CMiC helps Bartlett Cocke reduce admin time by 62-93% while driving 30% revenue growth.
The Challenge
Founded in 1959, Bartlett-Cocke General Contractors (‘BCGC’) is one of the largest and most respected commercial contractors in Texas today. By the end of 2017, the company expects to reach $675 million in annual revenue. Headquartered in San Antonio, BCGC has about 600 employees and offices statewide, from Austin to Houston.
Originally, BCGC—which used Viewpoint for accounting and Constructware for project management—was searching for a best of breed project management solution to replace their Constructware software. However, after realizing the risks and redundancies of having data stored in disparate systems, they broadened their search to include fully unified solutions that optimize productivity, minimize risk and support scalable growth.
“What prompted the need for a switch was the amount of down time and rework required to manually reconcile the two systems monthly, especially from a financial standpoint, to ensure the budgets are balanced between our accounting and project management systems,” says Luis Berumen, Director of Construction Technologies at BCGC. After conducting an audit on this process, they discovered it took roughly three business days to compile, enter and balance the budgets between systems. “It was a fairly cumbersome process,” admits Berumen.
Learn why Bartlett Cocke chose CMiC to reduce admin time while driving revenue growth.Download this Case StudyThe Solution
“CMiC has laid the foundation for us to effectively use the data passing through our company on a daily basis. Business intelligence has been—and continues to be—a top priority for us. CMiC helps us leverage our data to make well-informed decisions at all levels of the company—from executive to project management.”
Bartlett-Cocke dedicated 18 months to search for a new ERP and project management software provider. During the due diligence process, the company involved team members from all departments and interviewed more than a dozen vendors. They evaluated—among others—Oracle, JD Edwards, Primavera, COIN and Computer Guidance Corporation (CGC), but were ‘sold’ on CMiC after participating in on-site visits with two CMiC customers, Power Construction and Shawmut Construction. “Once our officer group saw these larger construction companies—that have been on CMiC for a considerable amount of time—double or even triple their revenues after running their day-to-day on CMiC, it sealed the deal for us,” says Berumen.
The final test was pitting CMiC head-to-head against their vendor at the time: Viewpoint. BCGC determined that the winning solution must successfully fulfill three criteria: meet their implementation schedule; fit inside their budget; and enable their day-to-day workflows and tasks. CMiC met or exceeded all three criteria successfully. Based on the recommendations of a consultant, the firm determined that an integrated, construction-specific ERP system—like CMiC—is the key for automating data management to remove duplicative data entry and increase efficiency.
The Result
After a comprehensive 12-month implementation, Bartlett-Cocke went live with the CMiC system—and reported immediate results. Before CMiC, the cost analysis process used to take each project manager 24 hours per month. With CMiC, BDGC has compressed the time to only 4 hours per month, an 83% reduction. How? The BDGC team no longer wastes cycles reconciling data stored in two separate systems.
Similarly, before CMiC, invoice approval and processing for vendor and supplier payments (using paper checks) took, on average, 21 days. Today, the process is handled 100% digitally and takes only 8 days, a 62% time savings. The implementation of Kofax for automated routing and Docusign for digital signatures has allowed BCGC to eliminate paper checks and digitally sign subcontractor agreements, work authorization forms and change orders. As a result, the firm has been able to increase their revenue by 30% while maintaining the same level of staffing. Likewise, contracts, which used to take 14 days to execute, now only take one day, resulting in a 93% time savings and reducing administrative time to zero.
Reflecting on their decision to go with CMiC, Berumen is confident his firm “made the right decision.” Berumen added: “CMiC has laid the foundation for us to effectively use the data passing through our company on a daily basis. Business intelligence has been—and continues to be—a top priority for us. CMiC helps us leverage our data to make well-informed decisions at all levels of the company—from executive to project management.”
Other results Bartlett-Cocke has achieved with CMiC
- Implemented eTime, a CMiC tool for tracking labor productivity. The tool has allowed BCGC to eliminate paper-based recording, shrinking the time for each tracking cycle from 60 minutes in the field to 10 minutes digitally.
- Reduced the payroll administration cycle from four to two days.
- Increased confidence and security with 100% data accuracy by eliminating the risk of manually entering data multiple times.