The current scenario:
Yes, there is a challenge for all of us. However, I also believe that pandemic has given us an opportunity to overhaul our business execution.  The construction industry has no choice but to adopt much-needed innovation or technology adoption for sustaining their business profits. When we think of innovation, there are four crucial factors associated with it.

• Time
• Money
• Human resource (manpower)
• Processes

If we look at these four factors, the AEC players are tremendously under pressure to balance them. In particular, the smaller businesses are feeling the heat of the moment, and to come out of this current situation, they need to adopt a plan that can take the pressure off them slowly but steadily.

Breaking out the comfort zone:
As we speak of innovation, the AEC industry, especially the construction companies, have to come out of their comfort zone. We all know the poor adoption of technology in the construction industry in comparison to other industries in spite of significant contribution to GDP. This is a universal truth. However, we cannot afford to keep it going anymore. The time has come when this technology negligence can lead to unwanted and long-term losses. No doubt, the construction industry is predominantly manually-driven with less technology adoption in certain business areas. However, this needs to be changed and changed for the better.

The challenges:
Let’s have a look at some challenges faced by construction companies today.

• Cost overruns
• Real-time information access
• Team collaboration
• Real-time project tracking
• Timely project completion
• Process streamlining
• Timely approvals

Most of these challenges directly affect the overall business profitability and efficient project management.

The ERP way:
While I speak of enterprise resource planning (ERP), there are certain parameters that we need to keep in mind. I strongly believe that any business investment should be justified on the returns and should have long-term benefits. From the business perspective, there is a huge demand for data collection and data personalization. For any real-estate developer or a contractor, access to this data will lead to strategic business advantage. From such a perspective, the ERP software comes as a right fit for construction companies. Irrespective of business size, the construction ERP enables a process-driven organization with entire data captured during the process is analyzed to provide the right reports to make informed decisions and adopt winning strategies.

How Construction ERP will help?
As I said earlier, the construction ERP adoption should have a multi-faceted approach with the following parameters.

Process Driven: The software should be process-driven that collates all the industry processes under one system.

Flexible and configurable: The flexible and configurable ERP system will enable construction companies to configure the processes based on their business requirements without making any alterations to their existing processes.

Scalable: When the construction companies have scalable ERP in place, it becomes easier for them to balance business growth and increasing demands.

Anytime, anywhere access: Also, one of the crucial things that the cloud-based construction ERP will help with anytime, anywhere access to the business data through any device, be it PC or Tablet or mobile.

Conclusion:
The construction industry players need to re-think the way they manage their projects and their decision-making process. Today, data holds the key to make informed and intelligent decisions and the construction industry players should understand this reality. Moving ahead, the emphasis should be on making things smoother, stable and smarter. Yes, there are several pain areas; however, once ERP is adopted in day-to-day operations it will change the organization for the better.

With the enablement of the ERP system, the construction companies will be able to cope up with some of the traditional issues, such as procurement, project management, scheduling, inventory management, accounting, and most importantly, the sales with all of them connected to each other seamlessly. The collaboration of site and head office with clear visibility of progress at site on real time basis can only be achieved through technology adoption.

The industry players need to re-think the way they manage their projects and the decision-making process. The industry lacks data-driven decision making and to counter the post-COVID-19 challenges, the industry players need to rely heavily on the data collected on real time basis from remote sites. I foresee that online cloud based software and systems to digitally manage construction projects from now onwards will be considered imperative by business owners for monitoring and decision making for their projects.

For more details, contact:
Vijay Gupta,
Founder & CEO,
SoftTech Engineers Limited