O'Neal CEO Parnell discusses technology, flexibility, and camaraderie

Speaking with her was a masterclass in how to raise the performance of employees, increase operational efficiency and profitability, and how to show up to work engaged after over two decades in the steel industry! 

SMU is elated Jodi is joining the Woman of Steel forum at this year’s Steel Summit in Atlanta later this month.

Entering the industry 

Parnell: My path is very linear. I came straight out of college into the steel industry. There weren’t a lot of job options at the time. I needed a job and began in inside sales at Tuscaloosa Steel (Now Nucor Tuscaloosa). Part of the program required us to spend six weeks out in the mill. I learned a ton, from the ground up, in a very short amount of time.

My first mentor was Lisa McCollum. She worked side by side teaching so much, from industry knowledge to how to be a really good worker. Lisa taught me the importance of having good processes and to keep my head down and just do my job. She said, ‘People are counting on you to just do your job’ and work hard, be honest and transparent, and do the best you can. That’s what I did.

I came to O’Neal as a buyer, the reverse of inside sales. When I came onboard, the company was implementing an ERP system. I was on the project team where I learned a lot about the business from the process. That’s where it all started. 

People want you to succeed and so I kept my head down, found problems, and tried to solve them. I made many mistakes, took ownership of them, and learned so much from that process.  Look at AI, we see that even this technology is prone to making mistakes. It needs to be taught.  

That perspective has a lot to do with who I am today. I like to believe at O’Neal, despite the fact that information and data is so rapidly available and changing, that we give people a little space to mess up and learn. That opportunity is going away, which is a shame because that’s how we learn. 

Mentorship was a pivotal part of my journey. I do think that having a mentor mentality is part of my leadership style and approach. I learned to go figure it out and I encourage that mentality. Go find problems and try to solve them! Try not to look at mistakes as failures. Learn from them and apply what you learn.  

The revolution is here  

Parnell: We believe we are in a revolutionary phase right now. Everyone has been discussing AI forever. Scanning and barcode technologies are extremely important for sure, but to me it’s the ability to capture data that is the strongest tool moving us forward. What can you do and learn with all of that information, right? From how the organization is set up, and how inventory flows, to understanding the movement of your people, and turnover, this data can be used to revolutionize the uses of AI.  

For us, we’re doing a deep dive into the long-term use cases of AI. That way as it gets better and better, we’ve already mitigated problems that others didn’t necessarily foresee when they jumped into implementing certain AI systems.  

Our amazing team is pretty fired up about laying the foundation and progressing quickly. We are doing the prep, studying the use cases, watching as AI is creating itself, and we’re eager to make something that gets our customers excited. Instead of dealing with little shots that chip away at progress, we’re going in prepared for them.  

Our CFO (Andria Cleghorn) is extremely passionate about the possibilities that are ahead, and she has us excited about them, too.  

O’Neal Steel centers its customers   

Parnell: We’re 10 years into our e-commerce platform, “PRONTO.” It’s an incredible product and we’re going to give it a refresh. Our business and customers use it and most love it, and now we’re going to take their feedback and improve it.  

We have continuously met our consumers where they’ve asked us to meet them along the way, but now we’re going even further. That’s not something a lot of companies can do. But for us, that’s been a pivotal part of setting up an incredible consumer experience.  

Now we’ll be able to interface with our customers in an even more meaningful way. Being a privately held company allows us to think longer term and look at what success means in the long term. We get to offer flexibility on a customer-by-customer basis. We’re lucky not to have to get caught up in seeing shorter-term buckets. From the way we manage our relationships and handle their inventories, we have a lot of family values baked into our overarching strategy. That pays off with dividends. Handling the customer’s needs, product lines, technology commerce platforms, it’s a good recipe for adding value for our customers.  

We’re so proud of our latest ERP launch at 19 locations in May of last year with zero consumer impact! We are so proud of the team for this accomplishment. It’s probably one of the hardest things you can do, and our team banded together and did a great job.  

And they did it during a very chaotic time in the market. The uncertainty around the elections and market ups and downs, but despite all of the chaos the team did it. I can’t say enough about the folks who stepped up for this and the way they have dramatically embraced the changing environment… 

Our customers are experiencing uncertainty, too. They have to navigate changes and adapt and so we do as well. Some of our top customers today were our top customers five years ago, too. We aim to be the face of calm for them when times are challenging.  

Make connections, stay connected  

Parnell: I tell new interns, new hires, folks new to an industry to find a way to connect everything you read, hear on the news, or information you come across to your industry. And if you figure that out, you learn that in business, everything matters. Everything is connected and when you figure this out, you’ll never be bored. You will always be challenged, and you will always be intrigued.  

Who would have thought 25 years later, I’d still be this interested. When you know what governments are investing in and what they’re not, you can get a better sense of the reciprocal nature of industry. From medical facilities to data centers, everything is related. 

Whenever people are brought together, even when they disagree on something, it’s an opportunity for everyone to grow. Because it’s all about understanding perspectives. I have a different perspective now than I did when I had a different role. We have a lot more that we can talk about and learn from each other here than the parts of respective businesses that we can’t talk about.  

Coming here and listening to different ideas, perspectives, and developments makes us all sharper and smarter.  

O’Neal Steel is a service center based in Birmingham, Ala., and an affiliate of O’Neal Industries.