Just What The Buyer Wants
Stanbrooke Custom Homes uses just the technology it needs to beat the market downturn.
Custom builders face the same risks in the economic arena as developers, but have one advantage: reduced exposure to land price fluctuation. Considering land as inventory, builders also avoid tying up resources—meaning: capital in large investments.
Stanbrooke Custom Homes, www.stanbrooke.com, Fife, Wash., is a scattered lot custom homebuilder that takes pride in building specifically what the homeowner wants. While the company has a number of stock home plans that can be customized in any way the customer chooses, it also designs and builds complete custom homes. Throughout the past six years, Stanbrooke has grown exponentially, but the company has felt the current slowdown similar to other residential builders.
Even so, it expects to complete 100 homes in 2008, the same average “two-a-week” rate it experienced in 2007 and before. Its roughly 20 employees are kept busy and that is a good sign; some of them are doing things differently, mostly by using more advanced technology. And that is an even better sign for the future.
The Right Pieces
Like many small companies, Stanbrooke started out using a traditional computer accounting and business program, QuickBooks from Intuit, http://quickbooks.intuit.com/, Mountain View, Calif. But as companies mature and succeed, they tend to outgrow basic programs and start to look for specific, industry-related technology. Stanbrooke falls into this category, seeking applications that offer more long-term potential.
Bill Piltz, purchasing manager, Stanbrooke, says, “In order to keep up with the growth of the company we started by purchasing Sage Master Builder Accounting with the expectation that we could use a sync program to interface with HeadsUp project management software.”
This was to allow Stanbrooke to reduce the amount of time superintendents spent managing schedules and invoices, and enable the purchasing department to expedite the flow of POs (purchase orders). Piltz adds, “Currently we use HeadsUp Project Management, Master Builder Accounting, and are in the process of implementing Timberline Estimating and Buyout.”
Master Builder, www.sagemasterbuilder.com, from Sage Software, Beaverton, Ore., is a full-featured integrated construction management and accounting package that, coincidently, was purchased by Sage from Intuit. Timberline Office, www.sagetimberlineoffice.com, also from Sage Software, is one of the best known software packages in the construction field.
Unlike the Sage applications, which can reside on a server or desktop computer at the office, HeadsUp project management from HeadsUp Technologies, www.headsuptech.com, Overland Park, Kan., is Web-based and can be accessed from any computer anywhere. Because HeadsUp is a centralized hosted application, it doesn’t run on the desktop computer but instead the software runs on a central server accessed via the Web.
According to Scott Smelser, vice president and COO (chief operating officer), Stanbrooke, “At first, we found HeadsUp pretty inefficient. Not from the software’s standpoint—I think the software was fine—it was just that the application took some time to get used to internally. But now that it is fully implemented, I have to say that it has probably cut our hours in production by 60-70%.” Now having used the technology, Smelser admits, he is very pleased with HeadsUp application.
What Stanbrooke did initially was to use a small range of the capabilities available in the application. Smelser admits, “At first, we used just the scheduling piece. Today, we use pretty much every tool that comes with it. We have one person who spends between 30-60 minutes a day, and about a half day on Friday with the software—about one day a week total—as opposed to what was a five day a week job for one person before. That’s dramatic. And our scheduling itself—I can’t even begin to tell you how much more efficient it is.”
And there are residual effects, too. “We’ve been able to redirect the activities of that person to build greater efficiencies in other areas by cleaning up our estimating and building vendor relations, and we’ve seen dramatic improvement in those areas as well.”
Piltz says the company uses HeadsUp at all levels of the company, adding, “The Web-based software allows us to store all project-related documents and scheduling in one spot, giving the trade contractors and Stanbrooke employees the ability to access them from any computer. The PO tracking functionality has been particularly advantageous to me.”
Every builder is looking for ways to achieve greater efficiencies in terms of build times. Quantifying the benefits, Smelser says, “For example, from the time we implemented HeadsUp until today, we have decreased our construction times by 45 days a home. Our software pieces have had a dramatic impact on those efficiencies.”
When you realize what saving a month and a half means in this industry, you get an idea of how much that has helped Stanbrooke.
One aspect of the new technologies is the way each aids in communication. As Tom Cross, CEO, Stanbrooke, points out, “What’s important about the technologies that we’ve chosen is that they’re Web-based and really a tool for us to communicate with our suppliers and a tool for them to communicate with us. It really facilitates the whole process.”
There is another application of Web technology that Stanbrooke is exploring. Cross comments, “We’re a custom home builder, so when we’re building a house we’re building it for a customer and they’re acutely interested in the schedule as well. So we will be putting in place a customer facing piece to this in the future.”
