A solid business intelligence solution helps align organizations toward their key objectives by providing timely feedback on whether current actions will produce the desired results or whether changes need to occur. Having quick access to this information acts as a lever for executives and managers to reduce profit fade on each project and drive overall improved performance and profitability across the entire construction operation.
Recent history has shown that companies that embrace a business intelligence strategy have a definitive edge over their competitors. This is even more evident with the highly competitive and often unpredictable construction industry. Construction firm executives continue to express the need to have information at their fingertips to better manage and act on exceptions in the business.
Many construction companies we’ve spoken to have expressed their frustration with decisions being delayed or changed due to the lack of KPI information available. Additionally, frequent changes in the data are not received or perceived properly by decision makers until it’s too late, causing a chain reaction of issues from loss of job productivity to rising costs to unhappy clients.
The inspiring news is that all of these issues can be addressed by choosing the right business intelligence solution.
A business intelligence system is not beneficial to your business if you can’t view essential information quickly or easily. Having KPI data available at a glance ensures you’re making the right decision at the critical time it needs to be made. A successful solution should present simple, easy-to-understand views in a graphical dashboard to save time and eliminate inefficiencies. By utilizing clear graphical reporting and optimal flexibility to access multiple data sources, businesses can quickly access and understand large sets of information enabling better decisions. Look for a solution that provides a library of pre-configured dashboard reports based on construction specific best practices, or a customizable dashboard presenting information that is highly visual and actionable.
A good BI library contains report parts to select from for viewing your company’s KPIs. Look for a BI library based on customer feedback and best practices that leading construction firms used to determine their own KPIs.
Examples of pre-configured dashboard reports you should expect as part of a robust content library include:
- RFI Trend – Reports on RFI’s overdue by a week.
- Top AR receivables – defined by customers across all companies.
- Employee distribution map – The number of employees by state with skill filters.
- Worst performing phases – View performance across all companies.
- Worst performing jobs – View job performance against budget for all companies.
- AR trending – The AR receivable break down by week.
- Backlog analysis – All work remaining on current contracts and potential projects.
- Unbilled Costs – Shows all the costs for a T&M job that has not been billed.
- Accidents by month trend – The number of accidents by month for all companies.
A good BI solution should also help you stay profitable by maintaining job cost control with access to immediate cost information, project progress, and real-time updates from Payroll, Accounts Payable, Equipment Management and Inventory. Some features we have added to BI to facilitate job cost monitoring include:
- Query tools to examine projects and identify KPIs.
- Ability to monitor overall company performance with dynamic drill down functionality.
- Track gross profit, cash flow, backlog, buyout status, labor productivity, ending contracts, and cost changes.
- Align project managers and management with graphical representation of data maintained in the database – document tracking, outstanding documents, days overdue, etc.
Business intelligence can be an innovative tool for providing timely feedback on whether actions will produce the desired results or if changes may be needed. A solid business intelligence solution can help reduce profit fade and drive overall improved performance across your entire operations.
View an Interactive Demo to see how Vista by Viewpoint can improve your business intelligence.
