Company: Morrison Homes is a high-end home builder, established in 1961. The company builds hundreds of homes per year in Calgary, Alberta and surrounding area.
Industry: Construction Region: Americas
Company Size: Mid-Size Enterprise – 100 Employees
Email Environment: Microsoft® Exchange Application Type: Business Productivity & Task Management
BlackBerry Alliance Member Solution: BuilderMT Business Process Management (BPM)
Business Challenge: Morrison Homes’ manual process for issuing variance purchase orders (VPOs) burdened mobile construction site supervisors with paperwork, and kept office administration costs high. Morrison needed a solution that allowed site supervisors to initiate VPOs using their BlackBerry® smartphones, so they could remain at construction sites and manage projects more efficiently. Solution: Morrison overhauled their VPO process using BuilderMT’s Business Process Management (BPM)
application with their BlackBerry® solution. Morrison rapidly designed a new business process which includes a web-based order form that site supervisors can access from their BlackBerry smartphones.
Morrison Homes’ Results:
• Enhanced productivity and time savings for site supervisors • Paperless VPO process with lower costs and higher office productivity • Stronger relationships with subcontractors • Opportunity for additional business process automation • Return on the $30,000 application cost realized in weeks Construction | Field Service |
Business Case Study
Case Study
Homebuilder Brings Wireless Business
Process Automation to the Construction
Construction
|
Field Service
|
Business Case Study
The Challenge:
Automate a Costly, Paper-based
Purchase Order Process
In new home construction, one of the biggest threats to a builder’s profitability comes from variance purchase orders (VPOs). VPOs are issued during construction for such things as extra truckloads of gravel and replacement materials due to on-site damage or vandalism.
In addition to adding unbudgeted expenses to a project, the act of issuing a VPO can be an inefficient and costly paper-based purchasing process. At Morrison Homes, construction site superintendents used to fill out paper VPO forms at the job site and drive them back to Morrison’s head office. Office staff would then manually fax each VPO to the appropriate vendor, and enter the data into Morrison’s accounting system. After the vendors replied with pricing, updated VPOs would be printed, faxed back to the vendors, and filed.
“Sometimes office staff would have to spend entire days just standing by the fax machine sending out VPOs,” says Philip Robichaud, Information Technology Manager for Morrison Homes.
To get a handle on the impact of this labour-intensive process, Morrison analyzed their VPO process and discovered they spent an average of 19 minutes handling every VPO “This added up to a staggering amount of unproductive activity considering we issue 5,000 VPOs per year,” Robichaud reports.
Morrison wanted a solution for automating their VPO process, with the main criterion that site supervisors would be able to initiate work orders on the go using their existing BlackBerry smartphones.
Why the BlackBerry Solution?
Morrison Homes had already deployed the BlackBerry solution two years prior to their VPO time-cost analysis. At the time, the smartphones immediately enhanced the communication and responsiveness of the site supervisors. With wireless email, supervisors no longer had to return to the office in order to read and respond to important messages from co-workers and vendors.
“Wireless email on BlackBerry smartphones has made our supervisors much more productive when visiting construction sites. Communication between the sites and our office has improved greatly as a result,” says Robichaud.
However, the benefits of wireless email were only part of Morrison’s motivation for implementing the BlackBerry solution. From the outset, Morrison envisioned BlackBerry smartphones playing a key role in the company’s plans for automating certain business processes.
“We wanted to invest in a wireless solution that was specifically designed to accommodate expansion,” Robichaud says. “The BlackBerry solution’s track record in this area is second to none, which made it the obvious choice for us.”
“Wireless email on BlackBerry smartphones made
our supervisors much more productive when visiting
construction sites. Communication between the sites
and our office improved greatly as a result.”
Construction
|
Field Service
|
Business Case Study
Robichaud used BuilderMT’s BPM to map and build Morrison’s automated VPO process for the BlackBerry solution. The application lets programmers or business managers create a visual critical path of a business process using icons. Each icon represents a component of the business process containing pre-written code. As the icons are aligned, they automatically link back-end processes for generating contracts, reports, pricing information, notifications, purchase orders, and payments.
According to Robichaud, this unique drag-and-drop approach speeds up the process of overhauling a business process “Using BPM, we saved considerable programming time and were able to map a new business process for variance purchase orders in about ten hours,” he says. “Before BPM, I never would have believed this was possible.”
Morrison’s redesigned VPO process replaced paper forms with a simple web-based form that allows supervisors to initiate the purchase process on their BlackBerry smartphones right from a construction site. The ability to initiate VPOs remotely enabled cost reductions throughout Morrison’s VPO process, and allowed Morrison to realize a full return on their $30,000 BuilderMT BPM investment in just a few weeks.
