Does your construction business have what it takes to compete in a digital world? Do you need it? If you have yet to make digital transformation part of your overall business process management plan, you might find yourself playing catch-up with your competition.

So where should you start to digitise?

For contractors, you might find that digitising the purchasing cycle or the supply chain management will give you the best return on investment. It is the most effective and profitable place to begin your digital transformation journey.

By placing your entire stakeholders on one platform to monitor material purchasing, your construction business’ financial health and competitive agility will benefit almost immediately and greatly. This is assuming, of course, that the digital transformation is done strategically.

What’s The Big Fuss?

Digital procurement is a strategic transformation from manual purchasing workflow. It is the utilisation of technology for each person involved in the purchasing cycle, from site supervisor to account manager, who performs purchasing, monitoring, and accounting tasks on one common digital purchasing platform.

It is an innovative method to do away with manual paperwork. You can think of it as using digital tools to help with the issuance and approval of Material Request Form (MR), quotation, and purchase order (PO). It also impacts how you pay your supplier, where it automates the matching of PO, DO and invoice. As your team uses the digital procurement tool, backend technologies such as artificial intelligence, advanced data analytics, and process automation help to streamline and optimise procurement.

The best feature of digital procurement software is that it manages your entire supply chain, and automatically compiles real-time reports.

These reports come with intelligence analysis of procurement data, helping decision makers to focus on what matters and giving you a holistic view to monitor material spending, supplier risk and budget.

Digital procurement software can connect to your existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) and accounting software, ensuring your procurement data is accurate. This will give you a single source of truth to manage your construction business, instead of trying to piece together a cohesive view from multiple sources.

Complex construction projects need to leverage support from digital procurement software to gain benefits from its data-driven analytics reporting to ensure project profits.

Digital procurement saves you time and money

Running a construction business is complex, given that you would have multiple construction projects running at a time. Ensuring materials purchased can be delivered on time and within budget is critical in ensuring project profit.

You can’t save what you can’t see

Most spreadsheet data (about 88%) contains mistakes, but you lose visibility on the process as you manage your business. On the other hand, e-procurement software lets you gain full visibility on how your team buys material.

With the help of digital analytics procurement software, you can see and catch spending mistakes. When you have doubt, drill down into the source of data with just a few clicks. You can use the data to sharpen your procurement strategy.

You Can Make Better Informed Decisions

Numbers don’t lie. Your data will be available to you at any time, in real-time. This means no more delays on reports. Digital procurement software provides you with actionable insights for you to make better decisions, faster.

Speedbrick COMPOSE—The Digital Procurement Software You Need

One such example is Speedbrick COMPOSE, a software (mobile/desktop) that streamlines your purchasing workflow. Users of Speedbrick COMPOSE have reported positive results such as increased project profits and better materials management (purchasing costs stay within the allotted budget).

Furthermore, Speedbrick COMPOSE provides several features such as historical price trends, automatic monthly material report generation, overbudget alerts, among many others. Users can prevent duplicate efforts and have increased visibility throughout the purchasing cycle, from material request to matching.

Construction is a complex business, and sometimes, it can get messy. Contractors spend up to 60% of the contract value to buy material.

Without developing a well-managed supply chain or proper protocols for purchasing and inventory management, your staff could be overspending, double-buying, or buying outside of the project’s requirements, which incurs unnecessary cost and time.

Manual supply chain processes are prevalent in the industry; communications between site and office depend heavily on email or instant messaging. These communications often involve going back and forth between processing and approval departments, which can stretch the process up to a few days before a site order is approved.

Furthermore, expenditure control involves heavy administrative effort of data entry in order to generate analytical reports on the procurement. These reports are highly dependent on the quality of data entry, where the risk of producing inaccurate reports is high.

Preserving profitability requires strategic spending, which requires managing the supply chain efficiently.

To do so, contractors should invest in a cloud-based, centralised digital procurement software. Site personnels can conveniently order building material from their phones at any point in time, no matter where they are. Then, the relevant departments will be alerted for approval through their phones or tablets, thus cutting short site order approval time from days to minutes.

