This contractor wins around a hundred jobs a year. Every one of them starts as an estimate, built line by line in their estimating software. When the bid wins, all of that detail has to exist again in their ERP so the job can be set up and the budget built. The two systems have no idea the other exists.
So a project manager re-typed it. Four to ten hours per job, depending on size. Across a hundred jobs a year, that’s hundreds of hours of senior people copying numbers that already existed somewhere else. Meanwhile, leadership’s view of work in progress was assembled once a month, which meant decisions were always looking at last month’s picture.
We started with a discovery meeting, the way we always do. We wanted to understand how their people actually work, not just what software they own. The estimators were good at estimating, the PMs were good at running jobs, and the gap was purely between the systems.
The decision that shaped the build was to leave their workflow alone. The estimators keep working exactly as they always have. We read the won bid from their estimating system, carry the full line-item detail across, and deliver it into their ERP in the shape their accounting expects. Nobody learned new software. The work just stopped being theirs to re-type.
While we were connected to both systems, we built leadership the view they never had. Work in progress that refreshes through the day instead of once a month, and reporting on which customers actually make money, how each department performs, and what’s sitting in the pipeline.
The same loop this contractor ran a hundred times a year. Put your own hours in.
A won bid now moves into the ERP in about thirty seconds. A PM might spend an hour tidying it up, and then the job is live. That used to be four to ten hours, every job, a hundred times a year. Somewhere between four hundred and a thousand hours of project management time, handed back annually.
The quieter win is what leadership sees. The WIP report that used to arrive at month-end now refreshes every fifteen minutes, and for the first time they’re looking at customer profitability and department performance as it happens. Decisions stopped waiting for the calendar.
