Shopping for the right technology

With all the claims and counter-claims made by advertisers, it’s not only getting harder and harder to know what to buy, it’s getting harder to know if you’re even shopping for the right technology.

You’re a smallish general contractor, let’s say, and some of your software is getting a bit long in the tooth.

You could simply upgrade to the latest version. It’s likely the simple and cheap way to go, but is it the best way?

If we’re talking about construction management software, you might wonder whether it really integrates well with your accounting software, or if you have simply become so accustomed to the awkward little work-arounds you have to do that it has all just seems easy.

If you’re tired of those work-arounds, or the repetitious data entry you may have to do, you might be able to go either of two routes: You can buy one of the big, all-inclusive packages (often beyond the financial reach of smaller operations) that does everything except put the cat out at night. Or you could buy something smaller and cheaper that integrates more easily with your existing accounting software.

Intuit, the makers of the popular QuickBooks accounting program, put its money on the second alternative several years ago when it formed the Intuit Developers’ Network — an idea that had already been tried by other companies with varying degrees of success.

The plan was to make enough of the QuickBooks code available to other companies to enable them to develop software products that integrate seamlessly with QuickBooks.

It worked better, I’m told, than anyone at Intuit had dared hoped.

Now there is a dedicated website where you can find all of the software that integrates with QuickBooks. The total is up to 235 products and counting, and that’s just for the Canadian versions.

I haven’t bothered to check how many products now integrate with the American or British versions of QuickBooks.

Not all of the 235 are related to construction, of course, but many of them are. Many are also related to professional service providers like architects and engineers, and some relate to property management.

All this is a roundabout way of getting to a recent announcement that UDA Technologies has just issued new Canadian versions of its Construction Office packages.

UDA has aimed its software directly at small to medium-sized construction firms. Its products work with QuickBooks and Microsoft Office to create a completely integrated project management system.

That means no awkward work-arounds. Construction Office can import a full chart of accounts, plus budgets and costs from Construction Office Estimating into QuickBooks, with everything classified by customer or job. As well, the tight integration lets users create QuickBooks invoices, budgets and purchase orders directly from Construction Office.

That means no moving data from one program to another, no repetitious (and error-producing) data re-entry either. Type it in once, and that’s it.

This is a concept that Intuit has been pushing for a long time.

Many employees, both at the firm’s Canadian headquarters in Edmonton, and its American head office in Mountain View, California, drink their coffee from mugs emblazoned with “NED2”—Never Enter Data Twice.” As for UDA and its Construction Office, its decision to develop for QuickBooks is paying off.

It calls itself the fastest growing provider of construction productivity software in a market that includes the United States and 37 other countries, including Canada. Its revenues have grown 45 per cent annually in each of the last five years.

Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@dailycommercialnews.com