Construction company prepares for ERP system with technology assessment

Client background

This company is a construction engineering contractor with 15 regional offices across the U.S. who specialize in designing and implementing building management technology systems.

The business challenge

The company was struggling with inefficient manual processes and was looking to update their current technology landscape to streamline processes while driving efficiency through a reduction in manual work. Additionally, the company’s processes had not been modernized in a way that capitalized on technical advances. There was minimal integration between systems, which often resulted in errors and rework. The general lack of tools to plan and organize work across the business led to inefficiencies and missed deadlines.

They engaged Baker Tilly’s digital team to assess their current state technology landscape and define requirements for a future state enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Strategy and solution

Baker Tilly’s digital team, in collaboration with industry support, conducted a current state assessment to develop a baseline understanding of the company’s current business processes, issues, gaps and pain points as well as potential opportunities for future growth across their various departments. These findings were summarized into three groups – people, process and technology – to present a summary of the most relevant perspectives from each team. As a result, the company was provided a list of prioritized improvement opportunities and potential gaps between their current state and desired future state.

Additionally, the current state findings highlighted an organizational culture of change pushback which displayed a team member preference for legacy ways of operating and a view of technology as a blocker rather than an enabler. This lack of understanding across the organization regarding the benefits and capabilities modern systems could support led to engaging in a change management assessment. For each of their departments, Baker Tilly produced a summary detailing the current state impacts on people, processes and technology, focusing on current systems in use, key activities, data utilized and key opportunities for improvement. This summary was prioritized based on how significant the impact would be on the company and informed our recommendations for their future state road map.

These assessments resulted in the company exploring options for an ERP system implementation. Baker Tilly then worked with the company to define system requirements for their future state vendor selection. This included evaluating and scoring potential system vendors to ultimately produce a future state implementation road map. With this assistance, the company can move forward on their digital transformation journey to drive efficiency across their organization by streamlining processes through a reduction in manual work.