The emergence of one of the deadliest pandemics of this century, COVID-19 or the new coronavirus, has taken the world by storm. With lives and livelihoods affected in enormous proportions, the spiraling and never-ending effects of COVID-19 have stalled the continuity of all business sectors, with travel and construction being the most severely affected.

The golden rule that every business must follow is the adoption of technology for digital transformation, as cost reduction is key to the continuity and sustainability of any business, and rightly so. But now, let's focus on how civil construction companies can jumpstart themselves and harness the potential of a comprehensive project management software suite. Read on to learn more about the benefits of a construction management software suite:

Content Management:

The civil construction industry must manage large amounts of data. Sticking to old-fashioned paperwork methods can only yield results as it always has. Expense invoices and contractor contracts must be properly documented in separate storage folders to be updated and retrieved at any time. This avoids unnecessary communication gaps and improves decision making to a great extent. In addition, intra-departmental communication is significantly facilitated and expanded. An integrated content management system (CMS) will document dynamic content that requires frequent updates and retrieval of stored documents.

Risk Planning:

The civil construction industry is a capital-intensive industry, prone to risk and uncertainty compared to other industries. Risk assessment is critical to the pursuit of any construction and building project. Project management software helps construction companies assess and monitor risks at an early stage to avoid unforeseen risks that can prove fatal later on.

Analysis:

The conventional paperwork system does not produce reports to get a deviated process back on track. Project analytics is nothing more than a collection of dashboards, administration panels and graphs that present real-time data on the current status of the project and the direction of progress. Analytics also represents predictive data that can reassess the status of a project and restore normalcy in the event of deviations in various processes, including accounting, customer relationship performance and new customer conversions.

Enterprise Resource Planning:

While market dynamics dictate the business landscape, an ERP software suite at its best can help manage supplier or vendor relationships, plan and allocate resources efficiently, and improve the overall business process. Construction companies should look to simplify business decisions and automate business processes, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak. Therefore, an ERP software suite can make the most of an integrated business process with automation and digitization.

Change Management:

The civil construction industry is a very fluid industry, subject to change requests at various levels, which therefore need to be handled quickly and efficiently before they gain momentum and become threatening. Manual processes cannot be relied upon for change management. Only an effective cloud-based construction project management software suite can handle and resolve change requests on the fly. And this is extremely important from a project management perspective.

Opportunity Management (CRM):

Lead conversion and customer retention are daunting tasks for any construction project company. If the opportunity management path is not discovered through intelligence and automation, customer relationships may take a back seat and the overall brand image will be a matter of uncertainty. Integrated CRM software can improve collaboration and help generate more data, creating an environment conducive to collaboration.