Large scale construction businesses rely heavily on contractors to complete projects. At every stage, the involvement of contractors is incidental to the progress of projects. With the right set of contractors, a business can soar great heights and seamlessly navigate the changes that are sweeping the industry. It also gives them an immense competitive edge when compared with other players.
In today’s context, it is not just sufficient to have the right contractors in place but a lot depends on how they are managed and how their relationships, scope of work, payment cycles and the overall engagement with them is managed. Empowering in-house teams, especially project managers with the right set of tools to collaborate with contractors is a key determinant of success.
Here is where contractor software plays a key role in shaping the engagement, The key expectations of a good general contractor software are:
Contractor software enables collaboration that is free from ambiguity and makes information readily available to all stakeholders - field, project management office and the contractors. This mitigates the chances for discrepancies, facilitates smooth billing and work order management. This improves overall accountability and sets transparency as a key tenet in the system. As a result, businesses can improve their relationships with contractors. This also serves as a way to make data-driven decisions to re-engage with contractors or look for new ones based on performance.
Through features like mobile app, photo/video upload, daily status updates, field teams have a way to record the progress made day-to-day. As project management teams get this real-time view, they can track progress, course-correct faster whenever needed and also work on contingency plans wherever there is anticipation of delay or deviations.
For contractors, this also serves as a good way to ensure speed, efficiency and streamlined record-keeping to make sure they remain competitive. This helps them improve service quality and set new SLA benchmarks.
Safety incidents are never a good thing and it is mandatory for contractors to follow strict protocols to ensure safety. With General Contractor software, there is streamlined documentation, photos with timestamps and a host of such features which can improve safety for field staff.
This also saves hours of manual hours that would otherwise be spent sieving through tons of paperwork during compliance audits. The third goal of using contractor software is thus, helping businesses improve
There is no dearth for contractor software in today’s market. There is a plethora of options one can choose from to a point businesses can find it daunting to make a choice. The complexity of scale, budget, ease of onboarding all users and general outlook towards adopting technology are key factors to consider from an organization’s standpoint to make a choice.
As far as the right contractor software is concerned, it needs to check a few boxes. Some of them are super rudimentary and fundamental to the nature of most contractor software tools that are available in the market. Some other tools offer differentiation for example, AI capabilities, that can add more value and get the organization to be future-ready.
Here is a list of things to consider before choosing a contractor software for your business:
1. Real-time Capabilities
In a construction site, time is money. No time should be lost waiting due to a gap in communication or some key approvals not being done on time. To ensure smooth and continuous flow of communication among teams, the contractor software needs to enable real-time communication. This means it needs to have mobile and online capabilities built in using which teams can seamlessly update statuses in real-time.
It also needs to have instant chat capabilities to enable transactional, day-to-day communication. This is an effective way to mitigate communication delays and keep all stakeholders aligned.
2. Performance Tracking
Performance tracking both at a field level and contractor level is a way of ensuring that teams complete tasks on time. This also has a cost impact as businesses can optimize contractor performance. This data can help businesses take calls on how to renew contracts. This enables them to make data-driven contractor selection decisions.
This data needs to be viewable in different forms such as charts, graphs. There needs to be options to export it and share it amongst teams. The teams should be able to slice and dice this data over time and perform trend analysis. Insights & Smart Suggestions based on this provided by the tool would be a great value addition. Further, there should be a way to compare data across teams, locations and even contractors so a comparative analysis can be done for getting deeper insights.
3. Customizable Workflows
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing projects sometimes even within the same organization. This makes the configuration flexibility that a tool allows, an important factor to consider.
Customizable workflows make sure that businesses can set up processes that best suit their needs. This is best done with minimum intervention or assistance or major code-level changes. This is also essential to make sure processes remain agile and adaptable to suit changing requirements.
4. Compliance Tracking
Compliance is a mandatory process in the construction industry. To ensure that local laws, labor laws, environmental standards etc are adhered to, companies need ways and means to effectively monitor compliance on a regular basis.
A contractor management tool that is context-aware can help a great deal in compliance tracking. This is one area that sets general tools which just position themselves as construction contractor management software from purpose-built tools with industry knowledge and awareness.
This not just helps organizations save time and effort but also mitigate the need for redundant tools.
