Double down on automation: how construction firms gain a competitive edge

Scott Seltz00:01

Good afternoon and welcome to this webinar, Double Down on Automation to Reap Overwhelming Competitive Advantage. This event is brought to you by Engineering News-Record and sponsored by FlowForma. I'm Scott Seltz, publisher of Engineering News-Record and your moderator for today's presentation. Thank you for joining us.

Scott Seltz00:18

In 2023, the need to adapt and automate is urgent. The trajectory points toward digitization, and it's vital that the construction business continues to optimize and modernize processes to stay competitive. Today we'll discuss how organizations, at whatever stage of their digital transformation journey, must continue this upward trajectory or risk being left behind.

Scott Seltz00:37

Joining us from FlowForma are Paul Stone and Shawn Kunkle. With broad experience in the IT industry, Paul uses his in-depth product and domain knowledge to support clients and internal teams in his role as product evangelist and strategist, and he manages and communicates the product roadmap. Shawn is a process transformation expert at FlowForma with many years of experience in business technology in the construction industry, working closely with construction organizations in the United States to help them achieve their digital transformation goals.

Scott Seltz01:23

I'll be back at the end to put your questions to our presenters, so please submit them in the Q&A section of your webinar console. Now let's hear from Paul and Shawn.

Paul Stone01:43

I'm Paul Stone, product strategist at FlowForma. Today we're going to talk about digital process automation, or DPA for short, and the benefits it can bring to your organization.

Paul Stone01:56

I believe your organization shouldn't digitalize for no reason. Focus on outcomes: delivering value and measuring that value. Forrester says efforts will pay off for those who double down on automation, and ultimately that's how you gain a competitive advantage. My objective today is to introduce our DPA tool and, most importantly, to share our customers' stories and the outcomes they've reaped from digitizing processes on a broader scale.

Paul Stone02:34

A little about FlowForma the company. FlowForma was formed in 2012 and released its product in 2013, and since then we've been revolutionizing the business process management space with a tool that lets businesses quickly digitize their processes. We have a presence in over 20 countries and well over 200,000 users. We've won a number of awards, including from Microsoft, and you'll find strong reviews of the product on G2.

Paul Stone03:39

FlowForma is a digital process automation tool. It automates the workflows in your organization, the tasks people execute to achieve their business goals. As people execute tasks, it captures data through electronic forms and documentation, so you have a digital record of all the work done. It also generates the documents and communications that travel between people in your organization and externally, to your clients, suppliers and contractors.

Paul Stone04:26

All of this information is stored centrally, so you can report on it and keep track of all the activity in your organization. You digitize the processes yourself, to work the way you work. It's fast, it's easy to use so it gets adopted, it's affordable, pay as you go, and it's no-code, designed for you to take control. It's also very agile: if you roll out a process and it's not taking with the workforce, you can quickly change it so they adopt it.

Shawn Kunkle05:35

Thank you, Paul. In construction, engineering and contracting right now, the three biggest focuses are technological innovation, diversity, and building projects that last. There's a huge digital transformation going on in the construction and design world, and globally we're known, unfortunately, as possibly the least digitalized industry out there. We've made progress, but there's still plenty of work to do.

Shawn Kunkle06:29

We found recently that 31% of organizations are still running processes on paper, and it's 2023. If that sounds like you, there's no need to panic; we run into it all the time, and there's a solution. We also found that 62% are reliant on spreadsheets to manage manual flows. Often someone in the field has to update a spreadsheet, and if it isn't updated in time, it creates a domino effect of negative business outcomes.

Shawn Kunkle07:13

One example is a current client of ours, a 60-year-old civil engineering company specializing in highway, bridge, marine and energy projects. They were looking for a tool that aligned with their mission: value for customers, respect for their community, honesty, high performance and integrity. They chose FlowForma because we could help them digitize processes and be part of a cultural shift, rather than just a product their workforce would push back against.

Shawn Kunkle07:58

With that, we're going to run a quick poll that you should see on your screen. Please give us some honest feedback; we'll take the next 30 seconds to a minute so everyone can respond.

Shawn Kunkle08:21

Thanks, everybody, for that feedback. In my role at FlowForma, we seem to see new challenges every day, but the consistent ones in construction and engineering start with reporting. It comes down to people using paper and emails, and the domino effect when someone doesn't do something and it affects multiple people down the chain.

Shawn Kunkle08:59

Maintaining a competitive edge is one of the most important. Digital transformation in construction isn't just a buzzword; it's real, it's measurable and it has ROI, and companies that embrace change rather than fight it will be successful. Then there's paper and Excel, which I'm sure everyone has dealt with. And customer experience: companies that are easy to do business with are preferred, and that helps secure new projects.

