Data Agility in the Construction Industry
Data Agility in the Construction Industry by Bob Childs, Advisor to The Data Company
The Data Company Technologies Limited showcased their construction solutions at the recent Glimpse of the Future event. The event was well attended and we are looking forward to the next event in late June. Watch here.
There is a lot happening in the UK construction industry. Boris’s pledge to “Build! Build! Build!” our way out of post-covid will certainly help the recovery.
We saw a surge of confidence as the road map was outlined, with the 17th May a key date .
The next huge day is the 21st of June and whilst there are still hope and excitement the new Indian strain results have dampened things a little. Confidence is still brittle & it won’t take very much negative press for uncertainty to return.
At The Data Company we are not letting ourselves get disheartened and we are expanding our partnerships; we have rebuilt all of our demonstration material & we have some really exciting solutions .
The importance of a company’s data is slowly beginning to be understood . We are seeing quotes that “Data is the next oil” and whilst it won’t drive the car it can, if harnessed, drive the business. This is the area where The Data Company can help companies. We understand that the construction industry is a very diverse industry & all major contractors have a whole host of applications on different technologies. Many are old, some are in the Cloud, some are on premise. What it all adds up to is lots of data in lots of silo’s making accessing it and then using it very difficult. The driver is to take lots of data and turn it into meaningful information so that the business can use it to drive their business and their digital transformation.
We have been working closely with a number of construction companies, most of which use Coins as their ERP solution. There are other consistent applications used by Coins users, Donseed, Asta, AssetTagz to name three.
We found that companies had three similar problems:
- Simply getting data out of Coins, being asked by a Commercial Director how much concrete had been used on a large project proved to be very difficult if not impossible.
- The problem became more compounded when they wanted to combine information from more than one application. An example is analysing the work force. How much time had actually been spent on site, versus how much time had been budgeted & whether the workers had the correct qualifications to be on site. This required information from different applications . The FINIUM platform provided the solution on which to take data from the different applications & quickly build dash boards & analytics so that the company could easily see the results they needed to manage the business. Previously they cobbled together spreadsheets which was time consuming & didn’t provide the ability to drill down to the original data source. Once the dash boards had been built it is simply a matter of refreshing of the data to see the results in real time. The solutions that The Data Company have developed are at the forefront of technology & give a company the tools to unlock the power of their data . Another key differentiator is that this can all be achieved in short timescales at affordable prices. There are no complicated license agreements simply a charge for the number of applications that are connected to the Intelligent data hub. We already have an extensive library of applications that are connected to the Hub.
- The third problem that we encountered consistently was that as well as needing access to their data, companies need additional functionality particularly in the arena of Mobile & site based applications. The Data Companies FINIUM platform can be used to develop applications in a fraction of the time and costs normally associated with the ERP providers.
Recent success stories have seen The Data Company develop solutions for major projects such as Cross Rail, Thames Tideway & Silvertown. Where JV’s are formed to build the project and they need their own software rather than relying on the ERP software of one of the JV members.
Software costs are a problem for an industry that struggles with margins of 2%-3% .
The Data Company can build applications that are both timely and that are affordable.
In summary The Data Company are confident that their industry knowledge, their solutions, and more importantly their people, are a platform on which we can build some world class solutions for major contractors and housebuilders.
If you are interested in more data solutions in the Construction Industry, contact us now to see how we can help.
