7 Must-have feature in Construction Management Software
In truth, one survey discovered that over half (56%) of SMB construction corporations have already adopted construction administration software program to make the lives of their builders and contractors only a bit simpler.
While there are a variety of out-of-the-box solutions available for construction industries, many organizations discover that off-the-shelf software often falls short. As such, more organizations are electing to construct custom-tailored Construction Management Software to fulfil their needs.
If you are contemplating acquiring your personal custom solution, step one is to begin planning out what that can appear to be. To get began, listed here are simply 7 must-have features for construction administration software.
1. Bid Management & Financial Management
Step one for many construction tasks is the preliminary bid, and your workforce is probably going submitting a number of bids without delay. In flip, your organization may additionally be receiving bids from sub-contractors. After some time, preserving observe of RFPs and submittals alone can develop into a juggling act. Instead, handle all this data via bid administration software, which may offer you financial savings in time, boosts productiveness, and extra detailed reporting.
Throughout the bid submission and approval process, you will most likely additionally need to observe the related monetary data. In addition, you are doubtless monitoring payroll, invoices, and challenge budgets, amongst others. When tracked manually, you improve your chance for miscalculations. Instead, use an accounting management software program for correct expense monitoring to monetary forecasts.
2. Customer Relationship Management
Once a bid has been accepted, and also you have acquired one other client, you will need to preserve observe of that client’s contact info, related particulars associated with their challenge, and your communications with them. And even when your workforce is great at juggling the needs of your clients, customer relationship management (CRM) could make them even better.
Not only does a CRM present your workforce with the tools necessary to make file maintaining and communication more manageable, but it could automate some of the duties required to make sure you are assembly your clients’ needs. From automatically sending reminders to challenge updates, your CRM can prevent time to offer your client greater buyer expertise. Plus, the typical ROI for a CRM is $8.71 per dollar spent on the system (Nucleus Research).
3. Project Management & Scheduling Management
After your client’s project begins, you will develop timelines for your workforce, in addition to your sub-contractors, to get the challenge rolling. With so many shifting components, guaranteeing that everybody is on an identical web page is usually a problem. As such, it should come as no shock that one survey recognized project monitoring as the first feature (73%) sought by development corporations, making project management and scheduling software presumably probably the most fascinating features.
With the assistance of a project administration system, an organization can foster improved collaboration, particularly when not all your whole workforce members are on the premises. When built-in with the scheduling software, your project managers can assign duties to sub-contractors, in addition, to develop comprehensive project plans that may be simply shared with all stakeholders involved.
4. Inventory Management & Equipment Management
Most construction projects call for 1000’s, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, in materials—that doesn’t even embrace the multi-million dollar tools that have to be accounted for, maintained, and distributed to suitable places. When not adequately tracked, you’ll find yourself shedding observe of where supplies or vehicles are when orders must be positioned, and more.
The excellent news is software program can assist in each area. Inventory management software makes it straightforward to seek for and distribute materials in a well-timed and efficient method. Likewise, gear administration software could be integrated along with your scheduling system to ship you reminders for when gear must be at a job website, in addition, to provide you with a warning when your gear is due for maintenance.
5. Document Management System
All of the duties talked about above produce a major quantity of paperwork, together with monetary paperwork, these RFPs and submittals, contracts, and a lot extra. Physical paperwork comes together with the draw back of needing to be saved in a bodily house, to not point out a surplus of money and time: Research has discovered that it prices a mean of $20 to file a doc, $120 to discover a lacking doc, and $220 to breed paperwork which have been misplaced totally.
Rather than waste time, cash, and space, you may think about going paperless with a cloud-based document administration system (DMS). Especially when you already have a present system, similar to a CRM or project administration software, you may simply combine them collectively. With the 2 techniques built-in, you may say goodbye to sifting via paperwork, and as a substitute, simply retailer and distribute paperwork through your cloud-based system.
6. Communications Software
Whether or not it’s emails, textual content messages, or cellphone calls, you and your workforce can simply discover yourselves misplaced within the surplus of communication channels. Between receiving requests from shoppers to answering contractors’ questions, data can simply get misplaced. With communication ceasing to manoeuvre ahead, the progress of your development tasks will doubtless decelerate as nicely.
To preserve your shoppers completely satisfied and tasks shifting ahead with well-timed communication, you should utilize communication software. By integrating this software program along with your CRM, for example, you may automate a few of your replies to clients; in that method, you will never miss a necessary message. Likewise, when integrated with a project administration software system, you may tie communications to a selected project, making it simpler to trace what questions are associated with which challenge, as an illustration.
7. Mobile Compatibility
Many organizations are benefitting from the cloud-based software, even people who spend the majority of their time in the identical workplace from week to week. In the construction business, however, most of each project takes place at a distinct location. Not solely that however the project managers, sub-contractors, and more are sometimes not all on-site at the identical time, nor have fast entry to a laptop or desktop.
With most software now cloud-based, your construction firm and partners can access the data they need from any time and wherever. In this way, when your software is made accessible from a mobile machine, through a cellular app or cellular responsive design, your project managers will be capable of access challenge specs to schedules from the palm of their hand.
Need a Custom Construction Management Software Solution?
While there are multiple construction management software systems for builders and contractors on the market, these cookie-cutter techniques are not appropriate for each development firm. Whether you have scaled or your unique want are not being met by the software you’ve, you could need custom software.
At Apagen, our team has been building operational software for over a decade. From project administration to inventory management systems, we have small to enterprise-level organizations with Odoo ERP software solutions that produce results.