The media tends to talk about the economy as if it is on the verge of recovery, but people in the field know times are still tough and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. No matter the size of the company, many businesses severely cut resources and employees during 2008 and 2009. They figured out how to maintain the projects they had with the minimum number of people, and adjusted payroll so they could keep the doors open. The theme for 2010 was simply to survive.
Fast forward to now: After downsizing, many businesses cannot cut resources anymore without risking the success of the company. In the contracting world, people are the most important assets available. Moving through 2011 and into 2012, firms are working to grow their businesses again with the current teams and resources they have. In short, they are required to do more with less.
Technology helps people do more in less time or with fewer resources. Following are some of the tools that are helping construction companies operate more efficiently in today’s highly competitive environment.
Collecting and Tracking Bids
Contractors are pursuing more projects than in the past, forcing their business development teams to juggle a multitude of opportunities. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools track all the opportunities being pursued, as well as the next steps. Instead of contractors having to remember to follow up with a client in two weeks, CRM systems provide automatic reminders. More importantly, others in the firm have full visibility. If someone forgets to follow up, another staff member will get the reminder so an opportunity to win a new customer isn’t missed.
Automating or Template Bids
Generating proposals and bids historically has required hours of tedious, manual work. For example, the first thing contractors do is search for similar projects they have bid on in the past. Then they track down other existing documents that have the information they need for this new opportunity, including the right boilerplate material. Then they have to ask people on jobsites for references, examples and details on previous projects. Usually this information has been provided in the past, but it is buried in old documents.
In order to round out this nightmarish process, the materials must be linked together so it looks professional and cohesive. This suboptimal process is repeated for each and every proposal. Now that many firms are pursuing more projects than ever, this can consume a significant amount of valuable staff time.
Automating the process using purpose-built technology produces materials faster and more efficiently, allowing contractors to spend more time where it matters most: thinking about clients. By using a bid generation tool, contractors can pick the template best suited for each opportunity and quickly add whatever information is needed, including project and bid information. This eliminates the need to ask other team members to spend time helping with the proposal when they should be busy trying to complete a job.
In addition to images and boilerplates, contractors can quickly identify and add commonly used data into the template, including:
- Projects: Has the firm done something similar?
- Clients: Who’s a good reference?
- Employees: Who are the best project managers?
Tracking Communications
With the expanse of email communications that go into construction projects, capturing or collecting them in an easy manner is challenging, especially when so many different people are involved. Today’s project management tools collect these communications centrally and associate them with specific projects. If someone needs to see who approved design changes, there’s no need to ask. Instead, use the project management tool to view every communication associated with a project, including when the client approved the project changes and associated increased costs.
Collaborating with Customers and Partners
With the birth of devices such as the iPhone and iPad, there are always new to view project information, enter updates and change schedules without ever booting up a laptop. Also, now people halfway around the world can collaborate on the same document online without ever getting on a plane, getting in the car or even being on the same operating system.
Think about the amount of time saved by emailing a client versus playing voicemail tag to get the needed answer and the amount of time and effort that goes into effectively responding to one bid. With technology, that time and energy can now be reused on the next bid. Even though some of these examples may save only a few minutes here or a few hours there, it all adds up.