PRELUDE: Why do I need a Construction ERP?
“What got us here, won’t get us there.”
The construction industry will only continue to grow, but the business landscape for small and medium-sized companies is getting increasingly competitive by the year. What used to be an industry based solely on relationships, referrals, and handshakes is going higher-tech. The businesses that adapt will survive and grow; the ones who fail to evolve will go the way of the steam-powered tractor (that is to say: obsolete). One way to gain a competitive edge is to invest in a modern, cloud-based ERP system like Acumatica Construction Edition.
What is Acumatica Construction Edition?
Acumatica’s newest product on the scene is their Construction Edition suite of modules designed to address the needs of general contractors, specialty contractors, builders, utility companies, and much more. Cloud ERP helps construction companies eliminate manual entry, demolish silos, connect the office to the job site, and so much more. [Follow our Acumatica blog for our upcoming series detailing the pitfalls associated with legacy technology and construction companies. This blog only scratches the surface.
We’ll begin the construction ERP blog series with a look at one of Acumatica’s most popular and powerful features: the fully customizable dashboards that show everything any individual user will need to see at a single glance. This cloud ERP demo will show you how even outside apps are seamlessly integrated into the main functionality – one “single source of truth.”
Intuitive, Customizable Dashboard Views
This is the first in a series of blogs where we will highlight the best features of Acumatica Construction Edition, and allow you to compare it to how your processes work now. We'll begin with reviewing some of the dashboards that are included out of the box in the Construction Edition. The transcript is included below the video as a guide.
00:00:03 Welcome to the Acumatica ERP Construction Edition overview demonstration. We'll begin today by reviewing some of the dashboards that are included in the Construction Edition.
00:00:15 Here you'll see a Project Overview dashboard. This is designed to be an executive or operational dashboard, kind of a high-level look at various projects that we have going on within the organization.
00:00:29 You can see here this dashboard represents some of the different types of widgets we can include on a dashboard, such as a simple chart or inquiry. As well as a graphical representation using pie graphs or bar graphs.
00:00:42 You'll also see that we have the ability to integrate websites such as this job site camera, where we can review the different projects and job sites in real time.
00:00:54 And we also have different overview information about our projects such as gross profit by project shown in both a grid as well as a graphical format.
00:01:04 We can also see a review of revised contracts, change order logs, even “Ball in Court,” so different RFI's that we've set in the system.
00:01:15 I'm going to flip over to our construction project manager dashboard. This is a dashboard that's going to be designed specifically for actions that construction project managers might need to take.
00:01:26 You can see here we have several different KPIs. Just giving them a quick look at some of their project metrics. We also have an integrated website again, which is our weather application.
00:01:39 This is completely interactive, so you can actually come in and search by different location for that weather app and then we can see some different actions that the project manager might have, such as items to approve a change order log, project issues that they might need to address.
00:01:59 We can also drill down further into these dashboard widgets such as our over budget projects. This is going to take us into an inquiry that provides us with additional detail about which projects are over budget and exactly how much over budget they are. From here you can see we could actually drill right into the project and be able to review that information in more detail.
00:02:21 Next, we'll go ahead and go into our favorites where we'll start reviewing a specific project.
00:02:28 This is our project inquiry which is going to give us a listing of all of the projects that we have within our system.
00:02:35 We can filter this by which projects are active, which projects are assigned to us, potentially as a project manager, or by customer ID.
Why Acumatica Construction Edition?
Software that used to work fine in the beginning is starting to hold companies back. In a landscape that is becoming increasingly competitive, businesses cannot afford to fall behind due to old inefficient systems, siloed data, manual entry errors. A modern cloud ERP solution can resolve those woes, and more.
What is an Acumatica Partner?
Choosing software is only half the battle – all ERP systems are sold through “reseller” partners who will help you assess, implement, train your team, and support you throughout the life of the product. It is absolutely imperative that you find a partner with whom you mesh well. It’s why we offer free consultations – you can get to know our team, and we can advise you on the best fit for your business. For more information on the importance of choosing the right Acumatica partner, check out our Acumatica partner blog.