July 2, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of CO Pod, Kal Litt from Softengine discusses the transformative impact of ERP systems in the construction industry. He highlights the urgent need for construction firms to modernize outdated, paper-based processes to improve productivity and attract younger talent. Kal emphasizes Acumatica’s flexible platform, strong accounting capabilities, and seamless integrations as key drivers of successful digital transformation. Sharing compelling examples, including a company that increased profitability by 50% after implementation, he underscores the importance of strong leadership support and a phased approach to change management for effective ERP adoption. This episode offers valuable insights for professionals navigating technology-driven growth in construction and related sectors.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Coeopod.
I'm your host, Caroline and today I'm joined by cal
Lit from Soft Engine. How are you doing, Cal, I'm
doing well.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Can't complain the uh snow's starting to melt. It looks
like the sun's going to be out till past seven
thirty this week. So I'm excited about the changing of
the season and those welcoming because those dark days of
winter have got too, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Oh for sure. I know. I think we're supposed to
have a few more weeks of winter, but honestly, it
does not feel like it.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Nope, nope, cream weather today.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Awesome. Well, let's just go ahead and get this started.
So I'd love for you to tell you our audience
a little bit more about you, a little bit about
what you do and especially what your role is at
Soft Engine.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, I've had the opportunity to be what you call
the business application space for about teen sixteen years now.
I've been had the opportunity to work for organizations like Oracle, Microsoft,
work in the var ecosystem for NetSuite, directly for net Suite,
as well as Acumatica. This is my second go around
with building out an acumatica practice out of r passionate
(01:18):
about technology, passionate about helping people organizations address the challenges
that they have around their business, but more importantly, addressing
how they help and service their customers right and the
output of their organizations. If you go back a little
bit further in terms of how even got introduced to
ERP systems and business process for engineering, it was strictly
(01:40):
by chance. Coming out of high school, I really didn't
know what I wanted to do. There was a commerce
program out of a university here in Toronto and was
sponsored by SAP, and it was called ERP Systems Business
Process Engineering BPR. I was like, sure, I got accepted,
obviously had some good enough marks to get in. That's
(02:01):
where I had the opportunity to really get into the
world of you know, the data flow diagrams er D
diagrams and then you know, coding with visual basic and
understanding what ERP actually was. And you know, it was
a unique time in the late nineties where you started
seeing the changing of the guard of you know, legacy
systems to to you know cloud. And there was obviously
(02:24):
a few technologies that were out there, but the fact
that we had an opportunity to get our hands on
sa P R three was actually pretty cool. So yeah,
it was strictly by chance and how I got introduced
to this whole you know world of business applications in
the ERP.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, you know, going into something by chance. I feel
like that is so common, you know with people. It's
like I never really had an interest in this, and
it kind of just happened. But what was it? You know,
happened by chance? But what really made you stay? What
drew you into ERP systems? That was like the hook
for you?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
The hook really was having the ability to interact with
people and having more of a dynamic engagement on a
you know, every day basis. Every conversation is different, every
organization that I speak to has different or unique challenges.
It's an opportunity for me to really keep myself fresh,
learn about new businesses, learn about how organizations have you know,
(03:20):
come about. In terms of the entrepreneurial journey, is specific
family had if it's in the construction industry, or have
a manufacturer developed a specific idea and had a unique
value proposition and a product and brought it to market
and went from a small you know, million dollar shop
to a multimillion dollar or one hundred million dollar company.
It's those types of stories that really are you know,
(03:40):
make my days unique and different. Right, No one specific
day or conversation is necessarily the same. So I'm a
person who likes change and a person who likes to learn.
And I found very quickly, you know, for my time
and starting in sales and helping people with transportation and
buying Hondas to looking for Xerox, that I loved the
(04:04):
ability to understand, Hey, why are we speaking today, what
are the unique needs and challenges that you're trying to solve,
and who is that going to impact? Right, That's essentially
where my career started. I loved that positioning of being
a trusted advisor, and sometimes being a trusted advisor means
me not having the right product or service but also
pointing you in the right direction of where you should
(04:25):
probably probably be looking. Right. I always use the analogy
of hey, if you're looking at the Honda, you should
be looking at the Toyota, and that's no different in
the case of the ERP world as well. And making
sure that any client that we're speaking to is not
just is looking at the right players in the right sandbox,
because if they're not, one of us is in the
(04:46):
wrong place, then we really need to unpack that further
as to why they're looking at a specific solution versus another.
But again, typically there's the typical or usual suspects. When
you're talking about cloud mid market off the shelf cloud
hear pieces.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
To you know, we've talked about you, you know, your
long journey in this career and you know, bouncing between industries,
so being at you know, Honda, Oracle, Microsoft and then
you know, taking a more specialized route in doing acumatica
as well. So what are some unique challenges of implementing
these ERP systems in construction compared to other industries that
(05:23):
you've been in.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Well, we have to step back and look at the
construction industry as a whole, right, it is probably the
least or second least digitized industry or vertical if you
want to call it that, in comparison to agriculture. So
you know, we have a lot of organizations out there
(05:44):
that have built muscle memory, a lot of tribal knowledge,
family businesses that were built from the ground up that
are in successful places with you know, paper based processes, Excel, spreadsheets,
you know, quick books and things like that. Legacy tools
that exist in the construction space and the viewpoints of
(06:06):
the world. The CMI C is the Jonases of the world.
Organizations have been able to be successful doing what they
are with these types of tools, right again, manual, some automated,
some not, some just with legacy. But the biggest challenge
that you're starting to see now is not only is
there resistant to change, you're also seeing some level of
(06:32):
hesitation do to the fact that, well, we have a
secret sauce here, we don't want to move away from that,
right And you also have a changing of the guard
in a certain sense.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
You have the grandpa that pass it down to maybe
the sons, and now the sons are passing it down
to their millennial you know leadership, whether a couple of
the cousins of the organization, and you know that's quite
common in this space.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
You said that what we're starting to see is that
power shift, that power struggle, but that changing of experience
for the employees. Right. So the leadership being millennials, are asking, hey,
we need a better tools, productivity, collaboration, approval, workflows, notifications,
(07:21):
we need document management because we grew up in the internet,
you know age of Internet. Right, We were the first
ones to adopt the Internet. We were the first ones
to actually have the opportunity to have the Internet and
experience what this actually means. So we're starting to see
the ass from this millennial leadership or these new leaders
(07:43):
of the company where the parents have went off and
retired and they're asking for it. Right. Why because the
employee experience needs to change, because you need to retain talent. Right,
as you change the employee experience, that will change the
output of the organization, right of the output of the
organization changes about being more responsive, being you know automated,
(08:04):
being able to send you know, bills on time and
pro forma invoices, whatever the case may be, and just
reducing the cycle time that it takes from doing you
know activity A to B or A B to CD,
right and improving communication again, improving collaboration productivity. That's going
to change your customer experience because your output is changing.
Experience change, and the organizations are gonna want to work
(08:26):
with you more because like, hey, these guys are on
the ball. All the money, they're going to service my
clients better. You know, this is definitely a GC that
I want to work with, or this is a specialty
trade or something that you know, I like why because
you know, they're fully digitized, you know, they're on you know,
there's there's no errors here per se, and they're they're
you know, consistently communicating with us and very collaborative. And
that's the type of organization I want to work with.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
And you know, and not only changes you know, the
customer's perspective and experience with that company, but it also
changes you know, the employee experience of course. And one
of the things we're seeing a lot is, you know,
our labor shortage and you know, our our workforce is
aging out. We're trying to attract this new millennial gen
z talent and you know, one of the only ways
(09:09):
to do that are the most successful way to do
that is to implement technology, give them what they're used to,
give them what they know.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Very very true. Again, I think you said it there,
labor shortage or competing for talent wingd be important. So
if I'm you know, a young millennial or your gen
Z and I'm looking at an organization and seeing, okay,
what type of tools PM tools. Are they using estimating, takeoff,
(09:38):
bidding tools? You know, what is their core accounting system?
