How to quickly build digital workflows to save over 700 hours a year on repetitive processes

John Ross (AGC of America)00:03

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's AGC of America webinar, How to Quickly Build Digital Workflows to Save Over 700 Hours Yearly on Repetitive Processes. My name is John Ross, and I'm the marketing manager of business development at AGC of America in Arlington, Virginia. I'd like to introduce today's presenters: Rebecca McManus, territory manager at FlowForma, and Gerard Newman, chief technical officer at FlowForma. Gerard, I'll turn it over to you.

Gerard Newman00:36

Thank you, and welcome, everyone. Today we're going to share our experience automating processes using digital workflow in the construction sector. We'll walk through why process automation is a strategic imperative for construction organizations, share real-world examples through three case studies, talk about why there's an opportunity for automation and why it's the new norm, and then take your questions.

Gerard Newman01:23

As I'm sure you're aware, there are lots of construction technologies available. Just like other industries, construction is being bombarded with new technologies, which is great: they open new possibilities, solve common problems and take the burden out of difficult or error-prone tasks. The construction technology sector received over $1.5 billion in investment in 2021, so we can only presume the range of technologies and what they deliver will keep growing.

Gerard Newman02:06

We all know that embracing some of these technologies is essential to compete and grow, but knowing that doesn't make it any easier to decide which technologies will deliver the most value, or when you can expect a return on your investment. Today we'll explain why we think process automation can deliver a quick return while being a key enabler of your digital transformation journey.

Gerard Newman02:32

Construction is a very process-driven industry. Processes are added so the business can scale and to ensure quality, compliance and standards. They're used in back-office functions such as finance, admin and HR, and on site to support day-to-day operations. They carry information to and from everyone involved, and in many ways they're the glue that holds the business together.

Gerard Newman03:14

But in construction we find these processes are often paper-based and manual, or they've been turned into spreadsheets and emails. That gives some automation, but it doesn't make taking part in a process any easier. It delays getting accurate information and takes people away from their core job. Because these manual processes run across the whole business, digitizing them brings benefits across the whole business, and in our experience that creates a viral effect for further process automation.

Gerard Newman03:57

Creating that demand can be a bit of a problem if you're automating processes with scarce IT resources, because that takes time. The approach we've found really successful in construction is to enable non-IT people to automate processes themselves. That accelerates automation across the business, and we have good examples of construction companies automating tens or hundreds of their own processes in a short period.

Gerard Newman04:39

Automating a process should be quite simple. Fundamentally it involves guiding people through collecting data in forms, passing that data to others in the process, and creating some output, whether that's a document, an email or an integration with another system.

Gerard Newman04:58

We wanted to understand why construction companies were so keen on process automation and where they got their return on investment, so we surveyed over 300 companies. 69% said they were interested in process automation because they needed to move away from manual, paper-based processes. They simply couldn't scale, and they felt manual processes were hampering their plans to digitally transform.

Gerard Newman05:31

Coincidentally, 69% also said individual projects had been hit by overruns caused by manual processes, which in turn hit their margins. 37% said process automation could help them overcome problems sharing data between construction sites, administration offices and project managers. It's often a real frustration not being able to share information across a whole project.

Gerard Newman06:22

And 23% were concerned that their workforce lacked core digital skills, which was a barrier to rolling out lots of different applications. So a standard way of digitizing processes was attractive: people don't have to learn lots of different applications, which minimizes the training overhead and the change management involved.

Gerard Newman06:56

We also looked at the challenges our existing construction customers were trying to solve with FlowForma. Information accuracy is a common one: information can be hours or days out of date, and in construction the opportunity to act has often passed by then. Process automation addresses this with electronic data capture at every point in the process. Once people have accurate information, they want more visibility and reporting, so they can make better decisions in a more timely way.

Gerard Newman07:38

Compliance with internal and external standards was another key reason, and so is proving that you've done it. In many construction companies the compliance trail is manual and paper-based. With process automation, everyone is guided through the process the standard way, and you collect the evidence as you go.

Gerard Newman08:19

That applies to health and safety too, a common use of our platform. You need a robust system for recording and actioning issues, so risks or breaches are recorded immediately and followed up. And finally recruiting and onboarding: being able to onboard large volumes of people onto projects, make sure they're properly certified, and have them available when you need them. Running that manually is very difficult, so customers used process automation to make it more predictable.

Gerard Newman09:13

If you'd like to take a moment and select one of these options, we'd be interested in your views on the challenges you face.

Gerard Newman09:27

That's interesting. Integration is the clear leader. That's a really common one, particularly as the technology environment in construction becomes more complex and more applications are in place, so tying them together matters. Not being able to automate workflows in-house is another. We really believe that if you can train your business users to automate their own workflows, you'll get rollout and adoption much quicker.

Gerard Newman10:08

Let's look at some process trends for 2022. There was huge interest in automating processes in construction in 2021, and we expect that to continue at pace as companies replace manual and paper-based processes. We expect it to be business-driven and at scale, because once organizations see what they can achieve, they want to move quickly.

