How A Single Pane of Glass Software System Can Help Your Construction Company

Many construction companies and trade contractors don’t have a good means to track the health of their businesses in a way that provides them with insights they can use to improve their operations. Having a software system with a “single pane of glass” management dashboard can help them get these actionable insights and improve their businesses. 

It can be tough to manage a construction or trade company. There are a lot of different elements to track and manage: equipment, schedules, new bids, compliance, job cost tracking, etc. In short, there are lots of moving pieces. And many of them are interdependent. It can be hard to know what is really happening and easy to have a nagging sense that you aren’t completely on top of things.

So, what can you do?

Well, a lot of construction and trade companies manage their businesses using a combination of manual processes and too many different software systems that aren’t integrated and don’t talk to each other.

For example, they might have one software system for time entry. A different software system for equipment tracking. They might use paper for their daily reports. Maybe they’ll use Dropbox or some other online file sharing system to collaborate on spreadsheets. All these systems have separate passwords (that all need to be changed every time an employee leaves). Many of these software programs have licensing fees. Often none of them are integrated with each other.

This cobbled together system is often enough to keep a business going, but it is never enough to help it perform at its peak. It also adds a lot of unnecessary stress and wastes a lot of employee and management time through inefficient processes.

Of course, some companies have invested in an off-the-shelf construction software solution. But, in our experience, most times they are not happy with the system. They often find it too complicated with a very steep and technical learner curve. It often doesn’t fit their business. They feel forced to change their business processes to meet the software’s requirements. Frequently they abandon the software they purchased and go back to their old system which at least (sort of) worked for them.

But we’ve remedied these problems with our custom software solution for construction and trade contractors. It is simple and easy-to-use software that fits the actual needs of the construction industry. It doesn’t force our clients to change their operations. It can fit the way they do business. It just makes their businesses easier for them.

One of the most useful features of software is building a management dashboard. This management dashboard integrates and presents your most important business data in a visually appealing and easy to understand graphical manner.

The dashboard is customized for your business. Whatever is most important to you to understand the health of your business on a day-to-day basis, that is what you’ll see on your dashboard. It allows you to see your data in the way you want, will give you alerts for exceptions, and will help you visualize key metrics.

A custom management dashboard is a real-time snapshot summary of how your business is doing, presented on a single screen. It provides you with current metrics and actionable insights. This management dashboard concept is also known in the software industry as having a “single pane of glass.” This means having the most important items that you need to know and track readily available to you on a single screen.

The reason SPARK can provide this single pane of glass dashboard is that it integrates your most important business processes and data into a single software system. Your folks in the field can use a simple mobile app to enter data like their time and fill out their daily reports. And they will also be able to check the schedule on the app as well as to track assets. The mobile app syncs to the dashboard. Digital tools likes these allow you to communicate and capture data from the field and track people, jobs, and information the way you need.

You can integrate so many aspects of your business into a single, easy-to-use system. And the single pane of glass of the management dashboard will give you a clear view into how that system is working. It keeps many different pieces of critical business data before your eyes.

And if you adopt a single system, you will only need one password for it (instead of the many you might need for your current set up). And you will likely be able to stop the licensing fees of the software programs you are currently using.

Importantly, custom software can seamlessly integrate with your existing business software systems such as a payroll or CRM system.

Would you like to learn more about how SPARK can help your company streamline its operations and give you the business insight you need? Please contact us. 

We’ve partnered with hundreds of construction and trade companies to launch their Just Right solution, and would love to hear from you!