Furthermore, profitability of any project hinges on good decision-making, which requires good data to begin with. With digital procurement or e-procurement software, management will receive automated, in-depth spending reports. These reports allow management to visualise and dive into the project expenditure, thus allowing overspending risks to be identified early on.

Moreover, a good digital procurement software helps you to collect, analyse and use your past procurement data to keep you informed on material price history and project material spending. These features may even lead to discovering hidden expenses in areas you had not previously considered.

In summary, by integrating the right technology to connect your construction sites and headquarters, you can build a strong collaborative platform for your construction team to easily manage procurement spending. Through this platform, your construction business will be able to operate with enhanced visibility and optimised procurement processes—minimised risk, maximised profit.

About Speedbrick Solutions

Speedbrick Solutions is a provider of cloud-based construction management software. The platform facilitates a more efficient work approach with a modern touch, specifically for construction industry stakeholders. Among the services Speedbrick offers are material procurement and management, revenue tracking and management, subcontractors claim control, and analytics reporting. Speedbrick has served projects over RM18.6 billion and has helped clients achieve up to 3.6% additional profits, making it a formidable player in its field. With smart construction management software and solutions, Speedbrick also helped its clients to save up to 133 hours per month.

Find out more at www.speedbrick.com.

According to PCMag, cloud computing simply means storing and accessing data or software over the internet instead of your computer’s hard drive. This means that no software download or installation is necessary.

When you update your Facebook status, you’re using cloud computing. Checking your bank balance on your phone? You’re in the cloud again. Sending emails? It’s the cloud. You can access it through any computer or mobile device connected to the internet.

In short, the cloud is the new normal. Forbes estimated that by 2020, 83% of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud, and that 94% of enterprises use the cloud (be it private, public or a hybrid model).

So, Why Should Contractors Move to the Cloud?

There are several advantages that have empowered other industries, which can also be beneficial to the construction industry as a whole.

1. Cost-efficient

Before cloud computing, a large business will have to spend a large amount of capital on buying hardware and software, and setting these up. Furthermore, they would have to hire IT experts for managing the infrastructure. These will definitely take up most of your capital expense.

With cloud computing, all these expenses are now reduced to a subscription-based model that fits your budget better. Moreover, some cloud computing services often charge per use, meaning users need only pay depending how much data is being accessed during the billing period. There is more flexibility to the payment scheme that makes it much easier to manage your cash flow, thus reducing your overall operational costs.

2. High-speed

Previously, using downloaded software and accessing it from your office computer requires a lot of patience and time. The speed of processing or even accessing your data depends a lot on the quality of your machine. If it’s old or almost obsolete, doing these simple tasks can take up to an hour!

Cloud computing often boasts high-speed on-demand services, which means that data processing and analysis can be done in a matter of minutes, or even seconds, depending on the complexity of the task. Furthermore, there is no need to upgrade to a newer machine – as long as it can access the internet, you can access your resources on the cloud with just a few clicks.

3. Increased Productivity

The reality for most construction enterprises that have not engaged cloud-based services is that your employees often have to set up the software or even the spreadsheet formulas to compute project data. Furthermore, you are responsible for ensuring the programs are up-to-date.

With cloud-based services, these programs and processes are often more advanced and efficient. Additionally, companies offering these services will ensure minimal setup required—some only need your email and password for registration and access, and that’s all you need to get started. However, choosing the right provider is also important—these services should be reliable and kept up-to-date at all times. Without excessive upfront effort to set up or even ongoing work arounds, your team can focus on delivering the project, thus enhancing your overall productivity.

4. Reliable Collaboration and Document Control

Without a doubt, collaborating with various stakeholders (internal or external) and maintaining documents are integral parts of a construction project. A smooth collaboration where all involved parties have adequate transparency and properly maintained documentation will ensure that your project is delivered in a timely manner within the budget.

Contractors do not have to expect or wait for employees to be in the office to complete their work. As long as they are connected to the internet, they can access the cloud-based software/service. This allows them to stay connected to your data even at the project site or off working hours. Since the data is also stored in a single place, your team need not send files back and forth or flip through hard copies of documents. At times, doing so can cause conflicts in the document content or formatting. With cloud computing, everyone sees the same version of the file, along with a proper audit trail.

