Benefits of Integrating Your Construction Business Applications

Today's construction organizations rely heavily on enterprise software applications. In most cases, those software applications are created by different vendors and built with different technologies and standards. Because of this, many organizations find themselves with massive amounts of data siloed in complex applications that require departments to have disjointed access to their data. The technical response to this problem is to integrate.

Integrations allow organizations to leverage their existing people, processes, and applications to create a unified overall solution. Well-thought-out integrations bridge the gap between multiple business functions and provide several benefits. 

Improved Data Accessibility

Integrations allow people easier access to critical, up-to-date, and reliable information. By connecting multiple systems together, you are able to share appropriate data between applications and provide users with more accurate and timely information. Integrations reduce communication delays and help your organization run more efficiently and with far less human error. 

For example, integration between ProjectTeam.com and Sage 300 CRE keeps unwanted users out of the accounting software while still allowing important financial data to be surfaced in the project management application. It also reduces the need for double-entry as information is approved in ProjectTeam.com and can pass to Sage 300 CRE automatically.

Better Communication

When construction organizations integrate their business solutions, they see streamlined communication between team members from different functions. As a result, organizations can easily share more information that was previously difficult, costly, and resource-intensive to access. 

For example, integration between ProjectTeam.com and Salesforce CRM allows new business and contact information to automatically update in either system. When a new contract is created referencing contacts from a certain business, that contact's information can sync to the contact in Salesforce which allows your business development team a way to track interactions and new opportunities ultimately leading to more wins.

Improve Productivity

One of the biggest reasons organizations want to create integrations is to eliminate the need to duplicate data from one place to another and wait for information to be received from other departments. Integrations allow you to map data fields between applications and make rules about how often you want the information to sync. By letting the applications sync data, you eliminate the need for duplicate human entered data. 

For example, integration between ProjectTeam.com and a document repository such as SharePoint lets users upload documents in one spot and pass information to the other system. This lets users in either solution view, download, and markup the information without having to log into both systems and upload twice.

Considering these benefits and many more, making a plan for the integration of your business applications is a worthwhile task. Integrations are not just about merging two systems, but also about figuring out new and more efficient ways to help your organization function to its fullest potential.