If I'm on the Office of Finance, you know, if
they're using legacy tools, outdated tools, spreadsheets, paper based processes
that I automatically start to compute and do that permutation
in my head say, hey, this is going to be
more of a difficult organization.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
To work with, right definitely.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
How quickly and effectively am I going to be able
to do my job? Am I going to be able
to get access to the data that I need to
make the right decisions in my position of power or
you know, whatever position that I might be interviewing for
might be a fit for within that organization. So I
think it's really important for organizations to really take you know,
construction and construction like companies, especially trades, GC's, land developers,
(10:23):
whatever the case may be, where there's typically been legacy
solutions and again resistance to digitization and transformation, to really
take a tougher, harder look at the options that are
out there. As we keep on saying, and the spirit
of nature of this conversation as being you know, digitization
and making sure that organizations are attracting the right type
(10:44):
of talent and also being ahead of the curve. Right,
even as an organization, it's it's important to understand that
you've grown to where you are today, but there's still
slow profit leak in many different areas, right, slow profit
leak is not one specific thing looking at you in
the eyes. It's death by a thousand cuts. Oh yeah.
(11:06):
And if you implement a digital strategy and transformation strategy
that's centered around core ERP and you know, and incorporating
the operational pieces that make you know your unique, uniquees organization,
you can eliminate anywhere between three to seven percent and
bring that back to your bottom line, back to ebit right.
(11:26):
And and essentially that's enough part at the end of
the gold right, that's enough goal to end the Rael
part of goal at the end of the rabel to
justify that investment, whether.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
It's two thousand knowledge right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
You know, for ten you know, ten billion dollar company,
three to seven percent that covers your investment in the
first year.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And you know, we're talking about the construction industry and
how you know, we're a little bit more resistant to change.
You know, we have those you know, companies that have
been around for twenty years, and you know, we've been
doing it by paper for twenty years and it's.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Worked for us.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Why should we change? You know, I think that's a
lot a lot of the attitude is that, But it's
also you know, it's a scary thing. You know, when
you're used to doing something one way for so long
and then changing up those processes is also kind of
you know, it's scary. There's a lot of unknowns. But
what has been your most successful approach to getting buy
(12:17):
ins from you know, veteran project managers or superintendents or
people who are a little bit more resistant to that change.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Well, it really it starts off at the top line leadership.
Leadership needs to be bought in to this project. If
they're going to purchase an AIRP, if they're going to
go through a best of bad approach and look at
bidding estimation tools, take off tools, PM tools, and surround
it with a you know, modern you know, off the
shelf you know, cloud multi tenant cloud AIRP. At its core,
(12:49):
the leadership needs to make sure that one the organization
is being brought along that journey right, everyone has input
and they feel as if it's the organization's project, not
you know, Bob's or John's or the new you know
(13:10):
set of the CEO, whatever the case may be. So
make sure there's some excitement, make sure there's buying from
every level. You have champions in every department. You know
that I have bought it, that they have given their input,
and that their group's input is you know that their
needs challenges, that their voices are being heard. That's that's
from an evaluation pre sale standpoint, and even as you
(13:30):
go through the implementation. But when you're talking about you know,
the site supers the foreman's you know that have been
there for twenty or thirty years and still probably hanging
on for another five or ten. You have to introduce
change at a rate where it's going to be accepted. Right.
The braid has no upper limit to what it can learn,
but it has a limited the rate which it can learn, right,
(13:53):
So that organizations need to slowly introduce change. So, you know,
one example I've seen is, you know John the form
and you know his wife has been complaining that he
never picks up his phone, but he doesn't because he's
focused on his job. So what do we do? Give
him a rug and iPad, say hey, your wife wants
you to check your email once an hour if she
needs to, you know, get contact with you. So so
(14:14):
check it and slowly he realized, oh, this is pretty cool.
So he got comfortable with the iPad. Right, And the
next thing is great, next time you want to raise
a change order or insigation R five, there's a problem
with the same take a picture of it and then
email it back to the office so we know the chap.
So he got more comfortable with using iPad and taking
(14:35):
a picture. Great. Step three, here's this PM tool within
this system. The next time I want you to just
open the system, take a picture and then send it
to me and put in some notes and details of
what this actually is. So these are some little anecdotal
examples that organizations can slowly introduce change, right, But again
(14:56):
it also has to you also to take it together.
These also have to be carefully planned on on who
you're selecting as these change agents, because there's definitely always
people who are going to resist change, right, and it's
the you know, it's usually some of the folks who
feel as if their job might be threatened or their
(15:17):
existence might be threatened.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
It takes a lot of planning, you know, a lot
of strategy, but also not just you know, throwing this
solution at the team and saying this is what we're doing,
kind of easing them into it a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, and again it's a lot of it's finding the
right change agents, right, finding that the sponsors within the
organization that are going to help spread that change. Right.
So it's not hitting you over the head now shall
do this, But realistically it's coming from your peers rather
than leadership sometimes where you have that level you know
of resistance between you know, you know leaders or boss
(15:56):
and supported it per se. But find your agents at
the line level what I like to call it, that
are going to help you with that change. And then
you know that specific example of introducing a rugged tablet
to the guy whose you know wife has been contacting him, right,
and then move him to phase two by telling you
to take a picture of some issue of a site
and then eventually introduce them to the to the PM
(16:17):
two that can allow him to raise an RFI.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, I love that. And you know we're we're talking
about you know, once you know, so they make the
decision to embrace this change, embrace this new technology in
your experience what is the most common like light bulb
aha moment that when they finally do embrace this technology
and this transformation, how they see that helping them out.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Well, they have more time to do their job better. Right,
Sometimes they have more time to do value added items
to the organization. Right. Sometimes zero was working on administrative
monotonous activities that are really value they just have to
do because they have to do to complete their job.
(17:04):
That's one piece of it. At the leadership level, it's
organizations or leaders that are always overworked, don't have enough
time for their family, for their kids. They are missing
soccer practices, dance recitals. You know, once you have a
more mobile tool, something that's in the cloud, you can
be on the beach now and go through those approvals
and notifications and always have a pulse on the business
(17:26):
right and feel okay with enjoying your success per se
as as an owner. And that's what I find with
a lot of ownership in this space. They're overworked. They're
just too invested in their in their in their business. Rightfully,
so they're they're invested, but because they don't have that
level a tool or technology that's flexible, you know, where
(17:47):
they can access the business anywhere, anytime, and check on
the health of the business, check on you know, the
whipp report, check on the profitability on a specific approach.
I can be able to be responsive and and and
address any escalations on a flow or you know, changeolders
or you know, get approvals being a big one as well.
If they're not able to have a tool that allows
(18:09):
them to be flexible in that regard that they're always
going to be in town, that always going to the office,
are always going to be on site, and and and
you know, have that you know that chain and mall
effect in a certain sense right to every project and
their business right and far too many times I've seen that,
you know, I have friends who own successful construction GC
companies here and the greater Toronto area, where that's just
(18:31):
the case that you know, I'm just I can't leave.
If I leave, you know, it feels like sometimes you know,
the roof is going to cave in. So a few
of these organizations I've introduced acumatica too, or say, cal,
why do I listen to you sooner and sooner? I
didn't realize how much time this will save us and
how happy your employees would be I can actually take vacation.
(18:52):
I can just log in and you know, from my
phone and get access to the health of the business
on any project. And it's just it's just it's so
much more easier to manage my business and still be
able to give tie back to my family that enjoy
my success.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That's you know, That's the one of the really big
things that I've noticed with talking to you know, construction owners,
CEOs all of these people, is, you know, the work
life balance is really difficult sometimes, you know, and with
technologies like this, with ERP systems, that work life balance
does improve, but in some sense it's still really really
(19:27):
hard to you know, pull yourself away sometimes.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
It definitely is. And again I know there's going to
be lots of folks listening to this, to this podcast
and owners of businesses like, yeah, how you deal on
the head. It's hard step away from the business. I
see it far too often.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, you know, we're talking about you know, ERP systems
and you know, switching over. And when I think one
of the really great things and tools we have is ACUMATICA.
