Philip Collard describes how a digital collaboration platform can improve efficiency when bidding for work by 20%.
The evolution of digital collaboration is happening, right now!
How do I know, and more importantly, how is this going to affect us? Well, over the last two years, we have been working hard to develop a digital collaboration platform for construction industry work-winning teams.
From inception to completion, our mantra was Steve Jobs’ vision that “it is not about having great technology, and looking for places to use it”, but a need for technology to deliver “an intimate connection with the feelings of the user”.
We believe that with this mentality, the industry can stop being blinded by the unknown concept of digitisation, and instead embrace it to enhance our everyday successes.
For the past 25 years, I have worked closely with hundreds of work-winning professionals, while working for a wide range of contractors and consultancies. We witness every user perspective, and need: from estimators, to bid managers, planners, design managers, divisional directors, right up to board level and executive directors. We listen, diagnose and provide solutions to the everyday hurdles which hold everyone back.
So, my mission was to design a digital collaboration platform that instantly empowers every type of work-winning user. To deliver a solution to the misread, misinformed, unrecorded information in driving business growth. What we have come up with is myConsole.
We provide everyone with their own individual workplace dashboard, unique and specific for construction industry work-winning teams. They can access and use a wide set of collaboration tools, as an integrated part of their working day. They can visualise and plan their team approach to securing, and delivering, excellence.
Construction businesses spend, on average, 3% to 8% of their turnover on tendering and work winning. We estimate myConsole will increase efficiency and reduce workloads for bidding teams by 20%.
CRM and Excel Spreadsheets do not provide enough. BIM has the potential to unlock the future, but does it start early enough in the procurement process? Steve Jobs recognised that delivering excellence through technology was first about understanding the feelings and motivations of the user, and this is the gap that myConsole aims to provide in the construction industry.
Work-winning approaches and activities can be seamlessly delivered via a cloud platform. We can automatically provide real-time data insights, in a dynamic collaborative efficient and effective client-centric way. But it needs individuals willing to embrace change, to truly realise the potential of making this leap.
I’m delighted to report that we’ve found several leading businesses looking to do that: Scott Brownrigg, Baxall Construction, Focus Building and Ambivent are now using myConsole. This group reflects how myConsole can be used across the whole industry. It includes a small and a medium-sized contractor, a major international architect and an innovative subcontractor.
Malcolm Clarke, managing director of Baxall, highlights how myConsole will deliver results for his business: “We are already performing very well in pre-construction, but want to get better. We want to know where to focus our resources, we want to make decisions more quickly, and we want to reduce the cost of each tender. We are excited to have signed with myConsole and think they can help with all of this.”
Michael Olliff, managing director of Scott Brownrigg, expects strong results from myConsole. “Scott Brownrigg is very effective at securing architectural work through relationships, particularly in the private sector where less formal processes are required.
“We are less successful in bidding in the public sector and want to significantly improve our win rate. We are delighted to have selected myConsole as a partner to assist us in using data to improve our decision-making processes and to help us raise the quality of our submissions, ultimately achieving a one-in-three win rate.”
With this cloud-based solution data input happens only once and there is seamless communication across the business. myConsole also offers prompts and checks to deliver a more client-centric approach – a proven way to win more business.
Philip Collard is managing director of MarketingWorks. To find out more about myConsole contact [email protected]