Shawn Kunkle09:54

Health and safety is an interesting one. Several people have come to us recently needing a solution for audit trails, safety reports and incident reports, which are often managed manually in the field. It's super important, because incidents and safety violations cost big money. Project costs are also rising, with supply chain pressures and higher labor costs.

Shawn Kunkle10:39

Remote workforces, spread across the country or the world, need a single source of truth. The skills shortage is another: in North America it's very difficult to attract people to construction, because a lot of 18-year-olds go straight to college. How do we bring in digital tools that millennials and Gen Z want to use, so they stay in our industry? And last but not least, building resilience, which again isn't just a buzzword.

Shawn Kunkle11:28

So how does FlowForma help address these challenges? First, rapid adoption. We're a no-code solution, not a low-code solution, designed for organizational transformation across multiple departments. No-code is easy to launch, you see ROI quickly, and there's less reliance on six-figure IT professionals or expensive third parties.

Shawn Kunkle12:05

Our SureStart program is designed to get one process fully launched and automated within six weeks. We often recommend starting with the process that's the biggest thorn in your side, the one creating the most waste. It's a cross-departmental solution for finance, safety, accounting, human resources and more, and it's available on Android and iOS, so people in different locations can communicate and work from a single source of truth.

Shawn Kunkle13:08

Now we'll discuss three key challenges: resilience, skills shortages and overruns. Resilience, by definition, is the capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties. Companies have long tried to get by with being scrappy. I'm a boxing fan, and technical boxers have a good jab, a good cross and a good hook; they're precise.

Shawn Kunkle14:09

Organizations often say: let's work hard, let's be scrappy, let's be tough. But there's a difference between scrappiness and resiliency, and COVID showed us there's no replacement for resiliency. A structured, logical, ROI-driven approach to being resilient is what's needed to succeed in the future.

Paul Stone14:46

Briefly, one of our clients is a very large organization; we work with its services division. They noticed a lot of inefficiencies and weren't dealing with change very well, so they set up an innovation initiative. They needed a tool that would help them change quickly, and the tools they looked at were too slow. They found FlowForma and realized this might be the way to change quickly.

Paul Stone15:42

They first used it for stock management at a large hospital trust they operate and maintain. They had no stock management system, just a paper process with an Excel control spreadsheet, and the data was inaccurate and troublesome to collect. They built a solution in FlowForma in six weeks, implemented it quickly and got control of their stock.

Paul Stone16:27

That's the power of FlowForma: you can deploy solutions quickly and address problems as they arise. Resilience is the ability to handle the impact of change from the outside world, and FlowForma lets you manage that change and come out better. They measured increased efficiency, and staff felt empowered because the system was delivered quickly and they were directly involved. That fed an appetite for automation and started a culture of change and innovation, increasing the company's resilience overall.

Paul Stone17:53

In a broader context, construction is being hit by things that are hard to control: rising supply costs, supply chain difficulties and talent scarcity. A lot of construction companies have full order books, but delivering on them is tricky without enough resources. One construction recruitment company told us 77% of construction companies are struggling to fill their orders because of a lack of available contractors. So in 2023 we'll see automation projects focus on continuity and resilience. Shawn, can you talk about our approach?

Shawn Kunkle19:02

Absolutely. Our approach is designed to be fast and get processes launched in weeks, without relying on IT people or legacy knowledge. It's designed to empower your team, which is where the term citizen development comes from. Beyond speed, there's cultural value when a team sees a solution as a way to help bring about change in their company. And it decreases turnover, because people aren't wasting time in spreadsheets, Word forms, emails and paper. They enjoy their job and want to stay in construction.

Shawn Kunkle20:09

That's where the cultural shift comes from: optimization, growth and building together as a team. And you get to a data-driven approach, where you're not shooting from the hip or relying on hunches, tribal knowledge or spreadsheets, but have data to back up a solid business case and see ROI.

Shawn Kunkle20:40

Next, the skills shortage. Here in North America there's a huge shortage of talent, and not just people in the field in hard hats, but in technology and human resources too. Bringing in people aged 18 to 23, straight out of high school or college, is a real challenge. Gen Z and millennials are already used to digital tools, and those generations tend to be much more open to digital transformation.

Shawn Kunkle22:16

Let's look at a case study centered on skills shortages. Rimkus is a consulting firm doing building envelope restoration and renovation in New York City. Lots of processes were killing their productivity, and they relied on employees to fill things in: COVID checklists, inspection forms, leak reports, requisitions and purchase orders. They struggled to communicate and had no templatized way to fill things out, so there were gaps.

