Study on the adoption of Collaboration Technology by Australian Construction now closed

With 285 respondents surveyed across property, construction and engineering, our recent market research project, designed to investigate the use of collaboration technologies and project extranets by the Australian construction industry, has now closed and the full report will be published soon.

The study, conducted on behalf of John Lowry from Expert Eye, aims to provide a representative, quantifiable measure of the various benefits identified by people with firsthand experience of using collaboration tools on live projects, thus providing the first set of objective statistics and figures from an Australian perspective and a means to benchmarking against similar studies from other countries such as the UK Research Project, “Proving Collaboration Pays” undertaken by the NCCTP in 2006.

The results will form the basis of the paper which will be delivered by Lowry at the CRC for Construction Innovation 3rd international conference in Queensland in March.

While the offical study has closed we would still like to get your feedback on your experience of using project extranets or collaboration platforms. Please feel free to leave a comment or email us directly.

Selecting the right ERP software

Selecting and implementing a new software system can be quite overwhelming, what with the number of vendors vying for your dollars and the varying complexity of solutions on the market. The Technology Evaluation Center (TEC) has recently published an interesting Guide to selecting Process ERP Software. This guide examines why over 50 percent of implementations fail to meet functional and total cost expectations, and how these issues can be addressed.

In summary, TEC have found that project teams run into trouble for three main reasons:

• They have no effective way of identifying the critical vendor and product questions necessary to successfully initiate the evaluation process.
• Once identified, they generally do not prioritise the different criteria. As a result, final priorities are often the result of internal politics and not true needs and requirements.
• It is common for Vendors to exaggerate their capabilities, product and service if it enables them to move to the next phase of the deal. Project teams often do not have the ability to gather objective, validated, updated data on different vendor alternatives.

TEC advise organisations to create a structured, repeatable process for evaluating technology solutions and the vendors that provide them. Best practices drawn from TEC’s clients that have completed internal technology selections suggest that project teams examine five key categories of criteria, which investigate product-specific capabilities and the vendor's overall capabilities.

1. Product Functionality
As the primary stage in ERP software selections, this phase assesses the features and functions delivered by the product as it currently exists - i.e. what capabilities are available out of the box. Other criteria, such as service and support, corporate viability, and strategy, also contribute to software selection.

2. Product Technology
This phase defines the technical architecture of the product and the technological environment in which the product can run successfully. Sub-criteria might include application architecture, software usability, administration, platform and database support, application tools, workflow and document management, and reporting capabilities.

3. Corporate Service and Support
This set of criteria defines the capability of the vendor to provide implementation services and ongoing support. TEC have found that many industry surveys have identified this category as the single largest differentiating factor among potential selection options, as well as the greatest indicator of user implementation success and long-term vendor viability. Components of service and support might include consulting, systems integration, project management skills, geographic coverage and time coverage of the vendor help desk.

4. Corporate Viability
Crucial yet often overlooked, this category examines the financial and management strength of the vendor.

5. Corporate Strategy
The most strategic and long-term set of evaluation criteria, this phase evaluates the corporate road map and strategy of the software vendor with regards to specific timelines of how the product will be developed, sold, and supported within the process ERP software market.

We’re interested in hearing about your particular experiences in implementing new software systems. Please feel free to leave a comment or contact us on + 61 2 8080 4800.

Newsletter highlights

Now that the fun of the Cup has runneth over we can start to look towards Christmas so everyone can invest their winnings!

At Zavanti we may not have cleaned up on the Cup, but we continue to work on our product developments for our ERP, Contract Management and other solutions.

In this edition of our newsletter, we would like to welcome our latest Government client, the Department of Health and Human Services in Tasmania. DHHS are busy implementing Zavanti Portfolio Manager to monitor, track and analyse organisational performance across their health care services.

Learn more about our new study on the use of Project Collaboration technologies by the Australian Construction industry, we also encourage you to take part in this exciting new research study.

In addition, we invite you to register your interest in our Training Days or information seminars for the New Year.

Welcome

Welcome to the Zavanti users and interested friends blog site. This site has been established to enable free and rapid communication amongst our growing user base.

We do ask that contributions are constructive and comply with all local laws on content.

All the best

Ian Plater
Chairman