While projects and processes are intertwined in the front-line operations of construction businesses, each takes on its own unique signature when it is analyzed in the back office. The projects have beginnings and endings, but the processes flow continually through each successive project.

For companies that use Sage Timberline Office, there are opportunities to maximize the product’s usefulness for gathering, slicing and dicing company data that is generated before, during, and after each project. Third-party project and process management software bring these opportunities to life. Some of these products cater specifically to home builders, while others serve a much different purpose.

In some cases these third-party developers had historical ties to Timberline. Tom Gebes, president of BuilderMT in Lakewood, Co., described his days working for Timberline as a natural set-up for launching BuilderMT in 2001 along with two Timberline consultants. It was also helpful that Gebes’ father was a home builder. In the years before BuilderMT was launched, according to Gebes, there was an understanding among those close to Timberline that the product was geared more for commercial general contractors than for home builders. So Gebes and partners worked with Timberline product managers to define an “operational hub” that would interface with Timberline and serve production home builders. Eventually the company’s software linked Timberline to everything in a production builder’s operations.

Michael Kenyon, president of Pharaoh Information Services in Lake Forest, Calif., said his company also took the track of providing software for the home building market. Called the Integrated Builder Series for Windows (IBSWIN), this software hooks a myriad of functions to Timberline, including sales tracking, subcontractor bidding, customer service and warranty control, construction scheduling and design center automation.

Beyond home building: pushing field data, operations data to Timberline

But there is more to Sage Timberline Office's project and process management software plug-ins than just home builder tools. Innovative Software Design in Lake Oswego, Ore., for example, makes MyAssistant, a database monitor that watches Timberline databases and, when predefined rules are met, takes action to notify the appropriate people by email.

Jeff Adams, vice president of sales and marketing, used the example of having MyAssistant monitor job profitability and send emails to the project manager when certain thresholds are crossed. Or, when subcontractor insurance is about to expire, MyAssistant can be set to notify not only the appropriate people in the company, but also the people at the subcontractor’s company, he said.

“So many people are just overwhelmed with information and having to constantly put out fires,” said Adams. By pushing information to them, they can make better decisions quickly and, ultimately, focus their energy on their core competencies, he added.

For any construction business, the need to get information from the field into Sage Timberline Office drives a process that is born out of the continual search for increased efficiency. F2B Mobile Solutions lets users submit data from tablet PCs in the field directly to their Timberline database as well as receive, view and annotate CAD files and photographs and then send those to others. Don Lewis, sales manager for F2B, said the company’s product also allows businesses to use their own existing forms so there is already familiarity built into adoption.

Overall, Sage lists nine partners in the project and process management categories. The four included here represent the wide variety of approaches used to tame the data associated with these functions. Other offerings in these categories will grab and report operations data (hh² Web services), job production data (Austin Lane Technologies), customer relationship data, scheduling data, and sales data (Zybertech). While most are client-based, a few have Web-based applications that work specifically on the construction project management (Procore) and operations management fronts. Finally, one offering, Enabling, ties a businesses’ Timberline data to SageCRM, either via a LAN or directly over the Internet. (CRM stands for customer relationship management.)

In the second part of this article, we will explore the installation process and costs associated with adopting these four complementary Timberline Office project and process management software products.