An Integrated Focus
Bringing integration to a diverse selection of applications can be frustrating, even when several programs are from the same parent company—Sage, in this case. But that hasn’t stopped Stanbrooke from going forward.
Piltz says around mid-2007 the company became aware of Sage Timberline Estimating and Buyout and the interface with Master Builder.
Sage Timberline Office Buyout allows companies working within Estimating to transform detailed estimates into RFQs (request for quotes) and purchase orders. According to Sage, this allows companies to take advantage of material items in estimates, to solicit prices from potential suppliers and subcontractors, issue purchase orders, and automatically transfer the commitments to job cost, purchasing, and inventory applications.
“We were attracted to its ability to build assembly takeoffs and estimates for specific base plans. Our goal with this is to interface with Master Builder and sync our estimates so that we can create all job POs from the estimate in one shot,” says Piltz.
The synchronization of purchase orders to HeadsUp has saved the company a tremendous amount of time. “We can send out as many purchase orders as we would like with just the click of a button, track their receipt, and require acceptance by the vendor/contractor,” explains Piltz.
As a side benefit, superintendents spend less time scheduling and approving invoices, allowing them to focus more of their time on producing a top-quality product. The result: Happy homeowners, which contributes to the growth of the company.
The interface of Timberline will allow Stanbrooke to reduce the time spent estimating and purchasing projects by 70%, according to Piltz. Accuracy will also be improved, allowing them to spend more resources exploring the new product offerings and expanding market share. Once Stanbrooke has Timberline fully operational, creating purchase orders should be as easy as clicking a couple of buttons.
On the fully custom side of Stanbrooke, Timberline Estimating will work with software from On Center Software, www.oncenter.com, The Woodlands, Texas, which allows estimators to use a digitizer to do takeoffs directly from CAD (computer-aided design) drawings. This will give Stanbrooke the ability to pull takeoff quantities directly into estimates.
Sufficient Support
Two issues common to many contractors these days are staffing and communications with the field. Currently Stanbrooke superintendents use their cell phone PDAs (personal digital assistants) to access HeadsUp. HeadsUp has a condensed version of the software that allows superintendents to login, update schedules, and view resources for their projects as well as approve the delivery of purchase orders.
“One of the benefits that we see from using the PDAs is that it allows superintendents to access the resource lists for their projects,” notes Piltz. “It also allows them to update the schedule as they go to the different projects they have and check off any deliveries so they can approve purchase orders.”
Stanbrooke is a relatively small company and doesn’t have a formal IT (information technology) department. Thus it is even more critical that the software used is both flexible and easy to maintain, as well as has excellent vendor support.
“We currently rely on the support provided by the software developers and purchased local consulting services,” Piltz says. “When considering an IT person you must take into account the amount of field, office, and computer experience that person brings to the table. It is important to have IT resources that have industry experience, so that they can better partner with the operations group in bringing the best solutions to the table.”
The integration of software is almost never quick and easy. Piltz recommends a company do extensive research about any software before purchasing. “There (is) usually a lot of setup involved, and that includes support, training, and, of course, consultants. Our experience with the software we have chosen has been positive in terms of vendor support.”
Implementation involves not only the application, but typically operational changes so the benefits can be achieved. This is usually an internal effort.
Industry-wide, the talk is about a slowing economy, and that can be a significant hazard for a small company. As a result, some things need to take a backseat to preserve resources; others need to be sped up in order to gain their benefits quickly. Sometimes, technology fits into both categories.
While Stanbrooke is fast-forwarding Timberline and other implementations, it is doing more research on some “bells and whistles” that have been discussed. “While our technology plate is relatively full at the moment,” Piltz comments, “this year we will be exploring the use of Webcams at our (jobsites) and a scheduling interface to give our buyers information about their projects.”
Despite what some technology vendors might infer, computers and their applications are still “just tools.” Not every problem can be solved by implementing another technology program.
Smelser says, “We feel really comfortable with our business model and while we certainly have been affected along with everyone else (by the downturn), we have not seen the dramatic impact that a lot of the builders have seen. Part of it’s been our internal efficiencies in terms of how we use technology to do business, but a lot of it is just based on our business model.
“We don’t overextend ourselves, we don’t carry a lot of high-priced inventory, we don’t carry a lot of high-priced land, and we didn’t jump on the bandwagon with everyone else and buy badly hoping we’d recoup it. We tend to be pretty judicious when it comes to those kinds of things. We really want to focus mostly on doing what we do and do it really well and build efficiencies within our core business model.”