It is so all encompassing, you know, really you come
to it with your needs and they can help you
either through they offer or through is SB solutions, you know,
through lumber through all these different ones. So I think,
(20:06):
you know, i'd really like to talk a little bit
more on Acumatica and you know what they provide to
people and how this can be a solution that really
you know, you can tailor it to your business, you
can fit it to your needs.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, yeah, Acumatica definitely. You know what what you know,
I've dabbled myself in a few of these, you know,
the common players in the ARP space, and that suits
the Microsofts of the world, you know, stages and the
stages of the world. But I always gravitate right back
to the acumatic ecosystem just because of how unique their
construction offering is, right, and it caters to to anyone
(20:41):
who's in the construction industry, as I said previously, whether
you're at GC, specialty trade, specialty contract or land developer,
you know ret it's there are many different use cases
for Acumatica in that space. The flexible platform, you know,
at the core, obviously you have a very strong account
system that has a multi currency, multi entity you know,
(21:05):
full you know, tax currency banking module with all the
full automations that you can provide you know, repeatable processes
and framework. When it comes to the construction reporting construction industry,
all the compliance features that you need, managing holdbacks, retainage
you have built in CRM if required, and you have extensions.
(21:25):
Right if you're a construction company doing UH manufacturing or
have some level of manufacturing, you can tap into those
cross functional workflows. If you have some level of you know,
field service or after a warranty, service work or recurring
service appointments, things like that, you can tap into the
field service module. So it provides a really great foundation
(21:46):
for organizations out of the box to you know, to
really mitigate risk without you know, getting into the software
industry and building something custom And my experience and what
you see in some of the competitors, they're about five
plus years ahead of the competitors when it comes to,
you know, bringing this type of product to market, when
you're talking about a true cloud multi tenant you know
(22:06):
offering for the construction industry. Right, as we've seen in
the last five years, there's just been hockey stick growth
with with this, with this Acumatic Construction edition and the
level of innovation that we're seeing with it. You know,
seventy eight hundred enhancements to the to the platform. And
these aren't bun fixes or anything like that. These are
actual enhancements, workflow enhancements, you know, automations. You know now
(22:28):
with AI being you know, a buzzwords and that being
added to Acumatic and can short over as well. You know,
we're seeing just the level of innovation is is just
far any of the other you know, other vendors that
I had experienced with, right, So that's that's one piece
of it, is just the level of innovation where they are,
(22:49):
you know, as a platform, right, as you said, you know,
it's not just a business application or you know or
you know in that sense, it truly is a platform, right,
a lot of out of the box function. But then
you have the opportunity to tap into best breed tools,
a right, PM tools, whether it's you know, pro core
or any of the other PM tools that are available
(23:10):
in the acamutic ecosystem, you know, bidding estimation tools, pross stack.
You know, there's no shortage of ivs that have said, hey,
this acumatic vendor here is going to be quite the
player and already is at the construction space. We need
to migrate our technology to that ecosystem. And then once
(23:31):
they see how modern the APIs and the technology being
you know, Microsoft Centric power biomes on services in terms
of the gold center of public cloud data centers, right,
they're like, wow, it's easy to integrate. Right, It's never
the limiting factor when it comes to Acumatic is never
the limiting factor when it comes to integration. Supporting all
the latest and greatest protocols when it comes to you know,
(23:53):
a pis, web hooks, web services and things like that.
So you know, it's just it's just a matter of
time as you well, it's already happened, but it's just
amount of time as you see this level of growth
just continue, right, yeah, get you know, any construction company
that I've introduced Accumatic too is just typically blown away.
(24:13):
And then when you're seeing you know, we talk about
the maturing of the product, right, the maturity of the product.
Who's that driven by? It's driven by customers, it's driven
by partners. They listen to the community, you know, be
having the ability to vote, you know, to vote on
functionality and then what do you know to releases later
(24:33):
and that functionality is being part of the product. Uh,
and then other parts of maturing is you know, we
know payroll is a big one, unionized payroll, you know,
being a big one in Canada, being a big one
in the US. Have partners like lumber, you know, that
have come to the table that have brought a pretty
unique offering to to that space and this level of
(24:54):
you know, partnerships that best of being approach you can
really create you know, a techn ology stack that's that's
quite powerful. Yeah. Well then you know, again whether it's
it's payroll at HCM tools as well that Lubber offers,
and quite a number of options in the ecosystem as well.
There's no shortage, right, so customers know that they have
(25:15):
options and have the opportunity to do diligence with with
with any of the vendors that I call the marketplace
or what we call the app store as well, like
three hundred of them.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah. One of the other things I love about Acumatica
as well as you know they're providing all these you know,
solutions and everything, but they also provide a lot of
educational resources for people as well. So there's that whole
component of you know, we're not just going to be
throwing all these solutions at you and letting you, you know,
kind of fight to the death for which one is
right for you. But we're also going to be on
(25:49):
that journey with you, educating you on.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yes you need yes. Good good point. And I think
another unique proposition that ACUMATICA has, you know, the customer
bill of rights, putting the customer at the center of
the experience, taking out the predatory practices that are common
by some of the competitors a peers in the space.
You know, one of them being is you know, free
access to information uh and education. Right, you know, when
(26:15):
I tell organizations like hey, listen, you don't need to
be an acumatic A customer. You can just go on
their university and download a local instance and go through
a guide to see if it's right for you. Right,
I don't think, you know, I've yet to see that.
You know, that's as close as you're going to get
to a trial person talking about you know, cloud vendors
and giving access to their instance. Usually it's some type
(26:37):
of you know, controlled environment and things like that, but
but here you go, you can fully egalidate it. Then
you have the full help documentation all put the public domain.
It's not gated, right, So you know, that level of
transparency again should give customers or prospects or potential customers,
you know, that comfort and validation to see that, hey,
here's a vendor that is not hiding anything, right when
(26:58):
it comes to the full ruct share the system down
to the API end points being fully documented as a
part of documented as part of the public domain and
the Internet. Then you have the university that you have
the community, and the community is also very transparent. It's
the good, it's the bad, it's the ugly as well. Everything.
Acuumatica also listens to that for keeps you know, keeps
there the post to that donation that they're constantly improving.
(27:22):
So that's that's another big piece of of why you know,
organizations like Acumatica, Right, it's just a good you know,
combination of transparency, functionality, technology, great vendor viability in terms
of who they're back by, very unique pricing model as well.
It's a very cost effective and right size for the
type of organization you are, whether you're a five million
(27:43):
dollar growing GC or two in a million dollar GC
or specialty trade it's it's priced accordingly and it's affordable, right,
And that's again as we're seeing, just as this momentum
and growth is will not be stopped in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, you know, since we're on the ACUMATICA topic, I
would love for you to share with our audience. You
know how you guys at soft Engine, how you interact
with Acumatica, you know what your role is in that space,
just so our listeners can kind a little bit more
about what you guys do and how you're involved there.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah. So, soft Engine is a full service and white
glove collaborative ERP service provider. We've been in the ERP
space for about twenty years. We've picked up Acumatica in
the last few years just because, like I said, the
unique value proposition of functionality and technology and the platform
that it brings, especially in the construction and manufacturing and
(28:33):
field service space. We are a full service provider. When
it comes to ERP implementations, we'd go. We are everything
from pre sales all the way through to full appimentation
with a full bench of functional technical consultants, a full
development team, customization team, full support bench as well and
customer success and account manager. We are a full at
(28:53):
end service provider. We collaborate deeply with Acumatica when it
comes to any of the implementations or any assistance that
we need to be a full line of sight to
the ACUMATICA product development teams, product management teams, and their
services teams as well. We've had the opportunity to undertake
about seven to eight implementations now, all been going quite well.
(29:17):
We've recently had a customer being showcased at the Acumatica
summit as well. One of the fastest growing you know
gcs in Canada here called h Deconstruction. YEP, doing quite well.
