ERP for Construction Industry: A Necessity for Modern Business

ERP for construction industry is the need of the hour. You need to choose an ERP solution that perfectly fits with your business and provides the necessary tools to withstand customer demand and win the competitive market. Before understanding the need for an ERP system in construction businesses, let’s understand why businesses require such a solution.

Why Businesses Requires an ERP for Construction Business?

As we can see, the construction industry is becoming more and more complex with the unpredicted demands of the customer and fluctuations in market trends. Such sudden changes have updated the industry with new ways of doing business. Technological advancement and changing global conditions play a vital role in the changing scenario of construction businesses. In particular, the building materials industry transformation has highlighted the need for businesses to adopt more efficient systems to manage resources and growth.

Earlier, each process and activity in the construction industry consisted of manual methods with a lot of errors, inaccuracy, and process inefficiency. We are witnessing the technological advancements that are affecting the business's ability to manage people, equipment, and growth. With an advanced ERP for construction, your business can manage entire business scale and achieve new heights.

In this competitive market, we can witness different ERP solutions, especially those built for the construction business. You can customize such solutions to manage the numerous processes of the organization. These processes include obtaining insights, tracking processes, accepting automation, and increasing business efficiency to achieve goals.

The construction industry is full of complexities, errors, and issues. If you are in this industry, you must be aware of such roadblocks and system redundancies. In your daily business operations, you might be facing difficulties in managing different projects, simplifying operations, optimizing resources, and tracking budgets for each project in real-time. Also, building strong communication across the team as well as the department is one of the major concerns for the business.

Do you want to get rid of such issues?

Implement a business-centric and advanced ERP solution that can understand your business needs and help you achieve your goals. Among numerous ERP solutions, you need to choose the one that aligns with your business requirements and offers you the necessary capabilities for business growth. But, before going for a solution, analyzing your existing requirements is the first step you need to consider.

Before we check out the top 5 performing ERP systems for construction businesses, let’s understand the must-have qualities in a construction ERP system.

Must Have Features in Construction ERP System

Before choosing the right ERP solution, you should consider the below factors as must-have features. The essential factors are:

Responsive Access for all

The ERP system must offer access for all users, including team members, field teams, project owners, engineers, contractors, and vendors. With access, the entire business data can be unified to build a collaborative approach for the organization’s growth.

Comes with Cost Management

There are numerous processes in the construction business where cost plays a major role. Whether it is purchasing goods or services to optimize the materials, cost management must be an important module of the ERP system.

Inbuilt Financial Management Module

Good management of finances will empower the business to save costs and achieve higher profit margins with limited resources. Finance management in construction ERP includes budgeting, financial reporting, cash flow management, forecasting requirements, and cost control.

Seamless Automation

Automation in a construction ERP will eliminate 90% of errors and issues users have to deal with while managing different processes simultaneously. Leveraging the power of automation, a business can automate most of the recurring and manual processes, like workflow automation, document approval, generating invoices, and more, to enhance business productivity.

Data Reporting and Analytics

Users, project owners, managers, and stakeholders must be informed about each activity happening in the business. Here comes the effective data reporting and analytics capabilities of an ERP system that removes the boundaries between the business and the people to drive transparency.

Must be Customizable

Each business runs on some sort of process that makes it unique with respect to processing customer requirements and staying ahead in the market. So, the ERP system must adapt to such unique businesses to offer the extra capabilities they require to stay on top.

Best ERP System for Construction Businesses: Check out the Popular ERP Solutions

Here is the list of the top 5 solutions that are considered the most practical and effective for all kinds of construction businesses.

1. Microsoft Dynamics 365

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a suite of advanced solutions that offers ERP and CRM applications like Microsoft Dynamics CRM for all businesses, regardless of size. If you have a small construction business, you can go with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, as it is highly customizable and easily aligned with unique business needs.

Also, if you are a diverse organization with business operations around the globe, you can go with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, also known as Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, as it can seamlessly handle complex construction industry operations. It comes with:

• Construction Accounting
• Construction Payroll
• Mobile App
• Equipment Management
• Inspection Management
• Construction Business Intelligence

2. Penta

Penta is a specific construction ERP solution available in the industry with process management capabilities for contractors. With 35 years in the industry, Penta offers diversified tools to manage and streamline a construction business with minimal effort.

You can easily manage multiple entities with this solution. However, it offers limited integration and customization options for contractors and the business. Even though the interface is a bit complicated and offers fewer tools to profitably manage global business operations,

3. SAGE

SAGE is specifically designed accounting software, but it does come with the necessary tools required to manage a construction business. You can process financial transactions, build project estimates, calculate project margins, manage leads, and simplify operations.

Being a finance-specific ERP solution, it comes with limited capabilities that might hinder your business growth. However, if you are a construction business that needs an ERP solution specifically to manage finance and accounting, this is the best solution for you.

4. Maestro ERP

Maestro ERP has been recently acquired by SailPoint, a leader in offering security to cloud businesses. This solution is basically built to streamline the finance and operations of the construction business, with a few capabilities of other modules as well.

Also, it comes with full capabilities for project management to help a business streamline different projects altogether. After the acquisition, SailPoint is improving its capabilities and adding more features to make it a modern ERP for construction businesses.

5. Epicor

Epicor is an industry-specific ERP solution for construction businesses. It comes with almost all the business management modules generally required to simply operate and manage a business. Not only in manufacturing, but you can also establish this solution in other industries as well due to its flexible deployment and customization options.

However, it isn’t specifically built for the construction business as it lacks some of the essential tools like establishing centralized communication, minimizing project uncertainty, tracking manpower, and more.

Which Solution is Best for Unique Construction Business?

Other than these 5 solutions, there are numerous others on the market that claim to be the perfect ERP for construction industry. Let me tell you that it is not advisable to choose a solution until you understand your business requirements and what it needs to grow.

Once you have the data on what your business needs to grow in today’s competitive market and what it is going to need in the future, you can proceed to choose a solution.

However, analyzing a business is a complicated process, and you might seek expert guidance throughout the process. In such a scenario, Dynamics Square, your reliable Microsoft Dynamics 365 partner, is available to help you understand your core requirements and choose the best solution to accelerate your business growth.

Being a Microsoft Gold Partner or Microsoft Dynamics Partner for 12+ years, we have gained a lot of knowledge and experience in implementing the Dynamics 365 solution in construction industry. With 150+ technical consultants, we can help you stay on top in this highly competitive market while generating a consistent stream of revenue.