Growing construction companies face a number of challenges as they expand their coverage areas, add more complex projects to their portfolios, and scale their operations. With construction labor productivity remaining elusive and customers becoming increasingly demanding, smart construction firms are leveraging technology to their advantage.
Highly competitive by nature, the construction segment works on tight margins which means that any streamlining of operations typically equates to improved efficiencies and a healthier bottom line. For example, when a General Contractor can determine which inventory components are needed at a given jobsite in real-time and easily forecast their demand, this increases productivity while also reducing overhead costs to ensure projects remain on-time and under-budget.
Like many industries, construction tends to be bogged down by disparate systems, spreadsheets and manual processes—all of which can severely impact a firm’s competitive power and marketplace advantage. To best scale their operations and manage increasingly complex projects, construction companies need an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that integrates directly with a robust construction management platform like Procore.
Power Up Your Construction Projects
The right construction management software helps improve the accountability and transparency of projects while also helping teams manage costs and meet deadlines. Firms that understand this are using these solutions to optimize internal processes, improve productivity and get geographically-dispersed teams on the same page.
“While project management software is often associated with the business and tech sectors, professionals in the construction industry are increasingly turning to software solutions to streamline their workflows,” Business News Daily reports.
“Project management software can help contractors and construction firms improve communication, manage budgets and documentation, and keep track of their employees,” the publication continues. “This all makes companies more efficient, allowing them to scale their business in the long term.”
Conquering Complexity with Procore & NetSuite
Used by companies in more than 150 different countries, Procore gives construction firms the tools they need to be able to grow their profits, protect their people, and build their businesses. The cloud-based construction management platform connects all stakeholders involved in a construction project—from owners and general contractors to subcontractors and vendors. Procore streamlines communication, collaboration, and data management across the entire construction lifecycle—from pre-construction to project completion and closeout.
Because Procore can be used as a standalone application, many construction firms started out with that application and then added NetSuite in order to gain a unified view of their finances, operations, sales, customer relationship management (CRM) and project profitability. In other situations, construction firms implement Procore and NetSuite concurrently. Then, they’ll add additional NetSuite modules and/or a field management application as the needs arise.
As a NetSuite Alliance Partner, Vursor helps growing construction firms integrate Procore with NetSuite and then harness the benefits of this perfect pairing. Vursor understands the intricacies and requirements of construction management, and looks carefully at how its clients’ businesses operate, the data that they want to share with customers and how their project managers or general contractors can use the system.
“We factor all of that into our design solutions before we even start the configuration process,” says Drew Preiner, VP of Sales at Vursor. “From there, we provide the guidance that construction firms need to be able to get the most out of these two powerhouse systems—NetSuite and Procore—and get them to complement each other. This all happens during the discovery phase to make sure everyone's on the same page before starting the configuration.”
Once the project begins, Vursor’s delivery team dives much deeper into the functionality and requirements of the two systems. “We work on a ‘measure twice and cut once’ philosophy,” Preiner adds. “Everyone has to give a mutual thumbs-up before we kick off the configuration.”
Keeping Everything in One System
The construction industry works on tight deadlines, complex budgets and seamless collaboration across teams. When NetSuite and Procore replace siloed software solutions and manual processes, the unified platform provides these and other top benefits:
- CFOs get central and reliable data that provides real-time visibility into project and portfolio health.
- Financial teams get the data they need to be able to improve cash flow, expedite procurement and billing, and close the project books faster.
- Project managers can easily gauge the financial impact of change orders and view the status of vendor and subcontractor payments.
- 74% of customers integrating their ERP apps with Procore agree that it has made their business more scalable.
- 93% of finance leaders have seen a notable improvement with their finance team efficiency since using NetSuite.
Integrated financial and construction management software also unites the field and back office with one source of financial data. This means construction teams can communicate better, manage change orders, eliminate multiple manual entries, reduce risk and accurately analyze projects. They can also get change orders approved eight days faster, on average, and reduce the frequency of non-recoverable change orders by 52 percent.
No More Jumping Between Systems
Other key benefits that companies expect from integrating NetSuite with Procore include access to a consolidated reporting tool that factors in the project profit and loss and individual execution of different stages or milestones of a project—right down to the resource level. Firms can also do time tracking in a single system (with the right permissions), versus having to cobble dozens of different systems together.
And finally, because Procore incorporates AIA billing and estimating capabilities, that additional functionality is woven right into your processes and integrated with NetSuite. “With Procore, you can leverage your planning and actual resource side and still retain visibility within NetSuite,” Preiner concludes, “all without having to jump between different systems to do it.”