As technology burrows its way deeper into construction businesses, data overload occurs more frequently. It gets increasingly difficult to corral, identify and extract the important things from the torrent of information. Technology also brings with it an increase in the speed at which everything hums along.

That speed increases even more as business processes begin happening in real time. Take the invoice that accompanied the delivery of materials to a distant job site, which is integrated into the company’s accounting system as a remote worker scans the materials while receiving them. This is just one instance where the quest for business intelligence begins and where companies such as Sage, which supplies software to the construction industry, see business intelligence and reporting tools as integral to increased efficiencies.

Sage Timberline Office has its own set of robust reporting and business intelligence tools, but, since it serves such a vast market, the company also turns to its partners. This article looks at three reporting and business intelligence software products for Timberline.

Core Systems (TimberScan)

“Even today there are many people who are using printed invoices,” said Bernard Ross, vice operating manager for Core Systems in Mount Kisco, N.Y. “Invoices come in, they get opened up, they get stamped, they get distributed to different project managers, they get lost, and then new invoices come in. What we have done is totally automate the approval process.”

Using Core System’s business intelligence software product, TimberScan, the invoices that arrive as paper are scanned at a photocopy machine. From there, they enter Timberline Accounts Payable in digital form. They are then routed to various recipients in the approval process, based upon rules the company has specified.

The recipients can code the invoices in many ways. For example, a single invoice that contains materials for multiple jobs would be routed to the project managers of both jobs, who may further code the materials to portions of the job, approve the purchase of the quantities and prices, and finally release the invoice to go on its way to the next level of approval.

“Where we have a document management solution for scanning and storing and retrieving images, Timberscan expands that capability in terms of routing,” said Erin-Todd Hansen, senior director for product management for Sage Timberline Office.

TimberScan is typically purchased through a contractor's Timberline business partner, but if the buyer doesn’t have one, then it can buy the business intelligence software product directly from Core Systems. The cost for five users is $3,995. A user is defined as anyone using TimberScan to enter and approve invoices. Each additional user is $695. There are also volume discounts.Core Systems installs TimberScan over the Web; Ross said the process takes a day or two.

Ross added that Timberscan will soon include a wireless component so people equipped with mobile G3 devices such as the Blackberry Storm can approve invoices remotely. They will also be able to take pictures of receiving tickets, which can then be sent back to the office.

Of course the timely availability of information means the business can, at a minimum, know job costs immediately, not to mention speed up the invoicing process. Ross maintained that his company’s clients on average reduce the approval processing time by 50%. Quicker pay means they can take advantage of discounts offered by vendors, and others, and save money on orders overall.

Ross said his business intelligence software product also simplifies the process of pulling information together from Sage Timberline Office payables. He used the example of companies doing cost-plus jobs. The user only needs to select the job, select the range of dates, and, with the stroke of a button, then turn out a report with all invoices for that job. Ross said the reporting features in TimberScan automate many kinds of invoice reports that are used for reporting to banks, funding sources, partners, and customers.

Stonefield Software (Stonefield Query)

Being able to find information and route it to all necessary users is just the first step in business intelligence. After that, it needs to be filtered for relevancy, cleaned of extraneous information and, finally, presented in a way that is meaningful.

This is a difficult process no matter what software a user has in front of him, since most applications use fairly complex data structure, said Doug Hennig, chief technology officer for Stonefield Software Inc. in Lake Mary, Fla.  Even Crystal Reports, which Hennig described as "a great reporting tool, is literally intended for wizards -- people who are experts at database structures and experts on the specific database structure of the application. It’s not for the average person like the estimator, or the secretary, or the construction manager.”

