How do your processes and systems compare to your industry peers?
How do your company’s business processes and systems measure up against industry averages, and best-in-class construction contractors? Amid all the change and swirl in the current business environment, you need objective, quantifiable metrics about how well your business processes and systems are serving your company’s competitiveness.
So, do you know how your company compares to those of your peers?
Many contractors don’t.
If you’re not sure how your construction processes compare, an assessment is a good way to understand peer comparison in a safe environment. Assessments create common definitions of processes and provide a consistent, neutral measure of effectiveness comparing companies like yours.
Peer comparison is a best practice for any business because it can identify areas in need of improvement helping you maintain the efficiency of your staff and your competitiveness in the industry.
The Best Practices Assessment Tool from Burger Consulting Group and Trimble Viewpoint reveals how your company measures up to the industry average and best-in-class contractors, plus recommendations for action steps based on your score.
Get Your Free Construction Best-Practices Assessment.
Without a means for diagnosing how the individual components; the people, tools, and processes, are performing, many contractors are flying blind, hoping that their people are making the best use of the tools they are given to perform these jobs and hope is not a strategy.
In a recent interview Christian Burger, Founder and President Burger Consulting Group of along with Dan Miller, Director of Sales Engineers at Trimble Viewpoint spoke about the genesis of the assessment tool and the benefits it brings to contractors.
“Technology is a tool, not an objective,” Burger says. “So, what are we trying to fix? It often involves speed of billing, efficiency of AP, better job cost visibility, for example.”
The Assessment Tool is designed to help contractors see their blind spots, to identify the things they know, the things they don’t know, and how effective day-to-day operations are. It addresses the most common business processes in a contractor organization. You can choose to evaluate more key process areas such as procure-to-pay, contract billing and accounts receivable, job cost and change orders among others, answering a few key questions, and then see a visual chart of your company’s answers compared to your peers – those of similar size and in similar industries. You can also compare your company against optimal recommended targets for efficiency gains and reduced risk.
“The use of spreadsheets is death by a thousand cuts.”
Too many contractors find that work is being done outside of their core systems. “The use of spreadsheets is death by a thousand cuts. When you look at all of that manual activity – emails, spreadsheets – collectively, it’s bad. You have a lot of talented, well-paid people doing the slogging.”
“Comparative evaluations point out those inefficient, high-risk activities in the organization, helping to identify where you can improve.”
Learn more about the Best-Practices Assessment Tool.
Introducing the Best-Practices Assessment Tool: Construction Process Insights
So, what can you evaluate? The Construction Process Insights assessment looks at construction processes, such as:
- Do you process CO requests and pending COs in your PM solution, or within your Job Cost accounting system?
- What is the level of adoption of your collaborative PM solution generally among your project team?
- Does the company get receiving tickets/packing slips in from the field to match against POs?
Pick a process area. In less than five minutes, by selecting responses to key questions you will get comparative data as well as recommendations for areas of improvement. By using the platform, you can compare your company to a best-in-class score and the industry averages.
Dan Miller, Director of Sales Engineers at Trimble Viewpoint, has worked with Christian Burger for many years. “I hear a lot of people say, ‘We know we need to upgrade/modernize, but it is just too much right now,’” Miller says. “But what is going to be the catalyst for change? Will it be after you’re removed from a bid list and the customer is looking for a better, more capable partner? After you discover that you can’t attract the best talent? As you said before, it’s death by a thousand cuts.”
A best-practice assessment looks at all construction business process:
- Procure to Pay
- Contract Billing & AR
- Job Cost & Change Orders
- Payroll & HR, Timekeeping
- Financial Management
- Project Management
- Field Management & Safety
- Reporting & Analytics
- Service Management
- Quote to Cash
- Heavy Equipment
Within each area, there may be opportunity for improvement. This best practice assessment tool provides a holistic picture.
“I’ve watched the industry evolve over time,” says Burger, who started his own consulting firm 25 years ago in Chicago. “Contractors have always struggled with tech adoption and process change. In our industry, we haven’t managed to do that yet, though we’re getting better.
“Now the construction industry has the equivalent of a health checkup”, says Miller. “Once you’ve taken the assessment tool checkup, you now have a diagnostic you can take to a specialist to help with implementing the recommendations”
Get a health assessment of your company.