Custom builders face the same risks in the economic arena as developers, but have one advantage: reduced exposure to land price fluctuation. Considering land as inventory, builders also avoid tying up resources—meaning: capital in large investments.
Stanbrooke Custom Homes, www.stanbrooke.com, Fife, Wash., is a scattered lot custom homebuilder that takes pride in building specifically what the homeowner wants. While the company has a number of stock home plans that can be customized in any way the customer chooses, it also designs and builds complete custom homes. Throughout the past six years, Stanbrooke has grown exponentially, but the company has felt the current slowdown similar to other residential builders.
Even so, it expects to complete 100 homes in 2008, the same average “two-a-week” rate it experienced in 2007 and before. Its roughly 20 employees are kept busy and that is a good sign; some of them are doing things differently, mostly by using more advanced technology. And that is an even better sign for the future.
The Right Pieces
Like many small companies, Stanbrooke started out using a traditional computer accounting and business program, QuickBooks from Intuit, http://quickbooks.intuit.com/, Mountain View, Calif. But as companies mature and succeed, they tend to outgrow basic programs and start to look for specific, industry-related technology. Stanbrooke falls into this category, seeking applications that offer more long-term potential.
Bill Piltz, purchasing manager, Stanbrooke, says, “In order to keep up with the growth of the company we started by purchasing Sage Master Builder Accounting with the expectation that we could use a sync program to interface with HeadsUp project management software.”
This was to allow Stanbrooke to reduce the amount of time superintendents spent managing schedules and invoices, and enable the purchasing department to expedite the flow of POs (purchase orders). Piltz adds, “Currently we use HeadsUp Project Management, Master Builder Accounting, and are in the process of implementing Timberline Estimating and Buyout.”
Master Builder, www.sagemasterbuilder.com, from Sage Software, Beaverton, Ore., is a full-featured integrated construction management and accounting package that, coincidently, was purchased by Sage from Intuit. Timberline Office, www.sagetimberlineoffice.com, also from Sage Software, is one of the best known software packages in the construction field.
Unlike the Sage applications, which can reside on a server or desktop computer at the office, HeadsUp project management from HeadsUp Technologies, www.headsuptech.com, Overland Park, Kan., is Web-based and can be accessed from any computer anywhere. Because HeadsUp is a centralized hosted application, it doesn’t run on the desktop computer but instead the software runs on a central server accessed via the Web.
According to Scott Smelser, vice president and COO (chief operating officer), Stanbrooke, “At first, we found HeadsUp pretty inefficient. Not from the software’s standpoint—I think the software was fine—it was just that the application took some time to get used to internally. But now that it is fully implemented, I have to say that it has probably cut our hours in production by 60-70%.” Now having used the technology, Smelser admits, he is very pleased with HeadsUp application.
What Stanbrooke did initially was to use a small range of the capabilities available in the application. Smelser admits, “At first, we used just the scheduling piece. Today, we use pretty much every tool that comes with it. We have one person who spends between 30-60 minutes a day, and about a half day on Friday with the software—about one day a week total—as opposed to what was a five day a week job for one person before. That’s dramatic. And our scheduling itself—I can’t even begin to tell you how much more efficient it is.”
And there are residual effects, too. “We’ve been able to redirect the activities of that person to build greater efficiencies in other areas by cleaning up our estimating and building vendor relations, and we’ve seen dramatic improvement in those areas as well.”
Piltz says the company uses HeadsUp at all levels of the company, adding, “The Web-based software allows us to store all project-related documents and scheduling in one spot, giving the trade contractors and Stanbrooke employees the ability to access them from any computer. The PO tracking functionality has been particularly advantageous to me.”
Every builder is looking for ways to achieve greater efficiencies in terms of build times. Quantifying the benefits, Smelser says, “For example, from the time we implemented HeadsUp until today, we have decreased our construction times by 45 days a home. Our software pieces have had a dramatic impact on those efficiencies.”
When you realize what saving a month and a half means in this industry, you get an idea of how much that has helped Stanbrooke.
One aspect of the new technologies is the way each aids in communication. As Tom Cross, CEO, Stanbrooke, points out, “What’s important about the technologies that we’ve chosen is that they’re Web-based and really a tool for us to communicate with our suppliers and a tool for them to communicate with us. It really facilitates the whole process.”
There is another application of Web technology that Stanbrooke is exploring. Cross comments, “We’re a custom home builder, so when we’re building a house we’re building it for a customer and they’re acutely interested in the schedule as well. So we will be putting in place a customer facing piece to this in the future.”