5. Security and Disaster Recovery

With local servers, you bear the risk of losing your data especially in the event of natural disasters like floods or fires that may destroy both your running and backup servers. Cloud computing eases data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity, because the data is mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider’s network.

Moreover, broken, lost or stolen devices pose the threat of losing important data. With the cloud, your data is not stored on any device you own, but in the cloud, which makes it easier for you to access or retrieve your data anytime, regardless of what happens to your devices.

6. Market Competitiveness

Contractors spend a lot of time in meetings. Being able to retrieve vital or any information on demand during a meeting allows you to make quick decisions and impress your client. This gives you an edge over your competitors, as you can now act faster and win the contract.

Speedbrick Is A Cloud Computing Service

Speedbrick is a software-as-a-service (Saas), which is a method of delivering software applications over the internet, on demand and a subscription basis. Speedbrick hosts, manages, and maintains the software application, as well as the underlying infrastructure. This means that upgrades and security updates are Speedbrick’s responsibilities. Our clients can connect to Speedbrick through mobile or computer devices, as long as they have an internet connection.

About Speedbrick Solutions

Speedbrick Solutions builds easy to use software for contractors to do more with less. Allowing contractors to monitor risks ahead of time, on mobile. Currently Speedbrick has 4 products: procurement management, revenue management, subcontractors management and business analytics dashboard.

Currently, Speedbrick is servicing contractors in Malaysia and Singapore.

Find out more at www.speedbrick.com.

Malaysia recently launched the MyDIGITAL initiative in February this year, and since then, we have seen various parts of the plan put into motion.

One of the key stages of the digital economy blueprint is to establish the digital infrastructure such as the cloud. Microsoft’s announcement of establishing a data centre region in Malaysia, which will deliver access to the full Microsoft Cloud, demonstrates the private sector’s leadership in building and hyperscaling data centres and cloud services. This will eventually lead to the increase in data storage space, reduction in operating costs and improvement of analytical efficiency.

This cloud-first strategy will certainly drive the digital transformation in the country and empower local economies to build resilient infrastructure upon which they can then harness other emerging technologies such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) and blockchain.

But what does this all mean for the construction industry?

To put it simply, it’s a survival issue. In the wake of the pandemic, it is crucial that an organisation is able to adapt quickly to supply chain disruptions, market pressure, and rapidly changing customer expectations.

Digital transformation throughout your business will fundamentally change how you operate—mainly for the better.

Construction work is undoubtedly stressful—it is demanding and fast-paced. Contractors have to manage project sites all over the country or even globally. One of the biggest challenges is to ensure project teams are on the same page at all times, as communication between the project site and office is critical for project success.

Without a flexible fundamental infrastructure, this communication can break down easily, which would be detrimental to the project’s success. However, with a cloud-based construction software, collaboration can be optimised and ensured, simply because the data is stored in the cloud, which can be accessed anywhere and anytime.

Besides facilitating better communication, there are 5 major reasons why cloud-based solutions are especially effective for construction firms looking to optimise information sharing and collaboration processes.

1. Real-Time Data

Data accuracy and timeliness are vital for construction projects. Cloud-based construction software ensures that the project team receives real-time updates. This means that whenever the team needs the information, they can be certain that they are receiving the most recent data without any version conflicts. They can rely on this single source of truth to make effective construction decisions in a timely manner.

2. 24/7 All-Around Access

Working after hours is common for project sites, but accessing information at this time is a challenge as the office staff is no longer at work. Cloud-based construction software allows your project team to work anytime, anywhere. The information is available and updated online, so the relevant parties can take necessary actions, without dealing with minor inconveniences.

3. User Control

Good cloud-based construction software will also ensure the data stored is secure. Each user will have a level of access defined by the system administrator, who will have control over what information is shared with who. This is also helpful when you have incoming employees or outgoing employees. You can easily grant/remove access to your employees. This degree of control can also be broadened or limited, depending on the capabilities of the software.

