Report from the Front – Observations from a Veteran Construction Software Consultant

By Sheldon Needle

Based on a conversation I recently had with a very experienced ERP consultant who works with a variety of contractors, here are some timely observations about some of the most common challenges faced by prospective buyers of integrated job accounting and construction project management solutions.

Challenge #1: Getting straight answers on price
One of the first things many prospective buyers of construction software want to know is what will it cost them.
But vendors don’t like to talk about price until late in the evaluation process. A frequent technique is to lowball the software price up front on basic applications and then have price creep once you start adding applications. In fact one well known construction software vendor represented that he could sell his software to a single user prospect for $3,500. When the prospective buyer said he needed their estimating and document management applications he was charged for $1,300 for the estimating, $500 for document management, $1,000 for first year maintenance and $1,080 for 8 hours of job accounting training. But who knows whether that would be enough? When he said he needed 2 users instead of one, they added on another $1,595.

Bottom line, what started out as $3,500 product, quickly escalated to almost $10,000.

Challenge #2: Industry FUD
When vendors start slamming one other using the class FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) approach they may bring up that the vendor does not support the product, that the product is unstable or that the product will shortly be replaced by something new. But how do you separate fact from trash talk? The fact is that sometimes these accusations may be largely true. But it’s practically impossible for the buying prospect to determine the truth.

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