Improving Project Delivery With Financials Integration

ProjectSight enables you to streamline field management, document control and budget and cost management processes between architects, engineers, general contractors, and subcontractors. While those tools are powerful, you also need a way to connect the dots with your financial system to reap the most benefits.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software systems allow companies to manage their financials, human resource activities, operations, reporting, and more. The ability to integrate ERP systems with project management software provides numerous advantages to contractors. Integration partners such as Morpheus Technology Group can help to establish those connections. “It’s all about integrating disparate types of applications to create a seamless exchange of data that also conforms to your business processes,” says Guy Barlow, director of strategy and business development at Morpheus Technology Group. “Two key words come to mind ‘seamless and ‘flexible’.’

“We’ve seen an incredible leap in the use of digital technology to enhance collaboration in the construction industry around integration…”

– Guy Barlow, Director of Strategy and Business Development at Morpheus Technology Group

Many construction companies are already in the midst of digital transformation. “We’ve seen an incredible leap in the use of digital technology to enhance collaboration in the construction industry around integration.” Barlow says. “That’s good news.” Accounting ERP and project management software are the top two digital technologies contractors use today—but integrating the two systems can be challenging. Many contractors rely on error-prone manual processes to import and export data between the systems, re-keying data into spreadsheets or toggling between applications. Custom-built integrations are a possible solution, but they’re both costly and difficult to adapt if later changes are needed – and they’re always needed.

Building Seamless, Flexible Integrations

Contractors must be able to access pertinent data without, for example,  jumping from application to application. “From a technical and philosophical perspective, we only want people to touch the data once and only in their respective application,” Barlow explains. ““Finance stays in finance solutions and project managers stay in project management applications. We move data for them behind the scenes so they can carry on with their job without needing to be in multiple applications.” Flexibility is another key point for contractors, especially in today’s challenging construction environment. “Over the past year we’ve seen clients change and adapt, including changing business processes,” says Barlow. “That ability to rapidly meet the change has to be inherent in the product you’re using for integration.” To enable an integration, Morpheus uses a combination of pre-built application adapters and a highly configureable process engine to build workflows between the systems. “The process engine is what I like to call the key to the kingdom,” Barlow says. “Clients can use it to change, modify, or adapt workflows to their business processes as they evolve over time.” Using Morpheus, you can configure as many workflows as you want, including original budgets, change orders, purchase orders, actual costs, and phase codes. And you’ll be able to change the data flows and integration points as needed.

If you expend the energy to have conversations and take the time to standardize your business processes and then integrate them, it’s going to make your operations significantly more efficient.”

– Guy Barlow, Director of Strategy and Business Development at Morpheus Technology Group

Creating Standardized Workflows

Ultimately, integration is about standardizing your workflows—in many cases, taking a manual process and automating it. Because this involves some fundamental shifts in how teams work and interact with systems, it’s important to talk through those processes in advance. To make the most of the integration, it’s critical, to include all the key stakeholders in the discussion—particularly the finance, project management, and IT teams. “We see challenges – all of them surmountable – around getting everyone aligned. However, the payoff is huge,” Barlow says.