They've been able to increase their their whip by about
fifty percent since implementing Acumatica. They've you know, they've been
(29:38):
raving about the productivity and the collaboration, the cycle time
that it takes to do things. They're looking at, you know,
a bunch of the best of breed tools in the
ecosystem and again they came back to my cal why
did we do this sooner? And they were using it.
We migrated them off pro Core as well. They had
a combination of pro or pro Core or quick Books
(30:00):
standalone CRM tools. So you know, now they're they're looking
ematics native PM tool because it's enough for them. Uh,
the Acumatic edits core constructing, the Core Construction Edition. They're
looking at a few of the other add ons of
the ecosystem as well, looking at stack, I know they're
going to be looking at eventually at you guys, sorry,
(30:20):
not uguised payroll. Think is they'll have an unused employees,
but payroll and HDM as well. So they're they're just
happy to be more of a modern ecosystem as well.
There's quite a number of other, uh you know, organizations
we're about to go live with that are quite happy,
one of them using the Construction edition with manufacturing and
field service as well. Again, being able to have multiple
(30:44):
disciplines on one unified platform and the same native code
base can really go a long way because it's not
just a construction platforming for businesses to change over time.
Uh you know, you have the ability to tap into
those other vertical issues and repeatable process and framework that
Acumatic has to offer. But we're excited. We're excited as
(31:06):
we're scaling up our ACUMATICA team. We're a fifty person shop,
which is kind of considered larger in the Acumatic system.
We have, you know, quite a number of consultants who
have had experience in the construction of field service space.
We pride ourselves on high customer satisfaction. We're roughly at
ninety seven percent, which.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Is that's incredible.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
It is it is an owner. It comes from our owner,
our owner. You know, it's important that we don't take
on badfit projects, so we do really vent out the
specific customers that that way or prospects that come away.
We want to make sure that they're ready right, so
as much as they're interviewing us, we're interviewing them because
a badfit project can cost a lot of money. You
can tarnish your name, you know. Not only do we
(31:47):
have Acumatica's name and brand to protect, we have our
own name and brand to protect it as well. And
we love reference stories. We want to make sure every
customer is referenceable. That is a mandate from our ownership,
and we've lost money on projects just to make sure
that the customers are happy. We will always make good
when it comes to customer satisfaction, and that's something we
(32:10):
pride ourselves on.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
I think that's one of the most important things to
focus on. I mean, regardless of what your business is,
what industry you're in, that customer satisfaction should always come first.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Your customers, your biggest advocates, and your business biggest source
of additional business. So why not make sure that they
are happy, make sure that you're always aligned with their leadership.
And part of our implementation strategy and methodology is that
they will sign off from one stage to the next,
so they're satisfaction of yes, from everything from the initial
(32:45):
kickoff to the goal live and UAT and post goal
live support, they will sign We cannot move to the
next stage of the implementation until they sign off and
we have their satisfaction, and that's part of our methodology.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Oh wow, I love that. I love that. So we're
getting kind into the end of our time here. So
just you know, kind of a looking ahead to the
future question for you, what emerging technologies do you think
will have the biggest impact specifically on construction ERP you know,
I think in the next five years or so.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, I think I think you're going to have you know,
there's just quite a number of you know, bidding and
estimation tools and takeoff tools that you're seeing in AI.
A lot of organizations want to be able to take
you know, previous bids and estimates, put it into a
big data repository, and be able to generate you know,
(33:37):
queries based upon us essentially have an AI engine to say,
here's the type of project we're working on, based upon
the you know, the last you know, fifty projects that
we've done in the space, you know, please spit out
the according you know parameters, or be able to spit
out a similar bid per se. So being able to
almost have you know what we call that not a
(33:57):
fixed bid approach, but being able to take the day
to mind the data and be able to give up
more accurate bids and estimates. Right, I think that's going
to be a big piece. AI obviously is a big buzzword,
but it truly will mean something you know, for the
construction industry, and we're starting to see a lot of
constructed companies think about that and how they could be
(34:18):
more responsive to bids, get up more bids on time,
be more accurate as well, and making sure that they
can maintain their margins. And a lot of that is
going to be tembedded on the big data and being
able to mind that data through through AI. Another one
obviously is like I said, you know, the bidding and
the estimation tools AI obviously is going to be another one,
(34:38):
and I think you know, interactive three D modeling BIM tools, right,
I think are going to be big. You know, we're
also seeing some enhancements and some other players and autodesks
you know, looking at integrations with Acumatic and they want
to do you know, they want to availables and then
play nice in the sad box as well. So again
I don't think there's gonna be any shortage of players,
(35:00):
Like I said, given the momentum Acumatic has that are
going to want to make sure that they integrate into
Acumatic as platforms. So everything and anything to make a
construction company's life easier in terms of the core competencies
and processes that they manage on a daily basis and
how they respond to bids and estimates and to their
clients and as well as collaborating with other trades and
(35:23):
things like that. It's everything's on the table in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Oh yeah, and you know, one of the cool things.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
So much there's so much potential for digitization because it's
the second least industry next to agriculture. As I started
things off, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
One of the just like side note one of the
cool things I saw for emerging technologies is actually using
like VR virtual reality headsets to go through like job
site planning all of that. So I was like coming
across articles on this and it just looked so cool,
and I'm like, let's do this like.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
That. You know, Like I said, the three D visualization
VR all is going to be coming, you know, coming
into play very soon. If it hasn't already, You're are
just seeing some IOSes and the acumatic ecosystem introducing some
of this. Uh, you know, I think I think there's
a lot of potential, and I think the the the
(36:18):
you know, they're they're open for business. The whole ecosystem
is open for business. And you're going to see a
lot more forward thinking technology companies, legacy technology companies in
the construction space, reinvent, repurpose their solutions for the cloud
and being a little bit more uh you know, technology
forward in a certain sense, being able to play nicer
(36:39):
the soundbox with more modern APIs, and then obviously embracing
all the newer protocols and concepts around three D modeling
vr AI, and obviously being able to mind a large
amounts of data.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, it's it's going to be a really interesting transformative
time and construction. I mean now, but also you know,
in the upcoming five years, it's going to be very
interesting to watch. And I'm glad that we got front
row seats or key players, you know, we're doing all
of that. So it's it's going to be really cool.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It is, it is. It's a great time for construction
organizations to really look at their technology stack, you know,
engage third party consultants if you need to do an
assessment of the technologies that you have, look at your
strategy as an organization. Where are you headed, Where do
you want to be, What do you want to be
known for. How do you want to be able to
drive additional customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction. How do you want
(37:34):
to retain you know, those employees to make sure you
have the right group of people. How do you want
to also build culture? Right? These are all these are
all part of the equation when it comes to digital transformation. Right,
I think it's organizations a lot more are going to
be going through this exercise in the next two, three,
four or five years as a lot of these legacy
(37:56):
tools are not going to be you know, enhanced or
there's going to very little improvements some of them make
sunset as well. And then overall just the need for
mobile tools applications in the field, right and uh and
being able to access them anywhere at any time.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, well this has been awesome, and you know, I
would love it if you can, you know, tell us
a little bit about how to contact you, how to
learn a little bit more about soft engine for anyone
in our audience that you know, really really enjoyed this
conversation and wants to learn more.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Yeah, I'm always open. I love conversations, whether it's just
asking me more about you know, some experience that I've had,
or just my my input or my pding or your
cares to learn more about acumatic and soft Engineer and
the other other solutions that we offer. You can contact
me at cal k L dot l I t T
at soft engine dot com exactly how it sounds or
(38:49):
six four seven three eight eight three two zero six
and that's cal dot lit at soft engine dot com
six four seven three eight eight three two zero six.
And I welcome all in every conversation.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Awesome. We'll make sure to put that all in the
description for you guys, as well as some links to
you know, your LinkedIn soft Engine's website, possibly Acumatica's website
as well. So yeah, I know, this was a really
great conversation. I really enjoyed having you on today and
you know, learning a lot more about ERPs and technology
within the industry. So thank you so much for being
(39:24):
here today, cal than you having me. Yeah, it's always
a good time when we get together to talk technology.