Shawn Kunkle23:00

They also wanted to win more market share, which meant more employees who would need training on digital tools and would need to embrace them. With FlowForma, they automated up to four times faster. It helped their business development, their clients were happier, nobody was playing the waiting game, and they had a single source of truth and audit trails for regulations and ISO audits. Their quote talks about the speed and measurable gains of a no-code approach over low-code.

Paul Stone24:57

Everybody in US construction understands there's a real skills shortage, and it's impacting project delivery. The obvious answer is to attract new people into the workforce, but we also need to retain the people we have, who are already doing a great job, and make them more productive, so we can deliver more with the workforce we have today. People shouldn't be burdened with repetitive tasks, filling in forms and worrying about spreadsheets, when they want to get the construction work done. Shawn, can you talk about the approach?

Shawn Kunkle26:24

The approach is productivity, and productivity is money. We're trying to cut admin costs and the mundane tasks that frustrate people. One FlowForma customer saved 6,000 admin hours in one year, and that's quite common, because those hours go on outdated, boring, inefficient tasks. Another saw a 60% efficiency increase, not just for individual users but across departments, which makes companies more competitive and better places to work.

Shawn Kunkle27:30

The third challenge is overruns and costs. I'm sure everyone on this call has seen something not delivered on time because someone didn't update something or was stranded in the field with no internet. Our industry has a hard time communicating; it always has. Project delays create a domino effect of negative consequences, so having a solution to combat that saves money.

Paul Stone28:35

Project overruns are probably the biggest thing on everybody's agenda, on top of supply chain costs. The first step is recording data, so you know what's going on in your business. There are often inconsistencies: people do things in different ways, the data captured at each step is inconsistent and unvalidated, and one person's action or inaction can delay others. You need everything running like clockwork, with everybody knowing who has the ball.

Paul Stone30:00

A real problem is poor data. If you don't pass the right data at the right time to the right people, they may know they have a task but not have what they need to do it. Gathering the right data and putting it in the right hands keeps everything running like clockwork. Shawn, can you talk about the solution?

Shawn Kunkle30:37

Data really is power, and it's data we want to make decisions on, not hunches and gut feelings. Our approach is meant to accelerate process automation across a diverse workforce: all ages, roles and locations. Project delays are only going to get more costly as labor costs rise and supply chain issues continue.

Shawn Kunkle31:42

In measurable ROI, one client saved $290,000 on their daily briefing process across 100 supervisors. Another saved $77,000 on just one process. We're also seeing more fines and penalties for not conforming to local, state and federal rules. Sometimes I joke that we operate like the 50 countries of America rather than the 50 states, so audit trails, data, processes and workflows help you avoid those pitfalls.

Paul Stone34:04

Down in New Zealand, we work with the transport division of a large company with over 10,000 employees. They wanted to improve processes on site and gather data more effectively, because paper and spreadsheets weren't working. They couldn't see the current status of a project or anticipate delays, and they wanted to improve safety on transport projects, for example digging on rail lines and roadways where they might hit electrical services underground.

Paul Stone35:20

They also wanted to tackle processes that, in the words of a senior engineer, were trapped in people's heads, so a process could run one way one day and differently the next, which hits quality. They needed a digital tool connecting the workforce on site with the office, on mobile and desktop, whether or not they were connected to the internet.

Paul Stone36:05

The outcomes were significant. They reduced service strikes thanks to an improved digital permit-to-dig system. They reduced admin, because data was captured once, on site, validated there and sent to HQ. They improved the quality of documentation, which goes to the client, so the client gets better communications. Site workers could access project data and their tasks wherever they were, and management had better visibility of the site staff.

Paul Stone38:10

The permit-to-dig process alone saved over 430 hours. A digital system like FlowForma automatically captures performance statistics, so Downer could measure it. On the first two projects, over 20,000 processes were initiated and completed, saving over 2,000 hours. They also saved 126 days building those processes, because they'd tried low-code tools first and found them too slow. They've since rolled it out to more than nine projects.

Paul Stone39:43

As Carl Henderson, their digital engineering lead, puts it: the only limitation is your own imagination. If you understand a process, you can digitize it in FlowForma, standardize it across your workforce and measure its effectiveness. Once people start on the path of digitization, it's quite addictive, and every process gives you a return on investment you can measure easily.

Shawn Kunkle40:45

Some more information about our users and clients. We have over 200,000 users globally, people who touch a FlowForma flow day to day, filling out documents and inspection reports, or building processes for their team or company. We have clients in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America.