Gerard Newman10:57

We've also seen process boundaries breaking down. People think of a process as internal, but those barriers are disappearing, and processes spread across the workforce and out to clients, suppliers and subcontractors. The more of those people you involve, the more benefit you get.

Gerard Newman11:22

When you remove paper-based processes, you start gathering information you never had: how long a process takes, its status at any time, and where the blockages are. People want to analyze that alongside other business data. And as construction companies implement more applications, the need for integration grows, along with the ways of integrating them.

Rebecca McManus12:23

Thanks, Gerard, and hi, everyone. I'm going to talk about real-world case studies from companies that went on their process automation journey: Sullivan Engineering, Morgan Construction and Gallagher Group. On this slide you can see other companies that have automated processes, including NG Bailey, Grafton Group and the A14 Integrated Delivery Team.

Rebecca McManus13:01

The A14 was the largest road construction project in the UK, at 31 kilometers and about £1.5 billion, a joint venture between Costain, Skanska and Balfour Beatty. They automated a lot of processes, and from one process alone they saved £77,000, as well as hours of admin.

Rebecca McManus13:39

Sullivan Engineering is a building restoration company based in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Sullivan and its customers say it always goes a step beyond its competitors and delivers above expectations, which is something they're proud of. They had a massive amount of manual and paper processes and were getting bogged down, so moving away from paper and improving document generation and management was really important to them.

Rebecca McManus14:14

Processes they automated included a COVID checklist, field inspection reports and leak investigation reports. That led to improved client satisfaction, more efficiency, higher productivity and more agility. Sullivan was able to decrease project turnaround times rapidly, capture better data and insights, and put time into the jobs that matter instead of paperwork. The key takeaway: they used a no-code process automation tool to drive rapid adoption and quickly deploy a solution.

Rebecca McManus15:21

Morgan Construction is a civil construction company based in Canada, with over 500 employees, and a lot of its projects are environmental. Their team of recruiters and coordinators relied heavily on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to track onboarding. That was time-consuming, prone to human error and no longer efficient for the stage the business was at, with a high volume of new hires.

Rebecca McManus16:14

Visibility mattered to them: accurate, centralized data, and being able to identify strengths, weaknesses and bottlenecks in workflows. Alongside HR onboarding, they automated fleet maintenance, fleet transfers between sites and employee expense claims. Their pain points were an over-dependence on spreadsheets, excessive paperwork, no visibility over workflows, sign-up for projects taking too long, and the risk of human error.

Rebecca McManus17:05

With a no-code process automation tool, they standardized and simplified processes, encouraged business users, or citizen developers, to build their own workflows, accelerated time to completion and got clear visibility along the whole approval chain. Executives and client sites got real-time, accurate reports, including when employees and contractors would be available for their next job.

Rebecca McManus17:57

They took a giant spreadsheet with endless data entry that they had totally outgrown and turned it into a process flow that was intuitive for their people, which led to significant cost savings. The real takeaway is tracking and visibility. Knowledge is power, so it's so important to capture those insights.

Rebecca McManus18:38

Gallagher Group is a civil engineering company based in Kent in the UK, covering property development, design and contracting, and quarrying. It has over 300 employees and 20 live project sites. Its main challenge was too many manual processes, especially inspections, and it was heavy on email, Excel and paper.

Rebecca McManus19:10

They deployed process automation to eliminate the email, Excel and paper, and went live with 40 automated processes. They gave the project to two non-technical people, and with an easy-to-use no-code solution, those two built the 40 processes in only 10 weeks. You don't need to hire a team of developers. With a no-code solution, business users or citizen developers can build these processes. Gallagher also cut customer complaints by 50%, because mistakes and delays on projects were reduced.

Rebecca McManus20:25

Why implement process automation? You can digitize workflows, documents and forms. It helps reduce delays on projects, which can lead to unhappy clients and lost money. Mistakes from human error can be eliminated, and processes are completed faster, which can lead to significant cost savings. When choosing a solution, find something intuitive and agile that can be scaled across the whole organization, not just specific teams.

Gerard Newman21:11

I think you've covered that very well. The speed is one of the things we've been really impressed with in construction companies: how fast they roll process automation out across the organization, and the enthusiasm with which they embrace it. Being no-code, agile and intuitive all helps make that happen.

Rebecca McManus21:46

This slide gives an overview of the types of processes that can be automated. It's worth taking a moment to see whether any of them are causing the biggest headaches in your organization, causing delays on projects and wasting time and money.

Rebecca McManus22:15

From our experience, a lot of organizations have different systems for different teams, one for HR, another for finance, and none of them can talk to each other. So it's important to find a scalable solution that can be rolled out across teams and departments to streamline communication. It's not just construction processes here: HR and finance processes are included too.

Gerard Newman23:11

We've also seen a lot of commonality in processes across the construction sector, so we've spent time building templates. They give you an accelerator for common processes, because process automation can seem daunting, and something that gets you most of the way there is a good start. The templates can be customized to fit your business and your existing systems.

