The Role Salesforce Is Playing In The Technology Transition For The Construction Industry

The majority of the Construction industry has yet to embrace digital transformation. In this article, we look at the important role that Salesforce plays in the technology transition for Construction, integrating the many separate tools the industry typically relies upon today, into one seamless experience. Construction industry, are you ready for improved efficiency, a more profitable operation, and greater workflow capabilities?

While our clients at Endiem are fairly diverse, there is one thing that unites them all: no matter their sector they know that digital transformation is the key to their future growth. The Salesforce platform is their chosen route to take their business operation to the next level.

What’s interesting to us is that we don’t have more construction clients in our portfolio. We are very proud to be working with some awesome construction players, including ENGIE, Mustang CAT, and Wilbanks Trucking. Still, we can see that these folks are outliers in their sector. Taking a slice of data from a recent report on tech for the construction industry, the picture is clear - 51% of construction businesses don’t have a dedicated IT department!

We’ve got to ask - how are you guys managing?

Based on our experience, we know the answer: Most Construction players rely upon a number of industry-specific software suites to manage different business processes. We also know that these tools don’t cross-communicate and that’s where construction operations are losing efficiency. It’s also the #1 reason that Construction clients get in touch with Endiem. They want better integration across platforms to get business gains, for example.

• A single view of their customers regardless of tool
• More efficient and effective business processes
• Improved collaboration
• Better workforce productivity
• Faster invoicing and identification of AR

Which all leads to increased revenue.

Now we have your full attention, we’d like to add the good news that Salesforce is the perfect platform to link up the whole operation. Let’s take a quick walk through the different categories of tools that the Construction industry is currently using and how well they integrate with Salesforce.

1. Financial Management. For those who are not still relying upon spreadsheets, the number one favorite is SAGE. Integrates with Salesforce just fine.
2. Collaboration & Work Management. There’s a wide range of options here when it comes to digitally assigning tasks, checking up on project progress, managing calendars or other work, and even file sharing. The tools in use are just as diverse too and this is where Salesforce comes into its own by bringing data from separate apps into one view of truth. Many of these apps and tools will have a prebuilt connector, downloadable from the Salesforce AppExchange for quick integration.
3. Document Management & Storage. OneDrive, DropBox, Box, SharePoint and Google Drive are all in use when it comes to storage, retrieval, searching, archiving, tracking, management, and reporting on documents and records. All have excellent integration capabilities with Salesforce.
4. Construction Management - Probably the most well-known and adopted tool in this category has to be Procore. This is pretty much the soup to nuts experience for the digitally transformed construction player. A complex tool and therefore our recommendation is that you consider going for bespoke integration on this one.*

We are only really skimming the surface of how Salesforce can drive the digital transformation for Construction. You may well think this sounds like it could take up a lot of time and headspace. However, if your team is spending their time flipping between 3-6 different apps or software tools trying to make sense of the information and wasting time on duplicate data entry, then it’s time to start thinking about how to work smarter.

In the coming weeks, we will be giving a little more honesty (you could call it tough love!) and taking a deeper dive into the technology that will propel construction companies through their next stage. If you don’t have an IT department, don’t let that stop you: Endiem has the experience and knowledge with software integration across any vertical, but Construction is a focus for us. We can’t wait to partner with you to help your business move into what is now being called the 4th Industrial Revolution.

*If you are evaluating your options for integrating Procore and Salesforce, get in touch with Endiem today as we have a very exciting, cost-effective offer for you which we can tell you more about one-to-one.