In a previous entry I highlighted how construction software reviews can be useful when you are thinking about buying software. Another point to consider, albeit with a grain of salt, is the case study.

When contemplating a major purchase, the opinion of other people who have made the same investment can be quite useful. Sometimes this can be quite simple — find someone in a parking lot who drives the make and model of the car you covet and chat for a few minutes, and you’ll learn a lot about that automobile. Sometimes, though, it can be difficult — after all, it’s hard to ask a fellow runner what he or she thinks about a certain brand of shoe in the middle of a road race.

For this reason vendors of all types, including construction software companies, put together case studies. A case study essentially discusses the “before” and “after” for a vendor’s customer — how that customer struggled to get by before buying construction software compared to how life became much easier after the customer started using the software. (When you go to a vendor’s website, look for pages marked “Success Stories” or “Testimonials” or “What Customers Say” and that will likely bring you to the case studies.)

One of our writers was recently doing some research and came across a couple compelling Maxwell Systems case studies. Residential builder K. Alan Co., for example, described how it used Maxwell’s estimating software. Said Rocky McCampbell, K. Alan’s estimator, builder and general operator:

Before I began using Maxwell Systems software products, my bid information was compiled on many, many pages of legal note pads. Viewing or capturing that information was a frustrating exercise in page flipping. Now the pricing information I need is categorically listed in my database and I can easily transfer the information and work I generate during the course of creating a [construction] estimate from Estimators Notepad to my estimate.

As you can see, information like this can helpful if you have seen a construction software vendor’s list of product features and benefits but want to know how that all can be put into action.

Of course, there is a major caveat — few case studies will say anything unflattering about a product. If a customer had trouble with implementation, say, or training end users or migrating data, you may be hard pressed to find that out from the case study.

To learn about a construction software package’s pain points, you’ll have to go straight to who is using the construction software — whether it’s over the phone, over a business lunch or in between sessions of an industry conference. It is an extra step, but it will help put the vendor’s case study into a proper context.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Construction industry news and trends, Estimating software, Construction software user stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.