Rebecca McManus24:04

It's really helpful to have accelerators or templates, because starting a project can be daunting. Having something to customize and tweak gets the ball rolling, so you're not starting from zero.

Rebecca McManus24:28

They call it a journey, and it is. When you start, take into account what's involved and how long it will take: process mapping sessions to find which processes cause the biggest headaches, what resources you need, who will roll it out and when. Allow time to implement a new solution, to upskill people in it, and to build the processes.

Rebecca McManus25:22

You can see a return on investment immediately after automating your first process, so imagine what that looks like after 12 months. The key message is don't delay. If you do nothing, nothing will happen. Focus on getting one process automated, the one causing the biggest headache, see the return, then gradually scale out to other processes and teams.

Rebecca McManus26:11

Here are some ROI stats we have: £80,000 per significant process, 50+ processes automated per year, processes deployed 60% faster, 700 hours saved on repetitive processes, over 100,000 sheets of paper saved in a year, and a 50% reduction in customer complaints.

Gerard Newman26:40

It often seems that doing nothing has no cost, but if individual processes are wasting money, there's quite a high cost of doing nothing. The sooner you start, the sooner you benefit from the savings.

Rebecca McManus27:03

And when you get started, you'd be surprised how fast you can see results.

John Ross (AGC of America)27:10

I appreciate you going into the case studies and showing what digitization is used for and how companies implemented it. We have a few questions. How long does it take to digitize a process?

Gerard Newman27:34

Our aim is to get people up and running with a digitized process from a standing start in about two to three weeks. Our approach is skills transfer, through our SureStart program. We work closely with customers to get the first process running, and while we do that we're transferring skills: how to look at a process and how to use the platform. Then people can take the reins and carry on automating across the organization, as in some of these case studies.

John Ross (AGC of America)28:36

What is the difference between the process you've been talking about and Microsoft Power Automate?

Gerard Newman28:48

Power Automate is a fairly common platform you can build lots of things in, including process automation. We position ourselves as no-code, so business users, citizen developers, can build out processes themselves. You can do a certain amount in Power Automate without technical skills, but you quickly get to a point where you need them to complete a process. Technical skills are always in short supply and there are always backlogs, which slows automation down. So we let business people build, and they can bring in the IT team when they need to.

Rebecca McManus30:00

We'd typically be five times faster than a coded solution, because of the no-code element. What might take you four weeks to build with one solution would only take a week with a no-code solution.

John Ross (AGC of America)30:20

You mentioned no-code, but what is the underlying code base?

Gerard Newman30:27

We use various technologies in the platform. The overall platform is hosted on Azure, but the main thing we use is Office 365: we sit alongside SharePoint in the Office suite.

John Ross (AGC of America)30:50

Do you have any tips to help prioritize which processes to automate?

Rebecca McManus30:56

Find the process that's causing the biggest headache and that affects the most people in the organization. The return on investment will be more compelling, including to the wider organization. Or, if there's a simple workflow that won't take long to build, that's also a good route, because you'll see a quick return on it.

John Ross (AGC of America)31:40

Do you market your product in the CLM industry? What is the difference from CLM products such as DocuSign CLM or Icertis?

Gerard Newman32:04

We regularly integrate with things like DocuSign. As part of automating a process you may create documents that need to be digitally signed or sent to partners for signature. DocuSign is a narrower use case. We're not just managing the life cycle of a document; we're managing the life cycle of data across all your processes, which often means creating documents and getting them to third parties for acceptance.

John Ross (AGC of America)32:57

Our processes often change. What does it look like if you need to make a change in a no-code process automation tool?

Rebecca McManus33:09

It's much easier in a no-code solution. Customers tell us that when they've coded something and hire someone new, it can be very difficult to untangle and amend. With a no-code solution, a new hire can take it over and make amendments, and customers have been very positive about how easy it was to pick up.

Gerard Newman33:58

We'd actually encourage people to change their processes constantly. Improving them is iterative: get the process running, then look at how to make it more efficient. We have customers who continually improve their processes, and because it's easy, it encourages them to do more.

John Ross (AGC of America)34:23

Do you integrate with ERPs such as Penta and COINS?

Gerard Newman34:30

We have a wide range of integration capabilities. I'd need to look at those two applications, but we have generic interfaces such as REST APIs, which generally let us communicate with most standard applications in the construction sector.

John Ross (AGC of America)34:56

We have existing systems in place. Does your system integrate with them?

Gerard Newman35:02

Integration is something we're seeing more and more requirements for, and over the last 18 months we've extended the integration capabilities on our platform. The most generic is a series of REST APIs, and we're also looking at integration-platform services such as Tray.io, and newer entrants to the market like Agave.

John Ross (AGC of America)35:33

Thank you both for joining us. We really appreciate the information on digitization and how it can help contractors and specialty contractors save time and money and keep everything running smoothly. Thank you to everybody who joined us today, and have a great rest of your day.