An Integrated Focus
Bringing integration to a diverse selection of applications can be frustrating, even when several programs are from the same parent company—Sage, in this case. But that hasn’t stopped Stanbrooke from going forward.
Piltz says around mid-2007 the company became aware of Sage Timberline Estimating and Buyout and the interface with Master Builder.
Sage Timberline Office Buyout allows companies working within Estimating to transform detailed estimates into RFQs (request for quotes) and purchase orders. According to Sage, this allows companies to take advantage of material items in estimates, to solicit prices from potential suppliers and subcontractors, issue purchase orders, and automatically transfer the commitments to job cost, purchasing, and inventory applications.
“We were attracted to its ability to build assembly takeoffs and estimates for specific base plans. Our goal with this is to interface with Master Builder and sync our estimates so that we can create all job POs from the estimate in one shot,” says Piltz.
The synchronization of purchase orders to HeadsUp has saved the company a tremendous amount of time. “We can send out as many purchase orders as we would like with just the click of a button, track their receipt, and require acceptance by the vendor/contractor,” explains Piltz.
As a side benefit, superintendents spend less time scheduling and approving invoices, allowing them to focus more of their time on producing a top-quality product. The result: Happy homeowners, which contributes to the growth of the company.
The interface of Timberline will allow Stanbrooke to reduce the time spent estimating and purchasing projects by 70%, according to Piltz. Accuracy will also be improved, allowing them to spend more resources exploring the new product offerings and expanding market share. Once Stanbrooke has Timberline fully operational, creating purchase orders should be as easy as clicking a couple of buttons.
On the fully custom side of Stanbrooke, Timberline Estimating will work with software from On Center Software, www.oncenter.com, The Woodlands, Texas, which allows estimators to use a digitizer to do takeoffs directly from CAD (computer-aided design) drawings. This will give Stanbrooke the ability to pull takeoff quantities directly into estimates.
Sufficient Support
Two issues common to many contractors these days are staffing and communications with the field. Currently Stanbrooke superintendents use their cell phone PDAs (personal digital assistants) to access HeadsUp. HeadsUp has a condensed version of the software that allows superintendents to login, update schedules, and view resources for their projects as well as approve the delivery of purchase orders.
“One of the benefits that we see from using the PDAs is that it allows superintendents to access the resource lists for their projects,” notes Piltz. “It also allows them to update the schedule as they go to the different projects they have and check off any deliveries so they can approve purchase orders.”
Stanbrooke is a relatively small company and doesn’t have a formal IT (information technology) department. Thus it is even more critical that the software used is both flexible and easy to maintain, as well as has excellent vendor support.
“We currently rely on the support provided by the software developers and purchased local consulting services,” Piltz says. “When considering an IT person you must take into account the amount of field, office, and computer experience that person brings to the table. It is important to have IT resources that have industry experience, so that they can better partner with the operations group in bringing the best solutions to the table.”
The integration of software is almost never quick and easy. Piltz recommends a company do extensive research about any software before purchasing. “There (is) usually a lot of setup involved, and that includes support, training, and, of course, consultants. Our experience with the software we have chosen has been positive in terms of vendor support.”
Implementation involves not only the application, but typically operational changes so the benefits can be achieved. This is usually an internal effort.
Industry-wide, the talk is about a slowing economy, and that can be a significant hazard for a small company. As a result, some things need to take a backseat to preserve resources; others need to be sped up in order to gain their benefits quickly. Sometimes, technology fits into both categories.
While Stanbrooke is fast-forwarding Timberline and other implementations, it is doing more research on some “bells and whistles” that have been discussed. “While our technology plate is relatively full at the moment,” Piltz comments, “this year we will be exploring the use of Webcams at our (jobsites) and a scheduling interface to give our buyers information about their projects.”
Despite what some technology vendors might infer, computers and their applications are still “just tools.” Not every problem can be solved by implementing another technology program.
Smelser says, “We feel really comfortable with our business model and while we certainly have been affected along with everyone else (by the downturn), we have not seen the dramatic impact that a lot of the builders have seen. Part of it’s been our internal efficiencies in terms of how we use technology to do business, but a lot of it is just based on our business model.
“We don’t overextend ourselves, we don’t carry a lot of high-priced inventory, we don’t carry a lot of high-priced land, and we didn’t jump on the bandwagon with everyone else and buy badly hoping we’d recoup it. We tend to be pretty judicious when it comes to those kinds of things. We really want to focus mostly on doing what we do and do it really well and build efficiencies within our core business model.”
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