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Case Study: AGI General Contracting Optimizes Forecasting improving Business Performance

CMiC helps AGI General Contracting optimize forecasting and takes its business to an unprecedented level of performance

The Challenge

Founded in 1978 in Stanton, California, AGI General Contracting is a full-service general contractor specializing in commercial construction for the area’s leading businesses. Currently owned and managed by the founding family’s second generation, AGI continues to deliver on its founder’s vision of quality workmanship at a fair price and always delivered on schedule. Today, their list of notable projects includes the headquarters of Home Savings of America and the structurally complex rides at the Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park, a project that was fast-tracked to completion while the park remained open.

Despite these successes, AGI knew that their legacy system, eCMS, was holding them back from delivering record ground-up completion times on every project. “It wasn’t a scalable technology that could take us to the next level,” said Andrew Gautreau, Vice President at AGI. “It was difficult to collaborate because it was creating silos departmentally and interdepartmentally.” Other pain points included a lack of mobile capabilities and a dashboard with limited customizations. In addition, AGI was looking to switch to a hosted service from a Software-as-a Service (SaaS) platform. After investing 7 years and upwards of $250K into their legacy system, Gautreau decided that it was “now or never” to make the switch, or else continue losing more time and money.

The Solution

“If you think implementing a new software is as easy as ‘plugging and playing,’ it’s going to be very challenging. CMiC is an investment, and to understand it as such has allowed us to realize that any challenges are part of the process towards becoming better. CMiC can be whatever you want it to be, and those possibilities are truly exciting.” – Andrew Gautreau, Vice President at AGI General Contracting

Gautreau and his brothers, Chris and Richard—President and Vice President, respectively—made it their top priority to find a system that would “last until the end of their tenure at the company and serve their next generation.” They consulted industry sources, such as ENR (Engineering News Record) for top software reviews and sought the recommendations of other general contractors in the area. Although their individual answers varied, the conclusions were the same: the key to effective collaboration is having a system, built on a single database platform, that captures and organizes data across the enterprise. More importantly, the data must be available in real time.

Although AGI considered “virtually everything on the market,” only fully integrated software solutions made their shortlist. This requirement significantly narrowed their options down to two: CMiC and Viewpoint. The Gautreaus concluded that Viewpoint’s system felt “quilted together” compared to CMiC’s highly scalable single platform. The comprehensive functionality of CMiC—which includes CRM, resource planning, financials and project management & controls—seamlessly unifies all aspects of a firm’s business operations. In addition, CMiC offered the remote capabilities AGI was looking for with a fully developed mobile suite and customizable dashboards that can be accessed anywhere via a web browser.

The Result

With CMiC’s single database platform, AGI is now “functioning at a higher level than ever before.” “We optimized our forecasting and we know our numbers better,” remarked Gautreau. As a result, AGI has improved their accounting to be more efficient—with 20% less staff. By eliminating duplicative data entry on each update or change order, AGI has drastically reduced manual processing. Particularly during their AP invoicing process, they no longer split their vendors across two accountants. Now, with CMiC’s Workflow and Imaging, AGI has reduced their accounting team from five down to one.

On the project management side, AGI has built and customized their CMiC dashboard to highlight all the artifacts that they consider essential—RFIs, submittals, change orders, bills, invoices and compliance documents. The customization included deploying a new widget on their dashboard that assists with AP invoicing. Future enhancements of the dashboard include functionality for opportunity management, HCM and deploying the highly anticipated CMiC Business Intelligence tool.

Reflecting on their decision to go with CMiC, AGI is not shy about sharing their admiration of the software with others, despite having dealt with a few issues and frustrations. “If you think implementing a new system is as easy as ‘plugging and playing,’ it’s going to be very challenging. CMiC is an investment, and to understand it as such has allowed us to realize that any challenges are part of the process towards becoming better. CMiC can be whatever you want it to be, and those possibilities are truly exciting,” reflects Gautreau.

Similarly, the quality relationships with the CMiC team and the support of CMiC’s user group community—CMUG—continues to impress AGI. “At the end of the day, we’re in construction—not technology. There’s an entire community built around CMiC, and there’s comfort in knowing that both the software—and the people behind it—will meet needs we don’t even know that we have yet.”

Other Results AGI General Contracting Has Achieved with CMiC

  • Eliminating paper processes for invoices by enabling integrations with eTime and DocuSign.

  • Collecting and analyzing metrics from their CMiC dashboards to track and manage growth.

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