Regardless of the size of your construction business, it’s important to give your customers an accurate and timely estimate. Therefore, it’s crucial for your business to have construction estimating software so that you can get the expected outcome. 

But you need to find the right software that addresses your needs, solves the problems, and help you make more money. In other words, the software needs to be flexible for your construction business. This page discusses the key factors to consider before buying construction estimating software.

Ease of use

Ease of use is the obvious factor you need to consider before buying a construction estimating software. It’s a good idea to think about your employees, especially those who are not tech-savvy. Remember that if your salesperson finds it hard to use the software, then they will likely not utilize it.

A good sign of ease of use of a new software is the implementation time. All time you spend implementing the software and training your staff is an opportunity cost. So the longer it takes to implement the software, then there will be a greater adoption risk.

You can find some software that may take months to implement, but these systems can give you a whole lot of problems. The rule of the thumb is that a system that needs an outside IT expert to help you with technical specs may not be the best software to use. 

Another good way to determine usability is to check the level of support the system provides. Quite often, when you have to pay to get support, it means the software is perhaps complicated. 

If you can easily contact the customer support for the system through email, phone, and many more and it’s free, you can be sure that the company has trust in its product. Such companies know that the software is usable, so their support may rarely be needed. 

For many sales personnel, usability plays a critical role in adoption of new technology. Therefore, if it’s hard to use, they can easily lose interest in using or learning it. 

Increased efficiency

No doubt, when you buy construction estimating software, you want to improve efficiency. Some of the most key aspects of efficiency you want to see include collaboration features, document storage, and many more.

When making proposals and a sale, it’s important to have document storage to turn around accuracy and time. If you have a client who wants a quote, you want to avoid searching for pricing documents, proposal templates, or material lists. With an estimating software, you can stop the chase because the system has a document library. It’s easy to organize, maintain, and update this library, and you can access it by simply tapping a button. 

Your team members also need to effectively collaborate with one another. The software should allow you access to the document library and its way of storage should improve collaboration. In this way, the team members can coordinate changes, view updates, and many more to remove overlap of work and improve communication.

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