The Coronavirus pandemic has raised logistical challenges over the past months. The vast majority of businesses have been forced to move their operations online and the majority of the staff were either made to work from home. Maintaining the business continuity – for the customers and staff alike – in such conditions requires a strategy that makes sense for the time being and for the future of the company. A cloud-based solution, like Archdesk ERP, can support you to solve some of these challenges away.
Construction Industry and Remote Work
Throughout the world, we can see that the Construction Industry has been deemed as an essential service. It is true, the Construction Industry is among the least digitized (McKinsey Research) – just next to Agriculture and Hunting. However, even in cases where sites are closed until proper Health & Safety measures are put into place, work still goes on behind the desks.
How can cloud-based ERP solutions help you in working remotely
A cloud-based ERP can help you out with the changes in the market and also with keeping your work organized and readily available for your team, no matter where you are located. Here are some of the topics that a cloud-based solution can assist you with:
- Programme of Works – with a manufacturing software UK based, you can plan in advance and set up a schedule for your project that would hold each and every task for your employees – be it apprentices, permanent, subcontractors, and contractors. By planning ahead, you can visualize the costs that will incur and set up the time frames for your project, even before it starts. You should make sure you have the flexibility of seeing this both in a table-like form or as a Gantt Chart – if you use Microsoft Project for this task, make sure that the software that you choose integrates with it.
- Once you have the Programme of Works in Plan, you will surely think about Scheduling the tasks. By viewing the full calendar of all your projects and all your teams you can have a big picture for the day/week/month to come and redistribute the resources – all just a click or two away! The manufacturing software you choose should help you in avoiding double-booking your assets.
- Tasks are done, in the system, readily available for the on-site workers – what next? Clock in/out options – a cloud-based construction management software, must allow your team to log in at their mobile device while on-site. All they need to have is a device – Android or Apple Tech – with good internet connectivity. We know that most companies nowadays account for their employees via an Excel file (reconciled at the end of the month), but things can be so much easier and faster with a cloud-based solution!
- Document Management – take for example RFIs, that come either in paper form or email and they are hard to store and to handle around. Information goes missing or gets doubled up. A cloud-based solution can help you solve these issues. It stores not only RFIs but all types of files that your team uses. You can create folders, store files and share them with certain departments in your company and even – via a uniquely generated link – share them externally to clients or other parties.
- Tendering – Management software available on the market allow you to speed up, streamline, and automate the tendering process (what a blessing!). You can perform it 100% online. As a manufacturing company, you can breathe easily and bring your tendering process online. Predefine the tender rules, choose the suppliers, send them the info, gather the info back from them, and let the system calculate who the winner should be (of course, you can always overwrite that, if you wish to do so and choose someone else). It is all so much easier and faster via the cloud.
- No updates – Due to information on the cloud, your team can continue their daily work and tasks and you can always be in the loop, on top of everything that happens with your projects. Regular software, legacy systems that you use now, need regular updates, along with your PCs and laptops needing regular system updates, yet with cloud-based software, there is no hardware or software to update! You just need to have a stable internet connection – its as simple as that!
When selecting a good ERP solution that will help you to remote work, pay attention to the solutions it offers – is the system forward-thinking? Can it also help you scale up? Will it help you run your business from the comfort of your home? It is not a decision to be taken lightly as it will surely change the way you work and how your team communicates. Recommend reading: “Cloud ERP vs On-Premise ERP: A Comprehensive Comparison“