of dollars, helping us to concentrate on the areas with the biggest potential of savings,” says Jeramy.
So far, Jeramy says they’ve been using C60 to quickly find their best customers, compare plant performance and improve batching accuracy.
“Being able to catch plants that weren't batching accurately was huge,” he says. “It saves so much more money than just batching at 100%.”
An added benefit, says Jeramy, is managers are no longer tied to desks chasing information and developing reports: “C60 provides all the information I need, which frees me to return to the field.”
Jeramy’s advice to other producers with growing businesses is two-fold:
- Automate as much as possible.
- Don’t plan for what you have now—plan for where you want to get to.
With C60, Croell’s management team is able to accomplish those two objectives and more. They are better equipped to adapt to the change management required to ensure operational processes continue to meet the needs of the growing company and its customers.
To learn more about Croell’s growth and approach to change management as well as how technology has transformed the way producers operate, watch or listen to Ramy’s full conversation with Jeramy Croell via the K-Factor podcast and vlog. Watch the full K-Factor episode now!
