CMiC Evans Chaffee’s search for a unified project management & accounting solution ends with CMiC.
The Challenge
Evans Chaffee Construction Group is a mid-size contractor in Colorado’s Vail Valley. It aims to win work that best fits the company, so its workload fluctuates as a result. In some years, the company completes $20 million in commercial and high-end residential projects; in other years, it completes up to $40 million. Although the workload may vary, Evans Chaffee always maintains its lean staff of approximately 15 employees. That means the company requires highly efficient processes in place to keep projects running smoothly, regardless of the amount of work getting delivered. Only the right technology makes this possible.
To keep projects running smoothly, Evans Chaffee tried a number of software platforms to streamline project management and accounting. However, every product was missing at least one critical component. Some lacked the tools necessary for efficient project management, while others were missing the capabilities required for accurate accounting—and none were able to support the back office and the field as one holistic operation. To make matters worse, most vendors contacted seemed uninterested in enhancing their products… or lacked the customer service and support required for a fully integrated deployment.
Furthermore, the platforms were unable to provide a way to manage billing efficiently—a ‘hard’ requirement for Evans Chaffee. The company completes a number of projects with guaranteed maximum price contracts, which require Evans Chaffee to include supporting information with every invoice sent to clients. The solutions evaluated did not handle this process efficiently, causing many employee hours to be wasted on managing the billing workflows. After a number of frustrating attempts to explore how to address these issues, Evans Chaffee tried CMiC.
Learn why Evans Chaffee chose CMiC for unified project management & accounting solutions.Download this Case StudyThe Solution
“I wanted to go fast with implementation, and CMiC wasn’t sure what to expect. I wanted them to keep up with me—and they did. Our lead implementation consultant [Aaron] was just outstanding. I now feel like I’m family with the support team. I’ve never met them, but out of all the software providers we’ve worked with, they made me feel truly supported and like we were in this together.” – Michele Evans, Vice President/CFO, Evans Chaffee Construction Group.
CMiC offers the full integration Evans Chaffee was seeking. The platform provides robust and unified project management and accounting capabilities— a combination Evans Chaffee could not find with any other solution. So Evans Chaffee fully committed to the CMiC platform, starting implementation in November of 2016 and going live just three months later.
CMiC also provides the billing capabilities Evans Chaffee needed. The platform allows Evans Chaffee to choose what invoices will go with each billing, along with the documentation needed. In addition, the system efficiently creates reports, which contain links to related documentation; the reports and supporting documents can be easily shared with clients.
To troubleshoot the CMiC system prior to going live, and to make sure employees were ready to take full advantage of the new capabilities, each team recreated an ongoing project in the platform. In addition to helping migrate Evans Chaffee’s operations to CMiC, this approach served as hands-on training to all users. When the time came to go live, all team members were already versed in how to use the CMiC platform, ensuring that each active project continued to run smoothly.
The Result
CMiC’s support group and Evans Chaffee team members collaborated to ensure a smooth implementation in a short, three-month timeframe. With the system now fully deployed and ‘live,’ Evans Chaffee believes that CMiC was the right solution to maintain its quality and efficiency despite its relatively lean staff, especially during years with peak workloads.
Other Results Evans Chaffee has Achieved with CMiC
- Less time wasted entering data manually and tracking down documentation because project management and billing capabilities are streamlined into one efficient and integrated platform.
- More money saved on overhead by outsourcing non-value added tasks. Evans Chaffee now uses an outside data entry firm to input invoice information, which allows it to keep the in-house accounting department lean, regardless of the workload.
- Increased confidence in accurate data entry due to customizable and automated options for oversight, which prevent mistakes from being made in the system.
- Improved risk management due to automated and comprehensive oversight of project management and accounting systems.