Time, Accuracy, and Profits: What they have in common.
We spoke with more than 50 flooring contractor owners and found that for the same project, time is evaluated differently between Estimators and Project Managers. For Estimators, time is critical, but inaccurate data is a victim to speed that can prove costly. For Project Managers, accuracy is critical, but deadlines are often missed along with late payments.
Unavoidable Facts:
Estimators must validate a finish schedule prior to their take-off/bid. All bids have a deadline.
We reviewed over 300 flooring finish schedules and found a 30%-60% product data error rate.
Project Managers must validate the estimator’s work prior to submittals/closeouts. All submittals have a deadline.
Over 100 flooring finish schedules were evaluated after they were bid and over 10% of product data errors remained.
Mistakes are inevitable when repetitive manual data entry is performed by humans. Mistakes increase by 2.5X under stress.
Source: A restated study in an article by Lifetime Reliability Solutions.
The Test:
To help prove that time and accuracy do not have to be mutually exclusive among a company’s project team, we asked a customer to provide us with a floor finish schedule from one of their national accounts with multiple projects throughout the United States. There are 31 flooring products for each project. For each project, the estimator has to manually enter the product data into their takeoff software, and the Project Manager has to manually remake their submittal and closeout documents, order samples, and create handmade product labels. They needed a better process.
Test Results:
With the Spec-ID platform, we validated the finish schedule, provided by the architect through the GC, and found over 54.8% errors in the product data. Here are the processes we measured, by time, using the Spec-ID platform:
Create a sharable cloud-based, digital project folder.
Validate the data, correct the data, import the corrected product data into the project folder.
Create/edit custom and new products.
Auto-import all product technical documents.
Download the Spec-ID product data formatted for import to estimating software.
Share the new Spec-ID project folder, which is now 100% accurate, with the team from a cloud-based platform.
Automatically order samples, create branded product labels and create branded submittal/closeout packages.
Create a duplicate project data file for the next national account project from the Spec-ID platform - now 100% accurate.
Compare Your Times Against The Data:
THE BOTTOM LINE
So how do you and your team stack up to the competition? Increasingly, flooring contractors need to leverage automation to stay competitive: over 30% of FUSE™ and Starnet™ flooring contractors use Spec-ID software to automate their daily work, and almost all flooring contractors are taking steps to automate some of their work.
In a recent article by Smartsheet™, they concluded, “While perceived benefits (of automation) are primarily around increased productivity and reduced human error, 40 percent of workers surveyed say that automation will help their company be more competitive.”
TAKE THE CHALLENGE!
The only competitor to Spec-ID is your current manual process. Take the Spec-ID challenge. Send us a copy of your original flooring finish schedule and identify any ten products. Tell us how long it took your Estimator to validate those products and enter them into their software. Then tell us how much time your PM spent compiling the associated technical documents, ordering samples, creating product labels, and producing a closeout or submittal package. We’ll send you the number of errors we corrected and the time it took for Spec-ID to do the same. We’ll also send you a digital product file formatted to your take-off software.
“For a company of our size its very important to streamline repetitive tasks such as submittals. Spec-ID’s product allows us to do that and then some. The financial outlay has been well worth the cost and we look forward to the additional features they roll out.”
- Matt Bode, Vice President, CB Flooring
Not up for the challenge but want to learn more?
Schedule a brief call here, it may be the best time you’ve ever spent.
