Hale Corp has evolved into a leading boutique custom builder here in Melbourne. For us, this means we need visibility across the business. Aligning our business values and financial drivers for construction is something we believe will power our growth strategy. Plus enhance our end result for clients – stunning developments.
With larger custom build projects over the years came a new level of project management complexity. We experienced an increasing amount of manual input and processing for electronic and paper forms, leading to more review management processes. The finance team realised we needed to harness the financial performance drivers with our construction project management drivers to ensure we focused on creating and delivering value.
This meant we needed to solve more than one business driver when implementing a new digital construction management platform. Hale Corp needed a cloud-based platform that would pair with applications to maximise our potential from day one.
Here’s how we identified the business drivers needed to break through those barriers:
1. Modernise the Construction Environment
The first thing we assessed was how we were utilising time. Could our team execute financial or project management tasks quickly? And how did they do that – with paper, multiple pieces of software, did it connect from construction to finance? We replaced time-consuming manual processes and electronic spreadsheets with construction-specific software and digital processes when we realised the actual cost to people’s time. This included going live with the FileBound app with Procore at launch.
2. Reduce TCO
We made sure our new construction management platform paired well with apps that made us even more efficient. They also had to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a new construction management platform. We did this by accelerating our economies of scale with an app that solved a manual and costly process – data entry for invoicing. We gained upfront labour savings by removing the manual data entry phase for invoicing into our new platform (we never entered any data – instead, we relied on scanning and workflow). This reduced the TCO of our new platform from the moment we went live. Integrating apps and digital platforms shouldn’t be complicated. It’s fundamental to capturing cost benefits and achieving industry best practice very quickly.
3. Respond to Market Changes and Compliance
As we dialled up the size of our construction projects and our growth, it became more important to scale up invoice administration volume between our platform, Procore and app, FileBound – removing the need to add headcount. Hale Corp had earlier reduced its existing data entry commitments by over 60 per cent, which helped us grow cost-effectively. And the best part about this is streamlining an app, and a platform supported our Security of Payments Act compliance. Win, win for everyone.
4. Gain the Benefits of a Technology Roadmap
To make what we saw as a massive improvement to the business and maintain it, we needed a technology partner with a vision and commitment to developing the platform. Evolution for construction-specific tools and the build-out of an app ecosystem we also through was necessary. For Hale Corp, it meant we had confidence we were moving away from platforms that locked you in and didn’t allow for open integration. Over time, we could see how this would help us maximise the Procore platform with integration to construction, finance, and business apps.
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