So all right, everyone, have a great rest of your day.
Thank you so much for tuning into CEOPOD, and I'll
see you next time.
All right, hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Coeopod.
I'm your host, Caroline and today I'm joined by cal
Lit from Soft Engine. How are you doing, Cal, I'm
doing well.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Can't complain the uh snow's starting to melt. It looks
like the sun's going to be out till past seven
thirty this week. So I'm excited about the changing of
the season and those welcoming because those dark days of
winter have got too, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Oh for sure. I know. I think we're supposed to
have a few more weeks of winter, but honestly, it
does not feel like it.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Nope, nope, cream weather today.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Awesome. Well, let's just go ahead and get this started.
So I'd love for you to tell you our audience
a little bit more about you, a little bit about
what you do and especially what your role is at
Soft Engine.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, I've had the opportunity to be what you call
the business application space for about teen sixteen years now.
I've been had the opportunity to work for organizations like Oracle, Microsoft,
work in the var ecosystem for NetSuite, directly for net Suite,
as well as Acumatica. This is my second go around
with building out an acumatica practice out of r passionate
(01:18):
about technology, passionate about helping people organizations address the challenges
that they have around their business, but more importantly, addressing
how they help and service their customers right and the
output of their organizations. If you go back a little
bit further in terms of how even got introduced to
ERP systems and business process for engineering, it was strictly
(01:40):
by chance. Coming out of high school, I really didn't
know what I wanted to do. There was a commerce
program out of a university here in Toronto and was
sponsored by SAP, and it was called ERP Systems Business
Process Engineering BPR. I was like, sure, I got accepted,
obviously had some good enough marks to get in. That's
(02:01):
where I had the opportunity to really get into the
world of you know, the data flow diagrams er D
diagrams and then you know, coding with visual basic and
understanding what ERP actually was. And you know, it was
a unique time in the late nineties where you started
seeing the changing of the guard of you know, legacy
systems to to you know cloud. And there was obviously
(02:24):
a few technologies that were out there, but the fact
that we had an opportunity to get our hands on
sa P R three was actually pretty cool. So yeah,
it was strictly by chance and how I got introduced
to this whole you know world of business applications in
the ERP.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, you know, going into something by chance. I feel
like that is so common, you know with people. It's
like I never really had an interest in this, and
it kind of just happened. But what was it? You know,
happened by chance? But what really made you stay? What
drew you into ERP systems? That was like the hook
for you?
Speaker 2 (02:58):
The hook really was having the ability to interact with
people and having more of a dynamic engagement on a
you know, every day basis. Every conversation is different, every
organization that I speak to has different or unique challenges.
It's an opportunity for me to really keep myself fresh,
learn about new businesses, learn about how organizations have you know,
(03:20):
come about. In terms of the entrepreneurial journey, is specific
family had if it's in the construction industry, or have
a manufacturer developed a specific idea and had a unique
value proposition and a product and brought it to market
and went from a small you know, million dollar shop
to a multimillion dollar or one hundred million dollar company.
It's those types of stories that really are you know,
(03:40):
make my days unique and different. Right, No one specific
day or conversation is necessarily the same. So I'm a
person who likes change and a person who likes to learn.
And I found very quickly, you know, for my time
and starting in sales and helping people with transportation and
buying Hondas to looking for Xerox, that I loved the
(04:04):
ability to understand, Hey, why are we speaking today, what
are the unique needs and challenges that you're trying to solve,
and who is that going to impact? Right, That's essentially
where my career started. I loved that positioning of being
a trusted advisor, and sometimes being a trusted advisor means
me not having the right product or service but also
pointing you in the right direction of where you should
(04:25):
probably probably be looking. Right. I always use the analogy
of hey, if you're looking at the Honda, you should
be looking at the Toyota, and that's no different in
the case of the ERP world as well. And making
sure that any client that we're speaking to is not
just is looking at the right players in the right sandbox,
because if they're not, one of us is in the
(04:46):
wrong place, then we really need to unpack that further
as to why they're looking at a specific solution versus another.
But again, typically there's the typical or usual suspects. When
you're talking about cloud mid market off the shelf cloud
hear pieces.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
To you know, we've talked about you, you know, your
long journey in this career and you know, bouncing between industries,
so being at you know, Honda, Oracle, Microsoft and then
you know, taking a more specialized route in doing acumatica
as well. So what are some unique challenges of implementing
these ERP systems in construction compared to other industries that
(05:23):
you've been in.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Well, we have to step back and look at the
construction industry as a whole, right, it is probably the
least or second least digitized industry or vertical if you
want to call it that, in comparison to agriculture. So
you know, we have a lot of organizations out there
(05:44):
that have built muscle memory, a lot of tribal knowledge,
family businesses that were built from the ground up that
are in successful places with you know, paper based processes, Excel, spreadsheets,
you know, quick books and things like that. Legacy tools
that exist in the construction space and the viewpoints of
(06:06):
the world. The CMI C is the Jonases of the world.
Organizations have been able to be successful doing what they
are with these types of tools, right again, manual, some automated,
some not, some just with legacy. But the biggest challenge
that you're starting to see now is not only is
there resistant to change, you're also seeing some level of
(06:32):
hesitation do to the fact that, well, we have a
secret sauce here, we don't want to move away from that,
right And you also have a changing of the guard
in a certain sense.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
You have the grandpa that pass it down to maybe
the sons, and now the sons are passing it down
to their millennial you know leadership, whether a couple of
the cousins of the organization, and you know that's quite
common in this space.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
You said that what we're starting to see is that
power shift, that power struggle, but that changing of experience
for the employees. Right. So the leadership being millennials, are asking, hey,
we need a better tools, productivity, collaboration, approval, workflows, notifications,
(07:21):
we need document management because we grew up in the internet,
you know age of Internet. Right, We were the first
ones to adopt the Internet. We were the first ones
to actually have the opportunity to have the Internet and
experience what this actually means. So we're starting to see
the ass from this millennial leadership or these new leaders
(07:43):
of the company where the parents have went off and
retired and they're asking for it. Right. Why because the
employee experience needs to change, because you need to retain talent. Right,
as you change the employee experience, that will change the
output of the organization, right of the output of the
organization changes about being more responsive, being you know automated,
(08:04):
being able to send you know, bills on time and
pro forma invoices, whatever the case may be, and just
reducing the cycle time that it takes from doing you
know activity A to B or A B to CD,
right and improving communication again, improving collaboration productivity. That's going
to change your customer experience because your output is changing.
Experience change, and the organizations are gonna want to work
(08:26):
with you more because like, hey, these guys are on
the ball. All the money, they're going to service my
clients better. You know, this is definitely a GC that
I want to work with, or this is a specialty
trade or something that you know, I like why because
you know, they're fully digitized, you know, they're on you know,
there's there's no errors here per se, and they're they're
you know, consistently communicating with us and very collaborative. And
that's the type of organization I want to work with.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
And you know, and not only changes you know, the
customer's perspective and experience with that company, but it also
changes you know, the employee experience of course. And one
of the things we're seeing a lot is, you know,
our labor shortage and you know, our our workforce is
aging out. We're trying to attract this new millennial gen
z talent and you know, one of the only ways
(09:09):
to do that are the most successful way to do
that is to implement technology, give them what they're used to,
give them what they know.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Very very true. Again, I think you said it there,
labor shortage or competing for talent wingd be important. So
if I'm you know, a young millennial or your gen
Z and I'm looking at an organization and seeing, okay,
what type of tools PM tools. Are they using estimating, takeoff,
(09:38):
bidding tools? You know, what is their core accounting system?
