Mechanical Contractor - Illinois

The Situation
The company had a stand-alone service system as well as a relatively new version of a construction accounting system. The two, however, were not integrated and the accounting system was not implemented at all. After a modest amount of training, someone within the company decided it was too much work to implement and more or less gave up. The staff in that department was preparing job cost reports and billings manually. They also lacked any kind of integrated subcontract management or change order management.

The Challenge
With all of these stand-alone systems, financial statement preparation was difficult and inefficient. Nearly all information was in printed form and only produced on a monthly basis. Adding to the challenges, the president was not aware of the situation he had and, for that reason, did not know it was a significant issue that needed to be addressed. When a new VP arrived, he recognized the situation and called in BCG.

Solution
After a series of interviews with the staff, BCG quickly realized that the existing system, while functioning moderately well for one of the divisions, was wholly inadequate for the other divisions and was not integrated with service. BCG also suspected that the package that had been purchased, which had an integrated service module, was in fact a good fit and simply needed to be implemented. BCG asked the vendor to return to the client office and demonstrate the software to a group of people from service, accounting, and operations. It was quickly determined that the new version of this software would serve the organization very well.

Result
Just prior to implementation of the new version of the system, the company was purchased by a large supplier and that company’s systems were put in place. In spite of that, the organization went into the merger with a much better understanding of how their systems should be working.

Lessons Learned

• Sometimes the software purchased is satisfactory and it simply needs to be implemented better.
• Integrated systems are important for information access and efficiency.
• Senior management must become more aware of information systems and their role in the organization even if the individuals are not technically oriented.
• Software vendors should be much more attentive to their customers so they are aware of who is struggling with their product and how they can help.