Overview of the Smartsheet Platform
Smartsheet is a cloud-based work platform that has a familiar spreadsheet-like interface. You can plan, track, and manage projects in real-time. Smartsheet collaborative platform offers a range of tools, such as document and resource management, project reporting, and timeline tracking, to mention a few.
Smartsheet has many usages and is exceptionally adaptable for the construction industry, particularly your roofing company. In the following paragraphs, we will explore just some of the ways you can implement this technology in your business.
Administrative work
Like most businesses, you probably have one of the many available accounting systems that keep track of your daily financial transitions with basic reporting features. Some even have a dashboard with a few graphics showing cash balances, payables, and receivable charts. Having the data in a program is just a start; to grow profitably, you have to have accurate data in front of you and have confidence in that data. You also have to know what the information is telling you.
The magic begins once you get data into Smartsheet to start a thorough quantitative and qualitative deep-dive analysis. Together, project managers and stakeholders analyze potential projects based on data-driven conclusions that direct decision-makers toward the most appropriate and rewarding projects. Your goal is to put a management strategy in place that evaluates potential projects and uses that evaluation to prioritize and implement your projects.
Human Resources
You can set up the HR Suite to quickly fulfill your Human Resource tracking needs.
Recruiting and talent acquisition – track your return on investment (ROI) on recruiting activities, stay on top of your budgets, and streamline internal planning and coordination with your hiring managers.
Employee onboarding – streamline your processes and paperwork, and maintain a fully auditable database that will assist you in growing your business.
Employee resourcing and management – Increase visibility into your policies, office calendars, and internal forms, and centralize your critical resources to have a better-informed team.
Sales, Estimating, Planning, and Tracking Jobs
Sales teams can track leads and prospects, sales, contract closes, commissions, and close ratios. Contracts move through the approval process with automated alerts and approvals automatically requesting the required signatures and informing accounting or payroll about specific financial tracking needs. When work is completed, contract details, work notes, labor records, and accounting data are all moved into a closeout sheet for final review before archiving.
With Smartsheet, you can capture project leads and detailed data on roofing jobs completed over the history of your company: material costs, duration, labor hours required, unexpected issues, and more. This information helps the company's estimators understand what a new project would require and when crews will be available so work can begin.
Keeping track of your historical data on all the projects you have completed lets you know the man-hours it has taken to do the job, material underages and overages, and the equipment used. Your team can see how long the project has taken, what time of year it was done, the type of crew, and how many men.
The operations team can use Smartsheet to plan and schedule every step of a job, then track its status as work progresses. Managers get real-time visibility into the status of any project; if work is 30% complete but 40% of the allocated materials and labor have been used, leaders can step in to identify the problems, reset processes or expectations, and get things moving in the right direction.
It's easier to capture real-time details because users can access forms and data on their phones. With many team members on the go-between job sites, mobile access ensures they can get the most current information on a job before they arrive.
Team and Stakeholder Reporting
Dashboards make it easy for the estimating, sales, and operations teams to share information that is needed to make decisions.
In a C-level or other Senior Management position in your company, you must have the information you can crunch and have confidence that it's accurate. Dashboards make it easy to streamline the process. The nice thing about Smartsheet is once you get the data in, you can have your dashboards with your KPIs and company benchmarks all preset on one side and actuals on the other half. You can make your projections with numbers, graphs, or whatever works for you, and in minutes, you can get your company's health.
Customer Reporting
With the same concept as dashboards, you can set up your clients to have secured access portals to the data you need to share. Your customers can access this information on a desktop, smartphone, or tablet device.
Smartsheet is a great way to streamline your company's processes. You and your team will spend less time looking for information, with it all being in one location. Your team will collaborate and share information over one platform with confidence in the built-in security. Smartsheet has robust global security features and administrative controls that enable you to audit ownership, access, and usage. Your data is safe and can only be edited or viewed to those you set up with permissions.