If I'm on the Office of Finance, you know, if
they're using legacy tools, outdated tools, spreadsheets, paper based processes
that I automatically start to compute and do that permutation
in my head say, hey, this is going to be
more of a difficult organization.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
To work with, right definitely.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
How quickly and effectively am I going to be able
to do my job? Am I going to be able
to get access to the data that I need to
make the right decisions in my position of power or
you know, whatever position that I might be interviewing for
might be a fit for within that organization. So I
think it's really important for organizations to really take you know,
construction and construction like companies, especially trades, GC's, land developers,
(10:23):
whatever the case may be, where there's typically been legacy
solutions and again resistance to digitization and transformation, to really
take a tougher, harder look at the options that are
out there. As we keep on saying, and the spirit
of nature of this conversation as being you know, digitization
and making sure that organizations are attracting the right type
(10:44):
of talent and also being ahead of the curve. Right,
even as an organization, it's it's important to understand that
you've grown to where you are today, but there's still
slow profit leak in many different areas, right, slow profit
leak is not one specific thing looking at you in
the eyes. It's death by a thousand cuts. Oh yeah.
(11:06):
And if you implement a digital strategy and transformation strategy
that's centered around core ERP and you know, and incorporating
the operational pieces that make you know your unique, uniquees organization,
you can eliminate anywhere between three to seven percent and
bring that back to your bottom line, back to ebit right.
(11:26):
And and essentially that's enough part at the end of
the gold right, that's enough goal to end the Rael
part of goal at the end of the rabel to
justify that investment, whether.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
It's two thousand knowledge right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
You know, for ten you know, ten billion dollar company,
three to seven percent that covers your investment in the
first year.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
And you know, we're talking about the construction industry and
how you know, we're a little bit more resistant to change.
You know, we have those you know, companies that have
been around for twenty years, and you know, we've been
doing it by paper for twenty years and it's.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Worked for us.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Why should we change? You know, I think that's a
lot a lot of the attitude is that, But it's
also you know, it's a scary thing. You know, when
you're used to doing something one way for so long
and then changing up those processes is also kind of
you know, it's scary. There's a lot of unknowns. But
what has been your most successful approach to getting buy
(12:17):
ins from you know, veteran project managers or superintendents or
people who are a little bit more resistant to that change.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Well, it really it starts off at the top line leadership.
Leadership needs to be bought in to this project. If
they're going to purchase an AIRP, if they're going to
go through a best of bad approach and look at
bidding estimation tools, take off tools, PM tools, and surround
it with a you know, modern you know, off the
shelf you know, cloud multi tenant cloud AIRP. At its core,
(12:49):
the leadership needs to make sure that one the organization
is being brought along that journey right, everyone has input
and they feel as if it's the organization's project, not
you know, Bob's or John's or the new you know
(13:10):
set of the CEO, whatever the case may be. So
make sure there's some excitement, make sure there's buying from
every level. You have champions in every department. You know
that I have bought it, that they have given their input,
and that their group's input is you know that their
needs challenges, that their voices are being heard. That's that's
from an evaluation pre sale standpoint, and even as you
(13:30):
go through the implementation. But when you're talking about you know,
the site supers the foreman's you know that have been
there for twenty or thirty years and still probably hanging
on for another five or ten. You have to introduce
change at a rate where it's going to be accepted. Right.
The braid has no upper limit to what it can learn,
but it has a limited the rate which it can learn, right,
(13:53):
So that organizations need to slowly introduce change. So, you know,
one example I've seen is, you know John the form
and you know his wife has been complaining that he
never picks up his phone, but he doesn't because he's
focused on his job. So what do we do? Give
him a rug and iPad, say hey, your wife wants
you to check your email once an hour if she
needs to, you know, get contact with you. So so
(14:14):
check it and slowly he realized, oh, this is pretty cool.
So he got comfortable with the iPad. Right, And the
next thing is great, next time you want to raise
a change order or insigation R five, there's a problem
with the same take a picture of it and then
email it back to the office so we know the chap.
So he got more comfortable with using iPad and taking
(14:35):
a picture. Great. Step three, here's this PM tool within
this system. The next time I want you to just
open the system, take a picture and then send it
to me and put in some notes and details of
what this actually is. So these are some little anecdotal
examples that organizations can slowly introduce change, right, But again
(14:56):
it also has to you also to take it together.
These also have to be carefully planned on on who
you're selecting as these change agents, because there's definitely always
people who are going to resist change, right, and it's
the you know, it's usually some of the folks who
feel as if their job might be threatened or their
(15:17):
existence might be threatened.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
It takes a lot of planning, you know, a lot
of strategy, but also not just you know, throwing this
solution at the team and saying this is what we're doing,
kind of easing them into it a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, and again it's a lot of it's finding the
right change agents, right, finding that the sponsors within the
organization that are going to help spread that change. Right.
So it's not hitting you over the head now shall
do this, But realistically it's coming from your peers rather
than leadership sometimes where you have that level you know
of resistance between you know, you know leaders or boss
(15:56):
and supported it per se. But find your agents at
the line level what I like to call it, that
are going to help you with that change. And then
you know that specific example of introducing a rugged tablet
to the guy whose you know wife has been contacting him, right,
and then move him to phase two by telling you
to take a picture of some issue of a site
and then eventually introduce them to the to the PM
(16:17):
two that can allow him to raise an RFI.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, I love that. And you know we're we're talking
about you know, once you know, so they make the
decision to embrace this change, embrace this new technology in
your experience what is the most common like light bulb
aha moment that when they finally do embrace this technology
and this transformation, how they see that helping them out.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Well, they have more time to do their job better. Right,
Sometimes they have more time to do value added items
to the organization. Right. Sometimes zero was working on administrative
monotonous activities that are really value they just have to
do because they have to do to complete their job.
(17:04):
That's one piece of it. At the leadership level, it's
organizations or leaders that are always overworked, don't have enough
time for their family, for their kids. They are missing
soccer practices, dance recitals. You know, once you have a
more mobile tool, something that's in the cloud, you can
be on the beach now and go through those approvals
and notifications and always have a pulse on the business
(17:26):
right and feel okay with enjoying your success per se
as as an owner. And that's what I find with
a lot of ownership in this space. They're overworked. They're
just too invested in their in their in their business. Rightfully,
so they're they're invested, but because they don't have that
level a tool or technology that's flexible, you know, where
(17:47):
they can access the business anywhere, anytime, and check on
the health of the business, check on you know, the
whipp report, check on the profitability on a specific approach.
I can be able to be responsive and and and
address any escalations on a flow or you know, changeolders
or you know, get approvals being a big one as well.
If they're not able to have a tool that allows
(18:09):
them to be flexible in that regard that they're always
going to be in town, that always going to the office,
are always going to be on site, and and and
you know, have that you know that chain and mall
effect in a certain sense right to every project and
their business right and far too many times I've seen that,
you know, I have friends who own successful construction GC
companies here and the greater Toronto area, where that's just
(18:31):
the case that you know, I'm just I can't leave.
If I leave, you know, it feels like sometimes you know,
the roof is going to cave in. So a few
of these organizations I've introduced acumatica too, or say, cal,
why do I listen to you sooner and sooner? I
didn't realize how much time this will save us and
how happy your employees would be I can actually take vacation.
(18:52):
I can just log in and you know, from my
phone and get access to the health of the business
on any project. And it's just it's just it's so
much more easier to manage my business and still be
able to give tie back to my family that enjoy
my success.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That's you know, That's the one of the really big
things that I've noticed with talking to you know, construction owners,
CEOs all of these people, is, you know, the work
life balance is really difficult sometimes, you know, and with
technologies like this, with ERP systems, that work life balance
does improve, but in some sense it's still really really
(19:27):
hard to you know, pull yourself away sometimes.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
It definitely is. And again I know there's going to
be lots of folks listening to this, to this podcast
and owners of businesses like, yeah, how you deal on
the head. It's hard step away from the business. I
see it far too often.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, you know, we're talking about you know, ERP systems
and you know, switching over. And when I think one
of the really great things and tools we have is ACUMATICA.
