Article written by Ron Rambo on the Viewpoint blog.
Of all the things you might be pondering throughout the day on a job site, from budgeting and time concerns to labor and material issues, stopping to wonder whether your construction management software will operate better on-premises or cloud-hosted isn’t likely to be one of them. More pressing, time-sensitive needs usually keep contractors up at night.
But it’s reasonable to ask if there are tangible benefits that come with moving your construction data and processes to the cloud.
(Spoiler alert: There are major benefits, like better security and flexibility to data accessibility anywhere in the field).
Let’s take a look at three major factors to help remove the mystery surrounding cloud based construction management, and see why migrating to cloud hosting is a smart, growth-based move for your construction organization.
Benefits of Cloud-Based Construction Management
There are a few big reasons to move to cloud based construction management:
- A single set of connected data—accessible anywhere, any time. When data is collected and stored in the cloud, it can be accessed securely, through a laptop, tablet, or smartphone and get up-to-date information at your fingertips. Gain insights in real time, from a single source of connected data from across the organization.
- Increased productivity through smarter, faster decisions and fewer business risks. The ability to access real-time data and workflows means you can get the job done faster with fewer continuity risks. On-premise catastrophes like fires or ransomware can mean lost data and delayed projects; cloud-based data is not tied to any single location and is backed up regularly, so business continues even after a potential disaster.
- Better data security with immediate access to system updates. Digital information stored in the cloud is more secure, with encrypted, user-level permission controls, single sign-on, and multi-factor authentication. Look for SOC II, Type 2 certification for security, and be sure that your connected cloud solution gives you immediate access to the latest software versions, features, improvements, and security updates.
- Reduced personnel burdens and lower overall costs. The best cloud construction platforms should not require an army of IT folks just to get your technology moving. Instead, cloud-based software removes the need to maintain your own servers, roll out software updates across the organization, perform daily backups and monitor for security threats. Your cloud construction software provider should be saving you money on third-party IT spending and other on-prem hosting costs like hardware maintenance.
- Role-based licensing to fit the needs of every user. The ability to add or remove licenses to quickly adjust for seasonality and growth opportunity within your organization. Digital cloud-based software also offers dashboards that cater to the role that the individual owns. The ability to add external users to help with larger project teams is huge, with collaborative workflows to remove organizational silos and keep your teams working closely together—even when they’re apart.
The benefits of moving to a connected cloud environment go beyond what your users and employees see everyday—it should showcase its efficiency and effectiveness over time. Much like a modernized infrastructure approach, things like the “commodity maintenance” of hardware and software to care for your servers, which vacuums up valuable time and money, should deplete over time and leave your employees with more room to do their job.
These tasks may include responding to tickets, running backups and other software updates, and other things like ensuring sufficient system redundancy and that critical security updates are in place.
What is the Immediate Value of Moving to Cloud-Based Construction Management?
Depending on the types of jobs your organization does, working on federal government projects requires SOC II, Type 2 data security—so right away, it’s a requirement. (If you’re looking to get into federal contracting, moving to the cloud will help put your security requirements into place).
Even if you’re not contracting for the fed anytime soon, SOC II Type 2 is an industry-wide best practice that helps shore up cybersecurity.
There’s the compliance angle to consider, and situations in which quickly accessing data for compliance reasons might be particularly important. If a license or contract has expired and needs to be renewed, cloud-based construction management helps the back office to quickly assess what’s needed in the field in real-time.
With built-in workflows that automatically collect and track compliance documents, you’ll also have documentation for these activities in the event of an audit or compliance event.
Robert Kruse, the director of financial software for MDU, an electrical contracting firm, says that moving to the cloud allowed his team to expand their scope of new projects to further create efficiencies for his teams in the field.
“We’re able to do things that we just classically never looked at because we never had time,” says Kruse. “Some of those ‘wishlist’ items can begin to work their way into the queue because we’re no longer spending so much time testing the service backups, along with the gamut of other things that on-prem management brings.”
Even if you’re not contracting for The Fed anytime soon, SOC II Type 2 is an industry-wide best practice that helps shore up cybersecurity.
How Does Cloud-Based Construction Management Reduce Hidden Costs?
There’s a lot that goes into the cost of managing on-prem software, even outside of the server. All of these costs resolve around storage, performance, availability, and redundancy. Things like:
- Coverage in the case of a hardware failure through virtualization (This means having an exact duplicate of your system that you can access in the case of emergencies, which takes time to create and manage
- Cloud management, which can often be pushed off to a third-party vendor to avoid risk and help keep your systems running smoothly (Construction management software providers with great service will do a lot of the work for you)
- Storage to keep all of your data (which, while cheap, can add up quickly and is a ransomware risk)
- Different servers to manage for larger or more sophisticated environments
- Dedicated storage networking to connect the server to the storage
... And that are just a few major aspects of the infrastructure that we’re looking at.
Contractor management software can vastly improve the security and lower the costs associated with on-premise management—by as much as 4x, according to our clients.
