Steep competition, unique client requirements, tight timelines, and even tighter budgets are escalating the challenges that architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms face in order to create business. Staying ahead of the curve often means concurrently working multiple project bids and finding ways to manage the uncertainty about which projects are funded — all while constantly identifying new revenue opportunities. And once that business is won, firms must be prepared to demonstrate that they share their client’s vision and can provide consistently high-quality services that align with the client’s goals and resources.

While the road to new business can be a rocky one, AEC firms are finding new ways to cost-effectively cultivate a differentiated approach to client development and service delivery. These innovators are relying on advanced technology solutions that automate and enhance client experiences, practice performance, knowledge management, and project delivery. By better surfacing opportunities, understanding client priorities, and creating a unified approach for connecting with clients, these firms are increasing the odds of achieving market growth and ongoing client referrals.

CRM processes and tools under one umbrella
One tool that improves insight into project prospecting and solidifies client relationships is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology. CRM tools can help firms apply the right information to projects, better distill information, and ensure timely responses to service demands. Those firms with departments or teams that independently adopted CRM and homegrown opportunity-tracking systems over the years to support their sales activities, may be seeing some costly issues. These firms are now faced with multiple, disconnected applications and disparate systems causing data silos that are hindering a coordinated, enterprise view of sales opportunities and client data.

This challenge was particularly relevant for Thomas Doerr, project delivery director in corporate marketing and communications at CH2M HILL. “We needed to bring our CRM processes and tools under one umbrella to provide the strategic coherence necessary to increase sales opportunities.”

CH2M HILL successfully replaced its legacy CRM solutions with Microsoft Dynamics CRM in order to improve opportunity evaluation and selection. The firm will also revise its approach to handling opportunities. “We’re integrating our business rules and configuring the solution to provide common metrics across the enterprise,” Doerr said. “We’ll be able to produce good sales forecasting from that data and provide dashboard views to help our business development staff track sales performance.”

Integrated CRM tools can deliver a “single source of truth” for all customer data and interactions combined under one user interface and data store. By integrating an advanced CRM application into Microsoft Office Outlook, firms can manage client and contact information in a secure, policy-compliant environment, which is especially important for firms with a mobile or distributed workforce. Another benefit of the familiar Outlook interface is that firms can centralize marketing and business development activities along with associated sales information. Team members can then add or track information in a concise and readily visible way. New team members can quickly become productive with the CRM tools, enabling them to communicate and collaborate with other team members while gaining valuable business insight.

Tracking government-funded opportunities
Public and private entities can further leverage CRM technology to better manage existing projects and seek emerging opportunities. For example, Microsoft’s Stimulus360 was developed to help federal, state, and local agencies quickly mobilize and track federal funding sources, facilitate downstream funding requests, and track allocated resources for funds set aside in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The Illinois Department of Transportation, for example, uses Stimulus360 to provide executives and project managers with a clear view of all current and proposed ARRA projects. It also delivers insight on jobs created from ARRA projects and money spent as compared with funds available.

The framework is easily transferable to the private sector to help AEC firms track government-funded programs. As a single-view platform, Stimulus360 includes geospatial features that link data and mapping capabilities, and automatically captures actions and events to facilitate quick, informed decisions and improve transparency. Dashboards pull together visual and real-time key performance indicators (KPIs) so firms can quickly see how much money has been allocated. They can use the tool to monitor progress with intuitive views of the data to support marketing and business objectives. The solution also supports government-required performance metrics, automated workflow, and comprehensive analysis across consolidated data sources.

Firm-wide collaboration
Regardless of the funding source, AEC firms need to produce quality deliverables quickly and cost-effectively once the new business opportunity is secured. Digitally engaging professionals can help improve communication and collaboration through the firm as well as with clients, business partners, contractors, and craft workers — regardless of physical location or geographic time zone. The right tools enable these teams to apply the right information to projects all while facilitating clear and timely responses to client service demands. And with flexible, adaptive workflows, firms can transform human interactions into best practices and then replicate those best practices consistently across the organization.

Project managers, for example, are increasingly turning to collaboration platforms to create a project portal site for each new project, streamlining and automating project setup based on the type of work performed. By using web parts, the project portal may integrate information including documents, e-mail, project designs, project milestones, and calendars. The portal can essentially turn a browser interface into a project desktop that extends and connects project and business environments, improves teamwork, and reduces time spent searching for project files.

HDR of Omaha, Neb., built an extensive intranet portal based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server that is clustered and load-balanced for high availability. The portal provides a secure, easy-to use collaboration environment to make the best use of HDR’s people, intellectual property, and client relationships across locations. Using the Enterprise Search capabilities of SharePoint, users can search the entire portal from a single interface. In addition, HDR will integrate its Bentley ProjectWise CAD collaboration system with the portal so that project teams can access the search, indexing, and workflow tools in SharePoint Server 2007 at the design and review stages.

Southern California-based Gafcon has improved project delivery and knowledge-sharing by seamlessly integrating its disparate systems to centralize the management of structured and unstructured data. With disparate systems including intranets, extranets, and industry-specific business solutions, Gafcon took its collaboration environment to the next level by making information from its enterprise project management software, Deltek, readily available enterprise-wide. According to company executives, the company wanted to take advantage of the enhanced business intelligence features of Office SharePoint Server 2007, to improve management of company resources, and provide better, more detailed reporting to clients.

SharePoint360 LLC, a technology consulting firm, helped Gafcon develop an integrated system and customize dashboards that display in Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites information from Deltek Vision. Using customizable web parts that include dynamic KPIs, firm executives can track everything from revenue, to division productivity, to profitability. With immediate insight into its business data, Gafcon is able to view and report on key information faster and more accurately — including billable hours and employee progress on client projects — resulting in an approximate 10 percent increase in revenue and a new line of business.

Creating an environment for improved performance
AEC firms must continually seek better ways to attract, secure, and manage complex projects with improved enterprise visibility. Whether at the RFP stage or final project delivery, firms must identify potential problems early and find resolution with minimal impact. Firms are establishing technology environments that standardize project structure and content, track those projects with effective change management practices, and establish a common forum for collaboration about tasks, issues, and risks.

For instance, Skanska USA Building uses Microsoft Office SharePoint Server as the standard entry point to the company’s business systems and a central resource to project documents. The portal hosts several Office Business Applications (OBAs), which build on the Microsoft Office system as a development platform to streamline access to data in line-of-business systems — ultimately helping users work more productively and have a greater impact on the business. Today, people across Skanska use OBAs to access and manage information — from executives who use graphical scorecards to monitor business performance to construction supervisors who use mobile tablet PCs to download blueprints and upload safety reports.

From collaboration platforms to CRM tools, online maps, and enterprise search capabilities, today’s digital technology is uniquely developed for AEC firms to create and improve business. Even in a challenging climate, the right tools can help firms surface new opportunities, deliver quality products more collaboratively and productively, deepen business and client relationships, share knowledge with unprecedented ease, and deliver profitable solutions with less risk.

Brian D. Zeve is managing director for Microsoft Corp.’s U.S. Professional Services Industry Group. He can be contacted at bzeve@microsoft.com.

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