Construction Management
Business Automation Overhaul
By Jeff Knutson
Mon, 27 Nov 2006, 06:00 PST

If your building business is slower than normal, perhaps it is time for a complete evaluation and overhaul of your business processes and procedures. This means taking the time to evaluate your business in order to determine if you’re using automation and technology to the fullest. This will allow you to maximize your efficiency and rid your company of waste.

We all know that when times are good we, as business owners, have a difficult time incorporating new automation ideas into our business. When we’re busy and making money, we use the old saying “Don’t fix it if it isn’t broken” as an excuse for not making a change. Now that the building business is in the down cycle, you might want to reevaluate the idea, “I’ve done it this way for 10 years and it works, so why should I change?”

Successful builders from around the country are taking this window of opportunity to invest in automated tools to aide them in increasing their sales and bottom line profits. These builders are asking themselves, “How can we use automation and technology to improve our business, so we can be more profitable and efficient in the coming years when the building cycle is on the upward trend?” What many of them are doing is looking into more advanced technology methods to improve their sales, marketing, customer service, estimating, change orders, purchasing, scheduling, project management, and job cost accounting procedures in their business.

Builders should be asking themselves these 10 basic questions about their companies:

1. Do we have the automated tools to offer our sales agents the ability to track prospects, new sales, and sales under contract, and to generate purchase agreements easily and quickly so they can maximize sales?

2. Do we have good automated procedures for tracking customer history and service warranty work that create happy customers who provide us with ongoing references?

3. Do we have automated procedures in place to keep our prospects and customers informed about new jobs and projects, and does this provide us with an on-going referral base of business?

4. Is our methodology of pricing and estimating jobs quick and accurate, or is it time consuming and leaves profit on the table?

5. Are our estimates detailed and accurate enough so that what is estimated can be communicated effectively to the people that are bidding and/or building the project?

6. Once the job is sold, is what we’re using to communicate with our vendors and employees adequate and detailed enough to reduce or eliminate mistakes?

7. Do we have the tools in place to keep our jobs on schedule?

8. Are we doing a good job of estimating, pricing, and tracking change orders?

9. Are we doing a good job of tracking our actual versus budgeted costs on jobs, so we can catch cost overruns?

10. Are our systems integrated so everyone is working together for the same cause?


Answering these questions is the first step in improving your business. If you answered no to any of these questions, take the time to evaluate what is out in the market to help improve and streamline your business. This is a great time to take your business to the next level with automation. Whether you do something today or do nothing and wait until the cycle changes, the choice is yours. The great thing about doing something to improve your business today is that you will be better prepared and further ahead of your competitors who did nothing.