The different kinds of construction software
(and what to consider when buying)
There are a large variety of software and packages for:
projects |
time sheets |
customer relationships |
schedules |
warranties |
design |
tasks |
web sites |
file sharing |
contacts |
sales |
accounting |
documents |
equipment |
customers |
e-mail |
fax |
estimates |
financing |
and more... |
and more... |
It's overwhelming and difficult to compare.
Contracting businesses typically use 3 types of software or struggle with software made for conventional businesses, not construction firms.
Who wants to research, buy, setup, learn, and use a dozen or more pieces of software? Then figure out how to get software systems to talk to each other? It's time consuming and difficult.
Most software programs work independently of one another. While there are a lot of very good reasons for software systems to share information, the reality is, it's often next to impossible to get them to do it.
It's no wonder so many contracting businesses have steered clear of software.
Unfortunately, a lot of the same information needs to be entered over and over just to make different software programs work.
Redundancy, slows you down, wastes time, and sucks at your profitability like a shop-vac on steroids. If only one piece of job information changes (and how often does that happen?), then the change must be updated on every piece of paper and within every software system that relies on it. If this is not done immediately and religiously, then people end up working off the wrong information � one of the biggest underlying causes of mistakes and lost profit in construction.
However, none of these are problems with BuildIT because it is one software system that manages, organizes, schedules, and communicates a wide variety of information.
On top of that it takes a lot of work to keep computers running and connected (networked) to each other.
The fact is, people and businesses don't back up their information as often as they should (if at all). Then something happens, a computer gets stolen or a hard drive crashes, and things get real difficult (ask anyone who has experienced it).
It takes a lot of effort to recover from a computer crash - business won't wait - work still needs to be done - but now there's a ton of extra hassle to keep everything going - and the burden to recover from a computer crash usually falls 100% on the user.
However, you used a web based system you wouldn't miss a beat, just go to any computer, access the internet, and you're up and running.
More on the advantages of web-based construction software...
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