5. Role-based Access
From internal stakeholders to external vendors and contractors need access to the platform at all times. However, businesses need to stay cognisant of how much to share and with who.
This is best resolved with role-based access management where users are granted different access levels depending on what they need to accomplish using the tool. This access management needs to be managed by a super admin and should have a mechanism to control or change access levels at any given point in time.
With this, businesses can ensure secure and timely access for all users without compromising on the sensitivity of data.
6. Ease of Implementation
In enterprise software, implementation can be one of the biggest hurdles to cross, especially as the last stage of the entire procurement process. A shocking number of projects are abandoned mid-way through implementation, considering the cost, complexity and the general lack of patience.
It is important to ensure that the implementation process is seamless and simple. A self-service tool that requires minimum assistance from tech teams is ideal. This paves the way for faster return on investment and actually see the impact the tool brings into the organization.
It is also important to note that a lot of tools charge implementation fees and the longer the implementation cycle, the higher the cost would be.
7. Adoption & Ease of Use
There are several categories of users in the system, some of which are blue collar workers. From the C-suite to project managers to field workers, every user type needs to be able to use the tool seamlessly.
It should also be compatible with multiple operating systems and devices. This helps in onboarding users faster.
8. Scalability
Large-scale projects mean a lot of users are going to have to use the tool. It also implies that a large volume of transactional data is going to be at play. Since the tool impacts business continuity and day-to-day operations, to ensure uptime and speed is paramount.
The chosen tool needs to have proven abilities to scale and handle a large volume of concurrent users. It should also be secure and not show any signs of sluggishness due to transactional load. This is critical to future-proof the system for growth and avoid another upgrade or migration to another tool that can scale.
9. Integrations
Organizations have several IT systems handling different parts of day to day operations. This is inevitable and since transactional data is involved, the contractor software needs to seamlessly plug and play with these existing systems.
Support for API integrations, connectors and plug and play capabilities help a long way in facilitating information interchange. This impacts several functions such as accounting and payroll to handle smooth billing, invoicing and within stipulated payment cycles. This is critical to ensure timely payment and a healthy business relationship with contractors.
10. Pricing
IT budgets are a key determining factor in choice of tool. A plethora of tools across a wide range of pricing options is available. However, considering complexity, scale and the specific needs of a business, one needs to choose pricing that is optimal.
Nevertheless, contractor management software tools are known to generate a fast return on investment both in direct and indirect ways that include productivity improvement, avoiding compliance penalties and several other such ways.
11. Support
Post-purchase support and technical support are essential to ensure seamless adoption and continued use of the tool. Users of all levels can face challenges that can prevent them accomplish what they want. This can stall operations and to address this, they would have to reach out to support.
The different types of support that could work are - phone support, chat support, email support, a knowledge base, explainer videos/tutorials and gen AI-based support. It is always a good idea to check reviews about quality of support and the assistance vendors are offering to businesses.
Vendors that prioritize customer experience offer proactive support options. Some vendors also offer tiers and pricing plans where one has to pay extra for some premium support plans that can get technology experts faster. Faster resolution would mean faster restoration of normal operations.
12. AI-based Capabilities
Tools that embrace AI are future-ready and this is common across all industries and verticals. Gen AI helps automate repetitive tasks and enables companies channel their bandwidth for more productive, creative and innovative tasks.
It is much easier for users to ask the AI bot a query and get it resolved in under 30 seconds. This saves a lot of back and forth communication, chats and long email threads thereby saving time and manual effort.
13. Release Cycles
A vendor that ships new features regularly and provides frequent upgrades is any day better than someone who doesn’t. This not only improves the technology edge the company has over the others, it also keeps the operations state-of-the-art and maintains steady levels of efficiency and productivity.
The new features add more value for the investment and eventually help businesses stay ahead of competition.
As evident as it is, contractor relationships are critical for a successful construction business. To keep costs under check and adhere to agreed timelines, it is important to streamline operations involving contractors. A good contractor software is a worthy investment that can play a pivotal role in timely delivery of projects. It also paves the way for building reputation and gaining a competitive edge. To learn more about contractor software and to get started with one, click here. Start your journey with contractor software today with KYRO and join the league of successful construction businesses that are already leveraging its benefits.