Even for construction companies with an IT department there may be delays in obtaining meaningful reports, since IT is often dealing with higher priority items like security, system maintenance, and tech support, Hennig said. Stonefield has reduced the complexity of creating reports by cutting down on the depth and breadth of the database viewable to the user. In addition, its business intelligence software product automatically presents the most likely starting point for the Timberline module the user chooses. For example, if the user chooses the accounts receivable module, then he or she is presented with invoices as a starting point. The other unique aspect of Stonefield Query, especially relevant to construction, is that it can pull information from disparate databases. A company with multiple organizations could easily combine operating expenses from them all into just one report.

“Stonefield Query adds an additional layer on top of the database, which gives the added capability to group things that a customer might think up,” Hansen said. For example, forms with boxes and lines can't be done in Timberline, and, though reports with embedded images are possible with Crystal Reports, it is a rather technical process, Hansen said. "Stonefield did more than we offered with our own report designer, but were able to do it with greater simplicity than the Crystal solution. [It does] a great job of streamlining the work flow.”

Stonefield Query is purchased and downloaded from the company’s website. For $2400 initially the purchaser gets licensed for one report designer and five report viewers. Additional licenses for the same number of people are then $600. Hennig said it isn’t uncommon for companies to have two or three people as report designers, since not everybody needs to be able to design reports or for that matter wants to.

Event 1 Software (Office Connector)

As computing systems and information sources have become more distant from one another, the process of pulling data from various sources and assembling it into meaningful information has become more complex. Within the construction sector there is also a strong affinity to certain software products -- Microsoft Excel being one of them. Even though a business may depend on Sage Timberline Office for much of its information handling, there may still be a large cohort of Excel users who nonetheless need access to the data housed in Timberline. For many, the process of using their beloved Excel becomes one involving much copying and pasting. Others, though, might use business intelligence software products written expressly for bridging the gap between Excel and Timberline.

“It is not convenient to get information into Excel and have it formatted the way you want and then do it again and again," said James Coyle, president of Event 1 Software, Inc. in Vancouver, Wash.. "The amount of effort that people have to expend to get the data, get it formatted, and then make sure that it accurately reflects back to the data source, Timberline Office, is huge. But people...love Excel and they are going to keep working with it no matter what anyone says.”

Coyle said his company was approached by a construction firm in Iowa and asked to create a forecasting and business intelligence software product that would work within Excel, using Timberline’s data. The company’s operations staff was familiar with Excel and didn’t want to learn another product. They wanted to be able to tell Excel how to calculate various areas, hit a button and have the spreadsheet refresh from Timberline.

“We have the ability to export data to Excel, but once it’s in Excel we’re sort of disconnected,” Hansen said. “The folks at Event 1 took it one step further so that within Excel [there are] tools to make pivot table activity much easier, and they’ve built add-ins for the Excel product that allow you to intuitively pull in tables. As a project manager, you might be looking at your remaining job budget, but you want to have an extra column where you could then forecast your cost at completion."

Coyle explained that his company’s business intelligence software product, Office Connector, lets users work within Excel, but using data from Timberline. “I can do a financial statement with Timberline’s tools, but in Excel I can add notes,” added Coyle. “In Excel I can use my own formulas so now it’s a financial statement with what-if columns. It is a fluid environment."

Forecasting in Excel is another common use for Office Connector. "Let’s say that you had your job information in a database and you had to do compliance reporting with your customer," Coyle said. "That is an extraordinarily painful and difficult process. You need to be consistent. You would have to hire experts to try to accomplish this with the report designers. But Excel was built for that.”

For companies that want to design their own Excel templates, there is a $1,595 version of Office Connector. There are also standard licenses that let users access all the standard templates for $495. The business intelligence software product is downloaded from the website; once installed, the licensee has a launch pad on his desktop that shows all the available templates. He or she clicks on the template of his choice and Excel opens running that template.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly many companies will find the reporting and BI functions built into Sage Timberline Office to be all they need. Others may want simpler or expanded processes -- and, for those reasons, they can adopt complementary business intelligence software products such as TimberScan, Stonefield Query and Office Connector. Such products help companies get a grip on all the data that must be analyzed before decisions can be made and long-term plans can be created.