Digitalizing Construction: Four Best Practices to Modernize Your Tech Stack

Construction companies must modernize in the face of digital trends, customer expectations, and competitive pressures. The problem? An overwhelming number of choices — contractors looking for construction management solutions will find over 900 options listed on Capterra alone.

Critical to staying competitive is an effective, strategic tech stack, honing in on solutions that will best serve the company, and devising a plan for onboarding and implementing them.

There are several key tactics contractors can use to select, test, and assess choices to build or enhance their tech stack.

The first step to selecting any new tool is assessing current needs. Many construction companies already have standalone solutions for individual processes, from accounting to estimation to project management. Identify the biggest pain points in the current system for both employees and clients, and tease out the ones that could see the most immediate improvement from technology-assisted process changes.

Early work to understand current processes and future plans can help identify systems that will work over the long term.

A 2024 Gartner report found that nearly half of construction organizations still use manual methods like pen-and-paper or spreadsheets to handle their day-to-day construction operations. Of those who switch to more comprehensive systems, most will do so to improve operational efficiency.

But adopting software into construction processes does not automatically create efficiency. While some solutions are purpose-built and work to solve a specific pain point, platform-based tools work more globally. If this collection of tech doesn’t work together to form comprehensive processes, it can lead to disjointed operations and lost data, walling off information so it remains inaccessible.

For example, imagine a company uses a labor management program to handle payroll and keep track of worker training, but it doesn’t have systems to share that information with the project managers in charge of labor resource management. Without system integration, each department has to manually input data, which takes time and can lead to errors. Efficiency and compliance may suffer as a result.

Any new system adopted can be measured by its ability to fit within a current set of systems or to create a new system of processes that will foster greater accessibility, data sharing, and efficiency between workflows.

Process changes will almost certainly cause stress on employees. Weigh the needs you’ve identified based on which changes will be most accepted and have the biggest impact. Make a plan for how to manage change, specifically identifying what success looks like for your team. Develop key performance indicators to measure progress in areas like employee tenure and equipment idle hours. Communicate the benefits to the team to get the best buy-in, the smoothest transition, and the most comprehensive adoption possible.

Construction has notoriously tight margins and even tighter timelines. The ongoing cost of new technology is hard to stomach if it’s not proving its worth, and there’s not much time to adopt new systems. Couple that with an aging workforce and risk-averse leadership, and it can be challenging to give a new process the chance to shine.

With time, the right technology can give teams the tools they need to proactively manage risk and thrive with a smaller labor pool. Return on investment (ROI) is a critical metric that any new technology should be held to over time. The trick is to continually track progress while allowing enough time for the ROI to fully develop.

A Tech Stack is Never Complete

All the capabilities around technology in construction are improving, fast. It’s not enough to simply adopt a software solution and wait for improvement to begin.

Construction companies should prioritize tech solutions that are continuously growing, innovating, and keeping pace with the sometimes overwhelming pace of change.

Busy contractors who are trying to manage multiple ongoing projects can find it difficult to keep up with the latest technology trends that will inform their next steps. That’s where having a partner like Eide Bailly can help. We understand the landscape and can partner with you to help you identify the best solutions for your needs.