It is so all encompassing, you know, really you come
to it with your needs and they can help you
either through they offer or through is SB solutions, you know,
through lumber through all these different ones. So I think,
(20:06):
you know, i'd really like to talk a little bit
more on Acumatica and you know what they provide to
people and how this can be a solution that really
you know, you can tailor it to your business, you
can fit it to your needs.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, yeah, Acumatica definitely. You know what what you know,
I've dabbled myself in a few of these, you know,
the common players in the ARP space, and that suits
the Microsofts of the world, you know, stages and the
stages of the world. But I always gravitate right back
to the acumatic ecosystem just because of how unique their
construction offering is, right, and it caters to to anyone
(20:41):
who's in the construction industry, as I said previously, whether
you're at GC, specialty trade, specialty contract or land developer,
you know ret it's there are many different use cases
for Acumatica in that space. The flexible platform, you know,
at the core, obviously you have a very strong account
system that has a multi currency, multi entity you know,
(21:05):
full you know, tax currency banking module with all the
full automations that you can provide you know, repeatable processes
and framework. When it comes to the construction reporting construction industry,
all the compliance features that you need, managing holdbacks, retainage
you have built in CRM if required, and you have extensions.
(21:25):
Right if you're a construction company doing UH manufacturing or
have some level of manufacturing, you can tap into those
cross functional workflows. If you have some level of you know,
field service or after a warranty, service work or recurring
service appointments, things like that, you can tap into the
field service module. So it provides a really great foundation
(21:46):
for organizations out of the box to you know, to
really mitigate risk without you know, getting into the software
industry and building something custom And my experience and what
you see in some of the competitors, they're about five
plus years ahead of the competitors when it comes to,
you know, bringing this type of product to market, when
you're talking about a true cloud multi tenant you know
(22:06):
offering for the construction industry. Right, as we've seen in
the last five years, there's just been hockey stick growth
with with this, with this Acumatic Construction edition and the
level of innovation that we're seeing with it. You know,
seventy eight hundred enhancements to the to the platform. And
these aren't bun fixes or anything like that. These are
actual enhancements, workflow enhancements, you know, automations. You know now
(22:28):
with AI being you know, a buzzwords and that being
added to Acumatic and can short over as well. You know,
we're seeing just the level of innovation is is just
far any of the other you know, other vendors that
I had experienced with, right, So that's that's one piece
of it, is just the level of innovation where they are,
(22:49):
you know, as a platform, right, as you said, you know,
it's not just a business application or you know or
you know in that sense, it truly is a platform, right,
a lot of out of the box function. But then
you have the opportunity to tap into best breed tools,
a right, PM tools, whether it's you know, pro core
or any of the other PM tools that are available
(23:10):
in the acamutic ecosystem, you know, bidding estimation tools, pross stack.
You know, there's no shortage of ivs that have said, hey,
this acumatic vendor here is going to be quite the
player and already is at the construction space. We need
to migrate our technology to that ecosystem. And then once
(23:31):
they see how modern the APIs and the technology being
you know, Microsoft Centric power biomes on services in terms
of the gold center of public cloud data centers, right,
they're like, wow, it's easy to integrate. Right, It's never
the limiting factor when it comes to Acumatic is never
the limiting factor when it comes to integration. Supporting all
the latest and greatest protocols when it comes to you know,
(23:53):
a pis, web hooks, web services and things like that.
So you know, it's just it's just a matter of
time as you well, it's already happened, but it's just
amount of time as you see this level of growth
just continue, right, yeah, get you know, any construction company
that I've introduced Accumatic too is just typically blown away.
(24:13):
And then when you're seeing you know, we talk about
the maturing of the product, right, the maturity of the product.
Who's that driven by? It's driven by customers, it's driven
by partners. They listen to the community, you know, be
having the ability to vote, you know, to vote on
functionality and then what do you know to releases later
(24:33):
and that functionality is being part of the product. Uh,
and then other parts of maturing is you know, we
know payroll is a big one, unionized payroll, you know,
being a big one in Canada, being a big one
in the US. Have partners like lumber, you know, that
have come to the table that have brought a pretty
unique offering to to that space and this level of
(24:54):
you know, partnerships that best of being approach you can
really create you know, a techn ology stack that's that's
quite powerful. Yeah. Well then you know, again whether it's
it's payroll at HCM tools as well that Lubber offers,
and quite a number of options in the ecosystem as well.
There's no shortage, right, so customers know that they have
(25:15):
options and have the opportunity to do diligence with with
with any of the vendors that I call the marketplace
or what we call the app store as well, like
three hundred of them.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah. One of the other things I love about Acumatica
as well as you know they're providing all these you know,
solutions and everything, but they also provide a lot of
educational resources for people as well. So there's that whole
component of you know, we're not just going to be
throwing all these solutions at you and letting you, you know,
kind of fight to the death for which one is
right for you. But we're also going to be on
(25:49):
that journey with you, educating you on.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yes you need yes. Good good point. And I think
another unique proposition that ACUMATICA has, you know, the customer
bill of rights, putting the customer at the center of
the experience, taking out the predatory practices that are common
by some of the competitors a peers in the space.
You know, one of them being is you know, free
access to information uh and education. Right, you know, when
(26:15):
I tell organizations like hey, listen, you don't need to
be an acumatic A customer. You can just go on
their university and download a local instance and go through
a guide to see if it's right for you. Right,
I don't think, you know, I've yet to see that.
You know, that's as close as you're going to get
to a trial person talking about you know, cloud vendors
and giving access to their instance. Usually it's some type
(26:37):
of you know, controlled environment and things like that, but
but here you go, you can fully egalidate it. Then
you have the full help documentation all put the public domain.
It's not gated, right, So you know, that level of
transparency again should give customers or prospects or potential customers,
you know, that comfort and validation to see that, hey,
here's a vendor that is not hiding anything, right when
(26:58):
it comes to the full ruct share the system down
to the API end points being fully documented as a
part of documented as part of the public domain and
the Internet. Then you have the university that you have
the community, and the community is also very transparent. It's
the good, it's the bad, it's the ugly as well. Everything.
Acuumatica also listens to that for keeps you know, keeps
there the post to that donation that they're constantly improving.
(27:22):
So that's that's another big piece of of why you know,
organizations like Acumatica, Right, it's just a good you know,
combination of transparency, functionality, technology, great vendor viability in terms
of who they're back by, very unique pricing model as well.
It's a very cost effective and right size for the
type of organization you are, whether you're a five million
(27:43):
dollar growing GC or two in a million dollar GC
or specialty trade it's it's priced accordingly and it's affordable, right,
And that's again as we're seeing, just as this momentum
and growth is will not be stopped in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, you know, since we're on the ACUMATICA topic, I
would love for you to share with our audience. You
know how you guys at soft Engine, how you interact
with Acumatica, you know what your role is in that space,
just so our listeners can kind a little bit more
about what you guys do and how you're involved there.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah. So, soft Engine is a full service and white
glove collaborative ERP service provider. We've been in the ERP
space for about twenty years. We've picked up Acumatica in
the last few years just because, like I said, the
unique value proposition of functionality and technology and the platform
that it brings, especially in the construction and manufacturing and
(28:33):
field service space. We are a full service provider. When
it comes to ERP implementations, we'd go. We are everything
from pre sales all the way through to full appimentation
with a full bench of functional technical consultants, a full
development team, customization team, full support bench as well and
customer success and account manager. We are a full at
(28:53):
end service provider. We collaborate deeply with Acumatica when it
comes to any of the implementations or any assistance that
we need to be a full line of sight to
the ACUMATICA product development teams, product management teams, and their
services teams as well. We've had the opportunity to undertake
about seven to eight implementations now, all been going quite well.
(29:17):
We've recently had a customer being showcased at the Acumatica
summit as well. One of the fastest growing you know
gcs in Canada here called h Deconstruction. YEP, doing quite well.
They've been able to increase their their whip by about
fifty percent since implementing Acumatica. They've you know, they've been
(29:38):
raving about the productivity and the collaboration, the cycle time
that it takes to do things. They're looking at, you know,
a bunch of the best of breed tools in the
ecosystem and again they came back to my cal why
did we do this sooner? And they were using it.