4. Built-In Security and Data Protection

Given the quantity of information and collaborators the contractors have to handle, data security is paramount. Contractors cannot risk data leaks of confidential information. Cloud-based services usually have additional layers of security to prevent data loss or leakages such as automatic backups and protection, data encryption, policy-based controls, and password-based protection. In addition, should you lose your device on the go, you can always remotely erase the content on your lost device to secure the safety of your data.

5. Mobile Friendly

Time is money—this is especially true in the construction industry. You or your team at the project site will frequently need to make a decision almost instantaneously. While the project team may not have a computer with them, they will certainly have a mobile device with them. Mobile friendly construction software allows your team to save time and be more efficient and effective. Having real-time information when you need it ultimately improves client satisfaction, which in turn improves your company’s reputation as a whole.

From the project site to office, real-time cloud-based construction software is the answer to effective project management. Successful businesses in the future will need to be bold and embrace digital transformation, as organisations that fail to adapt will only be stepping closer towards extinction. Change is hard, but playing catch up is even harder.

About Speedbrick Solutions

Speedbrick Solutions builds easy to use software for contractors to do more with less. Allowing contractors to monitor risks ahead of time, on mobile. Currently Speedbrick has 4 products: procurement management, revenue management, subcontractors management and business analytics dashboard.

Currently, Speedbrick is servicing contractors in Malaysia and Singapore.

Find out more at www.speedbrick.com.

Digital procurement, also known as e-procurement, will give contractors a return of investment you can never imagine, but only if it is implemented properly.

In the construction material procurement context, digital procurement is a digital supply chain management. The benefits of a digitised procurement are that it eliminates repeatable tasks among different departments within the construction business, connects sites and the management office on one platform, boosts overall efficiency, and reduces operational costs.

All stakeholders in your construction business will be equipped with an easy-to-use tool that helps them to make better decisions faster with real-time insights and analytics through artificial intelligence (AI).

Construction businesses that are currently implementing manual workflows need to begin their digital transformation soon, or risk prolonging the inconveniences brought on by manual material purchasing processes.

Construction sites frequently place urgent orders, materials purchase can also often exceed project budget, and reports are usually late, all of which makes it difficult to isolate the real cause of the mistakes. However, this does imply that manual processes cost your construction business time and money.

The solution to these problems, which are preventable, is to use a good construction procurement software that will be able to provide the following:

• Real-time Data tells you what is purchased, reason for purchase, and the budget status

• Constant Access allows you to stay with the procurement cycle wherever you are

• Easy Decision Approval where the decision to approve/disapprove is backed by AI analytics

• Efficient Team will be the result of reliable data, thus enabling your team to act faster and better when mitigating risks

• Standard Workflow
  in which there are no shortcuts to jeopardise your company’s standard or bottom line

In the era of industry revolution 4.0, digital supply chain management or digital procurement is the first step to your ongoing digital journey in your construction project management. It creates a great impact and you will see an immediate return of investment.

Soon, we will see an evolution to the next generation of digital procurement with price trend prediction and analytics, providing you with even more useful data that will ease your decision making.

It’s imperative for contractors to start their digital procurement journey now to ensure they still have the competitive edge.

By transforming your purchasing cycle digitally, you stand to benefit from the following:

Digitise now to experience how technology protects your financial health and keeps you competitive. This is the future. And the future is now.

With Speedbrick COMPOSE, the digital procurement software you need for your construction business, you will have access to the following:

• Available historical price trends

• Automatic monthly material report generation

• Seamless accounting software integration

• Overbudget alerts

Speedbrick COMPOSE enhances your supply chain management by:

• Providing real-time actionable insights

• Increasing visibility and accountability across the board, managing stakeholders efficiently

• Allowing convenient and efficient procurement

• Eliminating duplicate efforts

Furthermore, just recently, Construction Industrial Development Board (CIDB)’s subsidiary Building Cost Information Services Malaysia (BCISM) invited Speedbrick to integrate with the Malaysian National Construction Cost Centre (N3C). Through Speedbrick COMPOSE, this integration allows contractors to make use of national data to analyse history price trends when making pricing decisions.

