How mobile solutions increase productivity and profits
Construction firms are faced with unique communication challenges, primarily between the field and office. Each member of the team, the contractors out in the field, accountants and project managers back at the office, are all contributing key data to keep track of the health and progress of a project, with many projects occurring simultaneously. Common challenges are waiting on paperwork from the field in order to run payroll; the need to re-enter materials inventory information into your back office system and then missing information that needs to be tracked down. As a result, the likelihood of increased errors and frustrations can run high. These challenges can also lead to loss of visibility of job progress, status and costs of tracking labor, equipment usage and production units. Running an efficient and profitable organization means construction firms need to find new ways to capture a project’s progress from the field.
From the field to the office
Construction companies are rapidly employing mobile applications to take advantage of simplifying and automating the capture of information from the field and updating that data in a company’s accounting and project management system. These mobile solutions go a long way in reducing errors and in turn increasing productivity. A profitable construction job or project often hinges on the accuracy and timeliness of tracking job-related costs: labor, equipment and units of production/percent complete.
Mobile solutions can eliminate the typical paper processes associated with timesheets, equipment usage or units of production. Providing the ability to capture these changes on a device, and incorporating the approval process in the same system saves hours of time that was previously used to track down and confirm information. These streamlined mobile solutions can also guard against inaccuracies that often occur when using a paper-based system such as illegible handwriting, lost paperwork or absenteeism of a critical information holder.
Contractors can expect to achieve a quick return on investment integrating their mobile solution with their project management and accounting system. Many can expect direct benefits to their bottom line when a mobile solution can facilitate:
• Entering and tracking time by account, work order or job
• Grouping labor and equipment to specific jobs or job phases
• Reviewing daily project status reports
• Tracking daily, weekly and monthly costs back to the established budget
• Field workers having more time to spend at the job site, avoiding the frequent need to go to the office to provide updates
If a mobile solution can track equipment usage and time associated with specific jobs, contractors in the field, supervisors, project managers, controllers and even the CEO has daily visibility into the health of a project. With this level of visibility, alterations to project plans can be made at a quicker pace. With these technology advancements your field personnel can easily record work progress, labor hours, inspections and compliance to specifications whether in or out of mobile network coverage. At the same time, your office employees can easily track, cost and report on time, equipment usage and progress on jobs. This allows you to see in real-time what has been done in the field. By increasing effectiveness in the field, improving data accuracy and same-day visibility into the health of projects, contractors can lower production costs, increase productivity and ultimately realize greater profitability.
The evaluation process
With the explosion of smart phones and tablets in the market, there is a sizable variety of mobile solutions in the construction market today. If you are ready to explore mobile solutions for your organization, what criteria should be part of your evaluation process?
• Easy for field personnel to use. A user-friendly, intuitive interface makes recording information easy. Only functionality necessary for select users should be displayed, giving them access to only the forms and fields that they will use. This will make the application continue to look simple to even new users.
• Platform independent. The solution should be able to run on either iOS or Android platforms, as devices running these platforms are the most popular. Whether you are purchasing tablets or smart phones for staff use, or you will support a “bring your own device”
(BYOD) policy, this feature offers you and your field personnel additional flexibility and will help ease their transition in adopting new technology.
• Fully usable when outside of network coverage. Should you be out of network, the solution should automatically synchronize captured information to your back-office system as soon as network or wireless data connection is detected.
• The ability to review and approve field data prior to updating the accounting system is vital to ensuring validity of data.
• Easy administration with automatic employee set-up and flexible configuration liberates IT resources to tackle higher priorities.
Bottom line
When evaluating a mobile solution for your business, ensure it has an intuitive and simple format, a high ease of use, is platform independent and works in or out of network. It should also provide a tight integration supporting a seamless flow of information from the mobile device to your accounting system and then back to the field. This continual flow of information means you can easily keep your data in sync and ensure your projects are progressing on schedule and at a profitable pace.
Scott Hegrenes is product manager at Viewpoint Construction Software, Portland, Ore. For more information, visit www.viewpointcs.com.
