For finance
For delivery
Connecting the dots: How technology can elevate your architecture and engineering business — and cut the busy-work
- September 16, 2024
- Posted by: Febiani Marsa
- Category: Cross-functional
In order to make it in the building industry, architecture and engineering (AE) leaders must excel at more than design: They must also run a profitable business. Often, as their firms grow in project load and headcount, they realize too late that they must scale their business operations. Due to a lack of time and resources to map their needs strategically, they piecemeal software solutions for different workflows that don’t communicate with each other. The missed opportunities are huge.
Streamlining operations through a connected platform
A connected platform that integrates enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), project management, and business intelligence tools all in one package can both bridge operations and information between design, management, and administrative staff and generate insights for greater productivity and profitability. The platform becomes a cross-departmental single source of truth (SSOT) from which employees can manage and access data on staff utilization, financial performance, marketing efforts, current and past projects, and past correspondence to improve the client experience. By channeling once-disparate information into one platform, firms can streamline employee tasks, correlate factors leading to project shortcomings and successes, and access AI tools to uncover business insights, such as which combination of designers excels at different project types most profitably.
From an IT perspective, a unified, cross-functional platform offers several benefits:
- Utilizing one product for multiple functions reduces costs for resources allocated to staff training, software licensing, ownership, and maintenance on multiple platforms.
- Entering and extracting data in one virtual location reduces the likelihood of losing or overwriting data, reducing IT workload.
- Without duplicate copies of records, documents, and media files floating around in their network and users running a mashup of different technologies, IT staff can also free invaluable storage and bandwidth.
- Using a platform that is developed by a trusted software developer allows AE firms to reduce exposure to cyberthreats, cyberattacks, and data breaches.
Connected platforms offer benefits across all departments
Outside of IT, all technical and non-technical departments stand to benefit from their enhanced ability to collaborate and interact across a project’s life cycle, from an initial lead to a post-occupancy survey. For example, a designer might enter contacts from a networking event into the platform and find past interactions. A marketing team then finds RFQs, RFPs, and consultant connections affiliated with the leads and quickly pulls together presentations of similar past projects. Upon winning a project, the design and production team can access client history and the final proposal to move forward seamlessly into design and project delivery. Managers can oversee how different teams are performing, monitor project progress, staffing and billing, and identify skill gaps and inefficiencies. Accounting and finance departments can access project data from bid to bill, without hounding project managers for updates; invoice clients and pay consultants in accordance with the work completed; and track overall firm growth and solvency amid the countless moving parts.
A connected platform also simplifies the critical administration operations behind a business. Human resources can build a frictionless employee experience, starting from hiring and onboarding to performance evaluations and leadership training. Firm executives and principals driving business development and marketing efforts can identify low-hanging opportunities, such as projects with repeat clients, research and schedule outreach events, build on boilerplate text for correspondence and proposals, and improve overall conversion rates on leads. Project managers can organize the vast volume of data and information, addenda, RFIs, change orders, progress photographs, and field notes exchanged every day into one up-to-date, cloud-connected platform capable of handling multiple file types and formats.
A connected platform can help AE firms excel at project delivery, secure and save money on their IT operations, and run their business with greater efficiency and profitability. Learn more about sa.global’s platform today here.
Febiani Marsa
Febiani Marsa is a part of the Global Marketing team at sa.global, where she brings together her expertise in digital transformation, cloud ERP and CRM, and the Microsoft Dynamics 365 ecosystem. She works closely with product teams to communicate the value and impact of technology implementations—helping businesses understand how intelligent solutions drive efficiency, innovation, and measurable outcomes across their operations.