Our needs grow over time, so technology must be adapted to make our lives easier. Whether it is finding a quick ride or checking real-time traffic updates, companies are making daily tasks faster and easier with the help of technology. This is where Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) comes in, and providers like Google and Dropbox are already changing the way people do business.

Cloud-based technology refers to the storage and usage of apps or information on the internet, rather than on your computer. E.g. when you use Amazon Web Services to compute information, and AWS does the processing work instead of your computer.

SaaS, on the other hand, refers to a cloud-based service where instead of downloading the app to the computer or device to run, you access the app using the browser. For example, Gmail is a full SaaS, and Microsoft Outlook still has a downloadable app.

1. Reduce Paper-Heavy Operations

 

Despite prevalent technological disruption elsewhere, the construction industry still relies heavily on paper to manage their supply chain, believing that they are better off without technology.

Many rely on manual operations by placing orders for building materials via phone call or email, printing out material requests and keeping hard copies of purchase orders or delivery notes. In most cases, the extent of technological savviness for these companies is likely just tracking budgets with spreadsheets. Overall, manual and paper-reliant processes are not ideal for companies looking forward to thriving in the future.

In order to optimise and standardise your supply chain management, it is recommended to transform your processes digitally. This means moving your data storage to the cloud, and using SaaS in order to manage your operations. The workflow will be smoother—the team can update budget, order materials and update delivery information into one centralised platform.

You can access your data via your mobile devices wherever and whenever you need it. Don’t waste time rummaging through physical files—use your time for more value-added activities.

2. Simplify and Enhance Management

 

Material management is a complex and intricate task that can make or break a construction company. With effective supply management, work is completed on time, profits are boosted, and cash flow is positive. Yet, there are many who still manually perform data entry tasks, which can be riddled with human errors, considering the vast amount of data they have to handle.

Manual data entry also reflects an incomplete digital transformation, which will not do any favours for your company. In fact, it will seem as if using data is slowing down your management and does not bring any benefit to your operations.

To gain the full benefit and to thrive in a technology-driven world, construction companies must start considering mobile-friendly SaaS that connects the project site and office. Data will be stored online and accessible anywhere. When a change is made to the system at a project site, the changes are communicated in real-time to the office and vice versa. This ensures your information is always accurate and up-to-date.

Data can be a powerful tool, but only if it is effectively tracked.

3. Maintain and Ensure Inventory Accuracy

 

Accuracy and precision are tricky goals to achieve in supply chain management, especially if companies are not fully adopting technological advancements in the industry.

Many contractors run into issues with inaccurate material management information. The main contributing factor to this inaccurate information is that data is updated in a timely manner and sometimes not being updated at all.

This is easily preventable and optimisable with SaaS. Data entry becomes part of your project team’s workflow, with no additional workload necessary. It is automated, thus ensuring consistency across all data sources. Furthermore, SaaS allows real-time updates, which means changes are reflected immediately, so you never have to worry about using outdated information.

Finding a good software-as-a-service can be challenging, but highly rewarding. Users of Speedbrick COMPOSE have reported positive results within a short span of time using it.

Speedbrick COMPOSE is a cloud-based SaaS that empowers you to monitor the most crucial part of your operation: procurement. Its features include, but are not limited to:

• Available historical price trends

• Automatic monthly material report generation

• Seamless accounting software integration

• Overbudget alerts

 

With Speedbrick COMPOSE, your supply chain management will be enhanced as the software:

• Provides real-time actionable insights

• Increases visibility and accountability across the board, managing stakeholders efficiently

• Allows convenient and efficient procurement, also eliminating duplicate efforts

Contractors spend 60-70% of their revenue buying materials; it is easily the largest expenditure item in the budget.

Managing your materials effectively will most likely improve the profitability of your construction business.

However, one of the obstacles to increasing your profitability is when the total cost of the material exceeds the budget. Some of the common causes of ineffective material management are:

• Poor planning and control of materials

• Lack of data visibility

• Surplus or lack of materials

• Materials arriving to the site at the wrong time or in the wrong quantity

• Material specifications do not match

• Re-handling and inadequate storage cause losses in labour productivity

These errors can be traced back to simple human errors such as forgetting to order materials or incorrectly ordering the items.

