Need Of Construction Management Software?

Staff WriterNovember 27, 2019, 7:00 amNovember 27, 2019

It doesn’t matter if you’re a sole trader starting out, or an established business with dozens of employees, unless you plan to retire in the next 18 months, you need to onboard your business to a construction management solution that suits you.

Selecting Construction Management Software is not a task to rush into. This system will run your whole business, so switching from one to another is not a simple task. That’s why it’s important to do your research and select the system best suited to your needs.

First, let’s establish why Construction Management Software (CMS) is so important to your business today.

Communication – The right CMS gives you a strong platform to effortlessly communicate with your staff and clients, and them back to you
Transparency – No more guessing who did what, and when, the right CMS will automatically show you
Efficiency – The right CMS will streamline your business practices, turning it into a ‘well-oiled machine’
Knowledge – The only way to improve your business is to know WHERE it needs improving. A good CMS will show you where you’re winning and losing, so you can make changes that will have a positive impact on your bottom line
Accountability – A good CMS will give you the data to track the performance of all your staff and jobs, making it easy to set and monitor KPIs

Now we need to look at the features offered by different Construction Management Software solutions, and which features are more important to YOU. The best way to do this is to perform a business self-assessment to prioritise the features that will make the most difference to improving your business.

Step 1 – Write Down Your End-To-End Procedure

I find it easier to do this as a flowchart. Start from the start: “Receiving an enquiry”, and finish at the end: “Client pays final invoice”. List all the steps that the project goes through, and all the staff (be specific about who and when) that are responsible for each step.

Don’t forget to note down how information passes from one staff member to the other.

Step 2 – Identify Your Strengths And Weaknesses

Now go through the procedure and identify your big pain points:

Where are you inefficient?
Where does the communication break down?
Where is admin taking too much time?
Where are the mistakes being made and why?
Where are you constantly losing money?

Step 3 – Write Your Wish List

Now you’ve put your business under the microscope it’s time to write your list of ‘must-haves’ and ‘nice-to-haves’. When writing this list, focus on solving the problems you’ve highlighted in your research above.

Here is a list of features offered by Construction Management Software packages and the problems they solve.

Give each feature a weight of 1 to 10; the higher the number the more important the feature.