Eliminate Silos, Improve Collaboration, and Increase Project Success with Acumatica, the Cloud ERP
Many construction businesses don’t have the right tools in place for good collaboration and sharing information between departments. This results in poor project outcomes, going over budgets, not being able to manage change, and not staying within timeframes. These firms are working with disparate systems, causing organizational silos and departments not knowing how it impacts the business.
Does Your Business Have Silos? 5 Things to Look for…
- Information doesn’t flow smoothly across your organization—and your entire business suffers as a result.
- It’s difficult to determine which projects are profitable.
- You worry about lack of visibility on labor costs—one of the most expensive variable components of a project.
- You have numerous external systems that don’t integrate, resulting in manual data entry and the errors that go with it.
- You’re running older technology that limits transparency, access, and process improvement.
In a recent study, construction firms reported they use, on average, six to ten software applications along with their main accounting system. Most of which have little integration with each other.
The Dangers of Silos in Your Business
Many businesses suffer from disconnected systems due to their legacy software. For example, departments might be using different spreadsheets, or stand-alone applications to complete their tasks. Does your business use different software for estimating, accounting, project management, bid management, and project scheduling?
What about reporting. Are you getting instant reports with ALL the data? If you have to pull reports from multiple systems and then collate them together, you’re not only wasting time but also leaving your business prone to errors.
By having all these different systems, it causes silos of information. These silos become a problem because teams develop tunnel vision and only focus on their own functional areas. They lose sight of the big picture and never think about how their work affects other people in other departments. With this sort of communication breakdown, dysfunction is soon to follow on multiple levels.
Additionally, for construction firms, having information in multiple disconnected systems causes all sorts of problems when we talk about a smooth customer experience.
There are few things more frustrating to a busy construction professional than using software that doesn’t provide a single customer view and real- time insights. Unfortunately, most customer experience teams have no way to arrive at a single customer view—and without this, they can’t fully understand each customer and provide them with a personalized experience.
Move to the Connected Cloud
Welcome to modern ERP. Cloud ERP solutions give you a complete end-to-end solution. You gain a single source of data for your business. Everyone from field techs to accounting has access to real-time information they need, including customer data.
With a connected cloud solution, you can:
- Connect your accounting with your construction business.
- Generate reports showing the percentage completed for projects.
- Calculate material and labor costs and generate a bill of materials.
- Track projects from start to finish while maintaining document control for change orders and other documents.
- Track inventory and help with your service business in scheduling, dispatching, and managing work orders.
Imagine your construction business having exchange of information between office employees and people out on job sites. When remote employees uses the mobile app and makes changes to RFIs, timecards, or project issues, the system automatically updates and syncs back to the system. Your entire workforce has access to the information the moment it changes. You can rest assured that important issues can be addressed immediately, before they cause costly delays.
Learn more about Acumatica and how this right-sized, right-priced, full featured ERP solution can help your construction business make money and keep customers happy.
Download a short 3-page article on why you need a connected system for your construction business.