We migrated them off pro Core as well. They had
a combination of pro or pro Core or quick Books
(30:00):
standalone CRM tools. So you know, now they're they're looking
ematics native PM tool because it's enough for them. Uh,
the Acumatic edits core constructing, the Core Construction Edition. They're
looking at a few of the other add ons of
the ecosystem as well, looking at stack, I know they're
going to be looking at eventually at you guys, sorry,
(30:20):
not uguised payroll. Think is they'll have an unused employees,
but payroll and HDM as well. So they're they're just
happy to be more of a modern ecosystem as well.
There's quite a number of other, uh you know, organizations
we're about to go live with that are quite happy,
one of them using the Construction edition with manufacturing and
field service as well. Again, being able to have multiple
(30:44):
disciplines on one unified platform and the same native code
base can really go a long way because it's not
just a construction platforming for businesses to change over time.
Uh you know, you have the ability to tap into
those other vertical issues and repeatable process and framework that
Acumatic has to offer. But we're excited. We're excited as
(31:06):
we're scaling up our ACUMATICA team. We're a fifty person shop,
which is kind of considered larger in the Acumatic system.
We have, you know, quite a number of consultants who
have had experience in the construction of field service space.
We pride ourselves on high customer satisfaction. We're roughly at
ninety seven percent, which.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Is that's incredible.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
It is it is an owner. It comes from our owner,
our owner. You know, it's important that we don't take
on badfit projects, so we do really vent out the
specific customers that that way or prospects that come away.
We want to make sure that they're ready right, so
as much as they're interviewing us, we're interviewing them because
a badfit project can cost a lot of money. You
can tarnish your name, you know. Not only do we
(31:47):
have Acumatica's name and brand to protect, we have our
own name and brand to protect it as well. And
we love reference stories. We want to make sure every
customer is referenceable. That is a mandate from our ownership,
and we've lost money on projects just to make sure
that the customers are happy. We will always make good
when it comes to customer satisfaction, and that's something we
(32:10):
pride ourselves on.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
I think that's one of the most important things to
focus on. I mean, regardless of what your business is,
what industry you're in, that customer satisfaction should always come first.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Your customers, your biggest advocates, and your business biggest source
of additional business. So why not make sure that they
are happy, make sure that you're always aligned with their leadership.
And part of our implementation strategy and methodology is that
they will sign off from one stage to the next,
so they're satisfaction of yes, from everything from the initial
(32:45):
kickoff to the goal live and UAT and post goal
live support, they will sign We cannot move to the
next stage of the implementation until they sign off and
we have their satisfaction, and that's part of our methodology.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Oh wow, I love that. I love that. So we're
getting kind into the end of our time here. So
just you know, kind of a looking ahead to the
future question for you, what emerging technologies do you think
will have the biggest impact specifically on construction ERP you know,
I think in the next five years or so.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, I think I think you're going to have you know,
there's just quite a number of you know, bidding and
estimation tools and takeoff tools that you're seeing in AI.
A lot of organizations want to be able to take
you know, previous bids and estimates, put it into a
big data repository, and be able to generate you know,
(33:37):
queries based upon us essentially have an AI engine to say,
here's the type of project we're working on, based upon
the you know, the last you know, fifty projects that
we've done in the space, you know, please spit out
the according you know parameters, or be able to spit
out a similar bid per se. So being able to
almost have you know what we call that not a
(33:57):
fixed bid approach, but being able to take the day
to mind the data and be able to give up
more accurate bids and estimates. Right, I think that's going
to be a big piece. AI obviously is a big buzzword,
but it truly will mean something you know, for the
construction industry, and we're starting to see a lot of
constructed companies think about that and how they could be
(34:18):
more responsive to bids, get up more bids on time,
be more accurate as well, and making sure that they
can maintain their margins. And a lot of that is
going to be tembedded on the big data and being
able to mind that data through through AI. Another one
obviously is like I said, you know, the bidding and
the estimation tools AI obviously is going to be another one,
(34:38):
and I think you know, interactive three D modeling BIM tools, right,
I think are going to be big. You know, we're
also seeing some enhancements and some other players and autodesks
you know, looking at integrations with Acumatic and they want
to do you know, they want to availables and then
play nice in the sad box as well. So again
I don't think there's gonna be any shortage of players,
(35:00):
Like I said, given the momentum Acumatic has that are
going to want to make sure that they integrate into
Acumatic as platforms. So everything and anything to make a
construction company's life easier in terms of the core competencies
and processes that they manage on a daily basis and
how they respond to bids and estimates and to their
clients and as well as collaborating with other trades and
(35:23):
things like that. It's everything's on the table in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Oh yeah, and you know, one of the cool things.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
So much there's so much potential for digitization because it's
the second least industry next to agriculture. As I started
things off, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
One of the just like side note one of the
cool things I saw for emerging technologies is actually using
like VR virtual reality headsets to go through like job
site planning all of that. So I was like coming
across articles on this and it just looked so cool,
and I'm like, let's do this like.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
That. You know, Like I said, the three D visualization
VR all is going to be coming, you know, coming
into play very soon. If it hasn't already, You're are
just seeing some IOSes and the acumatic ecosystem introducing some
of this. Uh, you know, I think I think there's
a lot of potential, and I think the the the
(36:18):
you know, they're they're open for business. The whole ecosystem
is open for business. And you're going to see a
lot more forward thinking technology companies, legacy technology companies in
the construction space, reinvent, repurpose their solutions for the cloud
and being a little bit more uh you know, technology
forward in a certain sense, being able to play nicer
(36:39):
the soundbox with more modern APIs, and then obviously embracing
all the newer protocols and concepts around three D modeling
vr AI, and obviously being able to mind a large
amounts of data.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, it's it's going to be a really interesting transformative
time and construction. I mean now, but also you know,
in the upcoming five years, it's going to be very
interesting to watch. And I'm glad that we got front
row seats or key players, you know, we're doing all
of that. So it's it's going to be really cool.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It is, it is. It's a great time for construction
organizations to really look at their technology stack, you know,
engage third party consultants if you need to do an
assessment of the technologies that you have, look at your
strategy as an organization. Where are you headed, Where do
you want to be, What do you want to be
known for. How do you want to be able to
drive additional customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction. How do you want
(37:34):
to retain you know, those employees to make sure you
have the right group of people. How do you want
to also build culture? Right? These are all these are
all part of the equation when it comes to digital transformation. Right,
I think it's organizations a lot more are going to
be going through this exercise in the next two, three,
four or five years as a lot of these legacy
(37:56):
tools are not going to be you know, enhanced or
there's going to very little improvements some of them make
sunset as well. And then overall just the need for
mobile tools applications in the field, right and uh and
being able to access them anywhere at any time.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, well this has been awesome, and you know, I
would love it if you can, you know, tell us
a little bit about how to contact you, how to
learn a little bit more about soft engine for anyone
in our audience that you know, really really enjoyed this
conversation and wants to learn more.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Yeah, I'm always open. I love conversations, whether it's just
asking me more about you know, some experience that I've had,
or just my my input or my pding or your
cares to learn more about acumatic and soft Engineer and
the other other solutions that we offer. You can contact
me at cal k L dot l I t T
at soft engine dot com exactly how it sounds or
(38:49):
six four seven three eight eight three two zero six
and that's cal dot lit at soft engine dot com
six four seven three eight eight three two zero six.
And I welcome all in every conversation.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Awesome. We'll make sure to put that all in the
description for you guys, as well as some links to
you know, your LinkedIn soft Engine's website, possibly Acumatica's website
as well. So yeah, I know, this was a really
great conversation. I really enjoyed having you on today and
you know, learning a lot more about ERPs and technology
within the industry. So thank you so much for being
(39:24):
here today, cal than you having me. Yeah, it's always
a good time when we get together to talk technology.
So all right, everyone, have a great rest of your day.
Thank you so much for tuning into CEOPOD, and I'll
see you next time.
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