While the error seems small when viewed individually, the effects of these errors do add up, and may end up costing your project millions of ringgit in revenue.

In fact, your construction team can spend up to 20% of their time hunting materials and tracking purchase orders.

These problems can be resolved with digital procurement software, like Speedbrick COMPOSE, that helps you to digitise and digitalise the entire procurement cycle.

When you have all your stakeholders on board on a common digital procurement platform, you stand to enjoy the following benefits on top of managing your materials better:

1. Store all purchasing data on one platform Never lose a document again. Find your documents easily when you need them.

2. Increase accountability The platform records all performed activities, thus providing sufficient audit trail that will enable you to track who did what

3. Prevent spending mistakes With AI processing, you can easily identify and receive alerts on potential spending mistakes, so the software’s intelligent capabilities guide your business decisions.

4. Have Full Visibility on Your Suppliers’ Performance At a glance, know how your suppliers perform, especially their reliability by delivering your materials on time or correctly.

5. Work from anywhere Without the need for paper/physical documents, your team can work anywhere on the digital platform and still be productive.

Users of Speedbrick COMPOSE reported the following results after using it, and we are confident that you will experience similarly, as well:

• Increased productivity by 8-12%

• Reduced material cost

• Improved handling of material

• Reduced double or multiple orders

• Reduced storage of material at site

• Improved quality control

• Improved cash flow

Managing and running construction projects means large volumes of data stored all over the place across multiple projects that are running simultaneously. You or your team may have experienced the frustration and rush when trying to compile, collate and analyse your data manually. Oftentimes, one will run into the problem where the information exists in a silo, where there is a breakdown in interdepartmental communication. This would then result in inaccurate information, thus impacting the quality of decisions made.

Such information bottlenecks will cost you time and money—two commodities essential to a construction project’s success.

Therefore, it is vital that project teams have accurate and timely data in order to make better decisions. As Robin Sharma said, the real trick in life is to turn hindsight into foresight that reveals insight, so to ensure future successful projects, you and your team should be equipped with valuable data that comes from a single source of truth. 

Accurate data comes from high quality data, which is the result of a good data collection process.

As such, the data collection phase plays a crucial role in your construction business. Yet, collecting data manually can be a nightmare for several reasons such as, data is stored in various places and sometimes missing, which would make the overall collected data quality to be poor. Mistakes are inevitable when data is of poor quality, and wrong decisions drastically affect your bottom line. 

How does Speedbrick automate data collection in your construction business?

Capturing accurate data can be challenging with manual processes. To obtain necessary data, it is essential to utilise smart construction software—one that automatically collects, processes and analyses data, like Speedbrick. Speedbrick helps you to break down information silos, keeps project teams aware and informed at all times, and allows decision makers to make better decisions with reliable, real-time data. 

Step 1: Digitise workflow

Data collection can be easy and seamless—especially so when it is automatically done as stakeholders perform their daily tasks. Speedbrick connects all stakeholders, including managerial and non-managerial roles, on one platform as it digitises the following workflows:

• Progress claims tracking
• Material purchasing cycle
• Subcontractor management
• Contracts obligation management 

Step 2: Store data on one platform

Data is only as meaningful and useful when it is used within the intended context, not when it is stored in various places. In order to process and present meaningful insights, Speedbrick stores your data on a secure online platform. 

Step 3: Process data with artificial intelligence

The next step to data collection is processing it—cleaning and organising it into meaningful blocks. Speedbrick’s robust backend technology can then identify potential risks and subsequently alert relevant stakeholders, helping them make better decisions.

Step 4: Automate spreadsheets reporting 

Once data is thoroughly processed, Speedbrick automatically compiles the report in a split second. The automation prevents risk of data manipulation or tampering, and the report generated is 100% accurate.

Step 5: Visualise data

Go beyond spreadsheets—visualise your data with interactive graphs to get deeper insights and make better decisions. With interactive visual aid, It will be much easier to understand the relationships present in your data and foresee the outcomes of the decisions you have to make.

With Speedbrick Analytics, your data will be automatically collected, processed, reported, and visualised in just a few clicks.