Shawn Kunkle41:34

The A14 integrated project in the United Kingdom was one of the largest highway projects in Europe, with a lot of government collaboration, workflows to digitize and tight deadlines. Morgan Construction, out of Calgary, Alberta, specializes in custom oil field projects with 500 to 700 employees, high turnover and spotty internet, and FlowForma helped them digitize workflows that relied on paper. Dresser, around since 1880, produces industrial electronics with 750 employees across 100 countries.

Shawn Kunkle43:17

We're often asked about typical user counts. Some clients have 50 users and others have 2,000. Small, mid-sized and large players all need to be talking about digital process automation, because the ROI, productivity and morale gains are very real.

Paul Stone44:18

FlowForma lets you build your own processes from scratch, your way, but we also provide process accelerators to get you going even faster: an actual production process in the field, making a return on investment, in a week or two. We built process accelerators specifically for construction, based on real-life use cases, and we're happy to demonstrate them.

Paul Stone45:30

FlowForma can be used for any process in your organization: finance, HR and more, with templates to get started quickly. Staff onboarding and contractor onboarding are a big deal; I think every construction customer addresses onboarding as one of their first priorities. The same goes for supplier onboarding, especially when supply chain issues mean switching suppliers at short notice, because it's easy to involve external stakeholders in FlowForma processes.

Paul Stone46:46

Quality management and quality check sheets are another. They're easy to create in FlowForma, and you automatically get a full audit trail behind them, so as a check sheet is used on site and passed internally, all of that data is collected for reporting.

Shawn Kunkle47:19

There's power in the numbers: hours saved, dollars saved, less paper, and more effective ROI than traditional business process management. That's what a no-code solution that digitizes multiple processes across multiple departments is all about.

Shawn Kunkle47:56

To summarize the key takeaways. Digitalization isn't just a buzzword; it's vital to the future of your business, and it doesn't have to be as difficult as it seems. Find a multi-departmental solution, because separate systems for HR, finance and fleet management might not talk to each other, and the bills add up, especially with a third-party partner.

Shawn Kunkle48:35

Embrace your internal champions and unlock citizen development, so your people are part of your future. Start with the low-hanging fruit, the processes causing the most pain, and launch quickly. Get feedback and be open to it, even when it's critical, because these people are experts with tribal knowledge. And focus on outcomes: the proof is in the pudding, and there's power in data to make logical business decisions.

Shawn Kunkle49:21

For next steps, please fill out the post-webinar survey. If you're interested in a free trial, visit our website, where you'll also find ebooks and case studies. Thank you so much for attending; I'll hand back to Scott for questions.

Scott Seltz50:01

Thank you, Shawn and Paul, that was a very in-depth conversation. Please take a few moments to complete our survey. Two questions occurred to me. First: if companies use multiple platforms in their business, how easy is it to integrate other systems with FlowForma?

Paul Stone50:46

FlowForma was designed to integrate with multiple systems throughout a process. In step one you might pull project details from one system, in step two talk to another, and in step three push information to your finance system or CRM. It's no-code, so you don't need to hire developers for integration. We have pre-built integrations with solutions like Procore and Viewpoint Vista, so you can push and pull information as you go, all through FlowForma's single interface, which acts as a front end to those back-end systems.

Scott Seltz52:13

And if an organization is ready to start digitizing with FlowForma, how do they kick-start it? Is there training involved?

Shawn Kunkle52:32

We work with you through our SureStart program, which builds the foundation. It's designed to train your team in FlowForma and get your first process launched and live within four to six weeks. It addresses an immediate business need and gives the people who'll be building in FlowForma the knowledge to take it to their teams, from one process to three, five, twenty or fifty. Often it comes down to making the conscious effort to get past the fear of the unknown and jump in.

Scott Seltz53:56

To that end, a viewer asks: are some processes better to start with than others?

Paul Stone54:01

We always say focus on the pain point. Usually there are processes everyone knows are an issue, and tackling the ones that hit as many people as possible shows a visible improvement to everybody from week one. That's important, because you're trying to get everybody to buy into change. FlowForma makes it easy to demonstrate improvements, which generates enthusiasm and momentum to digitize many more. Onboarding is often a starting point; it's probably the most popular process across our client base.

Scott Seltz55:15

Unfortunately, that's all the time we have for questions today. Please join me in thanking Paul Stone and Shawn Kunkle, and our sponsor FlowForma. If you have any additional questions, click the email us button on your console and we'll share them with our presenters. Thanks again for joining us, and have a great day.