How The Cloud Helps Construction Firms Coordinate Between Field Offices

Success in the modern construction industry is all about how well your staff and crews can work together between multiple job sites and the office. An uninterrupted flow of information is vital for the progress of your projects — do you know how technology can help with your firm’s coordination?

In modern business environments, collaboration is vital – every moving part in a business needs to stay connected and in sync in order to meet the expectations of clients. This is especially true of construction firms that operate multiple job sites and field offices.

It’s no secret; technology is the driving force behind effective collaboration for businesses, especially those in the construction industry. Aligning your information technology solutions with your firm’s projects and plans will be transformational in terms of returns and success, helping to enhance:

• Coordination among job sites
• Communication between the main office and your crew at job sites
• Collaboration between all employees

Are You Struggling To Connect Your Sites And Employees?

Any construction firm, regardless of its size, will face many challenges. Whether it’s a strict deadline, harsh industry regulations or aggressive competition, the construction industry will always offer its share of difficulties.

Communication, coordination, and collaboration are still a major concern in the construction industry with organizations lacking control of and collaboration on projects in real-time. It is still a very expensive time-wasting issue, especially when decisions have to be made quickly.

For example, we all know how frustrating change orders can be. They crop up at the worst of times, modifying the original scope of the work, the original contract amount and/or the completion date of your project.

No matter what you do, it’s impossible to totally avoid change orders. It’s the cost of doing the business you do.  Instead of trying (and failing) to avoid them at all costs, the smart move is to learn how to optimize your firm’s ability to deal with them quickly.

How Can Your Firm Enhance Communication, Coordination & Collaboration?

• Become More Mobile: Mobile devices have made it easier and easier to get work done while on the go. Laptops, tablets, and smartphones are simple ways to share and review data, stay in touch with employees, and more while on the road. As you well know, a lot of your firm’s work is on the road and at job sites, after all. You don’t even necessarily need to invest in new hardware — implement Mobile Device Management and Bring Your Own Device policies that allow employees to use their own devices in combination with the organization’s.
• Harness The Cloud: You need to use the cloud for your construction firm’s work – the cloud is so saturated in the modern business world that, at this point, it’s obvious that you need to be making use of it. If you’re not already using the cloud for file sharing and storage, you’re way behind the times. But if you’re also failing to take advantage of the construction industry-specific features the cloud can deliver, then you’re missing out on a range of benefits:
• Empower Your Crew To Collaborate Efficiently: With cloud technology, your staff doesn’t have to wait for each other to be done with their part of the document or project in order to tackle their own aspect. They can all work on the same project at the same time to maximize productivity.
• Scale Your Tech With Your Firm: Cloud services have the unique strategic characteristic of being able to stretch or shrink to suit your current level of demand. This is especially useful for firms of any scale that will change in size over time.
• Keep Your Job Sites Connected: The cloud allows you to connect and view job sites remotely from a single cloud platform. Depending on the scope of your firm and how far apart job sites are, this could save you hours every day in travel time, allowing you instead to check in on sites from the comfort of your office (or wherever else you have an Internet connection).
• Deploy An ERP Solution: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems handle the management of core business processes, in real-time, using a combination of various software and technology. An ERP system is a class of enterprise software that will ease real-time management of data from across the different departments of your organization. These may include:
  • Sales
  • Purchases
  • Accounting
  • Manufacturing

ERP software systems will greatly simplify individual functions throughout your organization by automating them. ERP systems will also keep track of your business resources. The highest priority in any ERP system implementation is understanding how it integrates with your organization. You need to consult everyone who will interact with the system and document each and everything they will do with the system. That allows you to pinpoint the most important considerations, and migrate successfully.  ERP implementations often fail because the organization either didn’t know or failed to communicate their needs, or had unrealistic expectations about the implementation or legacy data migration. That’s why analysis and information gathering are so important.

Need Expert Assistance In Deploying Cloud Solutions?

Initial.IT is here to help. We’re proud to deliver robust and secure cloud capabilities to our clients in the construction industry, helping them to harness the power of new technology and transform the way they work every day.