Using their BlackBerry smartphones, supervisors now browse to the online form where they enter order details and specify a preferred subcontractor from a drop down list. The selected subcontractor then receives an email notification of the VPO with a link to Morrison’s vendor-facing purchase order pricing form. When the subcontractor enters pricing, a notification is virtually automatically sent to Morrison’s purchasing department for approval. Once approved, a final purchase order is created and sent to the subcontractor as a PDF file. Closing the process, the order details are converted to a text file and entered into Morrison’s accounting system without any manual entries.
The new process is almost entirely automated with only one human touch point required, that being the purchasing department’s decision to approve or deny the VPO.
Business Process Automation
Made Easy – with Visuals
Partner Profile:
Company: BuilderMT
• BuilderMT provides customizable business process management software for home builders designed to integrate with Sage Timberline Office accounting and estimating software
• The company also offers mobile wireless scheduling applications designed to integrate with the home office for purchase order approval and job/vendor control
• BuilderMT BPM aims to provide process customization with a graphical drag-and drop interface. The application also utilizes icons that represent home building activities – from
pre-construction and contract flow, through to construction, and warranty.
Featured Product: BuilderMT Business Process Management (BPM) Application Type: Business Productivity & Task Management “Using BPM, we saved considerable programming time and were able to map a new business process for variance purchase orders (VPO) in about ten hours.”
~ Philip Robichaud, Information Technology Manager, Morrison Homes
Construction
|
Field Service
|
Business Case Study
Construction
|
Field Service
|
Business Case Study
Future Plans for Business Process Enhancements
Following on the success of their overhauled VPO process, Morrison has plans to further leverage their BlackBerrry solution by adding more capabilities to site supervisors.
A new automated process for ordering waste bins, also designed using BuilderMT’s BPM, will soon replace the current process, which involves an exchange of phone calls to vendors and the creation of paper purchase orders. As part of the new process, site supervisors will order bins by using their BlackBerry smartphones to browse to an online form.
There are also plans in place that will allow supervisors to append digital photographs to Morrison’s site inspection records. When inspecting land purchased from developers, supervisors will use newly-deployed BlackBerry® Curve™ smartphones to capture photographs of any property damage before construction begins. Detailed visual records of existing damage will help to ensure agreement with developers over responsibility for repair costs.
“The BlackBerry solution and Buildler MT’s Business Process Automation (BPM) application has helped us realize our vision of automating key business processes for significant
efficiencies and cost savings.”
~Philip Robichaud
Information Technology Manager, Morrison Homes
“The BlackBerry solution’s track record in this area is
second to none, which made it the obvious choice for us.”
Construction
|
Field Service
|
Business Case Study
Results
Enhanced productivity and time savings for site supervisors. The ability to initiate VPOs on-site means supervisors make fewer trips back to the office and have more time to visit sites and focus on managing construction projects. Paperless VPO process with lower costs and higher office productivity. With no paper VPOs to fax and file, administrative staff can get more work done and spend time on higher priority office activities.
Stronger relationships with subcontractors. The streamlined VPO process on the BlackBerry smartphones has meant faster payments to subcontractors. The subcontractors reciprocate this goodwill with increased adherence to Morrison’s construction scheduling and quality standards.
For more information on BlackBerry solutions for small businesses, visit
www.blackberry.com/go/smallbusiness
For additional BlackBerry customer success stories, visit
www.blackberry.com/go/success
This material, including all material incorporated by reference herein or made available by hyperlink, is provided or made accessible “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” and without condition, endorsement, guarantee, representation or warranty of any kind by Research In Motion Limited and its affiliated companies (“RIM”) and RIM assumes no responsibility for any typographical, technical, or other inaccuracies, errors or omissions in this material and shall not be liable for any type of damages related to this material or its use, or performance, or non-performance of any software, hardware, service, or any references to third-party sources of information, hardware or software, products or services including components and content such as content protected by copyright and/or third-party web sites (collectively the “Third Party Products and Services” ). When you subscribe to Third Party Products and Services you accept that: 1. It is your sole responsibility to: (a) ensure that your airtime service provider will support all features; (b) identify and acquire all required intellectual property licences prior to installation or use and to comply with the terms of such licences; 2. RIM makes no representation, warranty or guarantee and assumes no liability whatsoever in relation to Third
Opportunity for additional business process automation. The intuitive nature of the BlackBerry smartphones enabled quick proficiency and enthusiastic adoption among site supervisors. This makes it easier for Morrison to introduce new applications and device functionality with minimal training and little user resistance. Return on the $30,000 application cost realized in weeks. The ability to initiate VPOs using BlackBerry smartphones enabled cost reductions throughout the VPO process. With these immediate cost savings, Morrison realized a return on their $30,000 BuilderMT BPM investment in a matter of weeks.
Certain features outlined in this document may require a minimum version of BlackBerry Enterprise Server, BlackBerry Desktop Software, BlackBerry Device Software and/or additional RIM/BlackBerry software. Check with service provider for availability, roaming arrangements, service plans and features.
The limitations and exclusions herein shall apply irrespective of the nature of the cause of action and in no event shall any director, employee, agent, distributor, supplier or independent contractor of RIM have any liability related to or use of the material.
