There’s a reason Foundation construction accounting software is popular among contractors: Unlike general-purpose accounting tools, Foundation makes it easy to track and report all kinds of construction-specific information.
However, Foundation has another huge advantage as well: Because it uses MS SQL Server, it can “plug and play” with some of the most advanced tools available to contracting companies today — including the ProNovos construction data analytics and resource-management platform.
Combining Foundation with ProNovos allows contractors to flow their existing cost and budget data into a powerful analytics engine, yielding new perspectives on trends and leading indicators.
In addition to strategically valuable comparisons and projections, access to an analytics dashboard makes life easier for construction executives, project managers and the account team.
Finance and accounting professionals benefit from greater clarity into where the company is headed with respect to working capital, payable and receivable turns, days sales outstanding and more. Having key performance indicators (KPIs) around financials allows contractors to answer critical questions such as whether they’re generating enough income to cover their short-term liabilities.
Finance and accounting pros appreciate the way Foundation + ProNovos allows them to include more interactive visuals in income statements and balance sheets.
Construction projects are huge undertakings. The last thing a busy PM needs is an overwhelming experience with data analytics.
Data analytics dashboards are beneficial for Foundation PMs because these tools put critical project information in one place, with intuitive visuals and no extra noise. As a PM, what you want to be able to do is forecast your quantities, hours, costs and risks with greater accuracy and no extra hassle.
By bringing in multiple streams of Foundation data, our pre-built analytics engine gives PMs an easy way to break out costs by subcontractor, material, general conditions and the like. It also provides insights about what to expect in the future. For example, PMs can use ProNovos to automatically calculate where quantities are headed based on production rates.
Neither PMs nor their crews need to do anything differently. If crews are capturing hours using Foundation’s mobile app, for example, they can continue with that practice; ProNovos automatically collects that information from Foundation.
The flexibility of Foundation allows estimators, accountants, CFOs and others to run highly customizable and company-specific queries and reports. Combine that with analytics and the window of possibilities opens wider.
Imagine a CFO working with a total of five Foundation reports on prevailing wage rates in five submarkets. The exec wants to see charts and graphs illustrating the differences in those wage rates across the five submarkets. Using ProNovos, the contractor could generate that report automatically, as opposed to manually pulling data out of Foundation and setting up new queries, templates or combined reports in Microsoft Excel.
ProNovos works with Foundation right out of the box and makes it easy for contractors to run different what-if scenarios. Using labor data, for example, they could crunch the labor-cost numbers on different project scenarios in Austin, or game-plan what would happen if the company crewed up in San Antonio and crewed down in Houston.
The CEO of one construction contracting company is using Foundation + ProNovos to better understand dynamics around bids and cash flows. Some of the specific questions he wanted to answer included: If a specific customer pays late, how will it impact my cash flows? How will that, in turn, affect my ability to pay my suppliers?
With access to a data analytics dashboard, the CEO has been able to make strategic adjustments in real time, keeping his cash flows optimal six months out, with greater clarity into liquidity ratios.
When considering cash flow, many contractors look only at the jobs and related billings that are under their control now. Foundation + ProNovos allows you to accurately envision and plan for the future: “Here’s what will happen if we win the mixed-use bid and start billing in July; here’s how our cash flows will look if we lose that bid, but win the hospital project and start billing in August.”
One Foundation contractor has been using ProNovos to get a better understanding of the month-to-month revenue picture.
Imagine a project with a $1 million budget and a completion deadline six months away. Halfway to the goal line, the PM realizes that he’ll actually need $600,000 to complete the job on schedule.
Traditionally, PMs’ monthly reports would not include precisely when specific funds would be spent in the future. Instead, executives would get a status report on that $600,000 total figure.
But what if the PM could spread that $600,000 out across the duration of the project? That’s exactly how the aforementioned Foundation contractor is now using ProNovos. If $50,000 will be spent in June, but, due to equipment needs, $200,000 will be spent in August, those projections are now front-and-center in the report, giving the c-suite greater transparency into revenues.
This post provides just a glimpse at the power of the Foundation + ProNovos combination. For more detail, visit ProNovos Analytics.
We’ve designed the ProNovos Analytics Essentials package to give you the best of what expensive, market-dominant construction data analytics software offers, at a far-more-competitive price. The Analytics Essentials page provides pricing based on the number of users and includes a detailed FAQ for Foundation contractors. We encourage you to take a look!
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Construction resource management capabilities of ProNovos’ Operations Manager construction software
Case study of McClone Construction Co.’s use of Operations Manager for construction resource management
Press release on the launch of Operations Manager–a good primer on the benefits of construction resource management and construction software platforms
