InEight "Keep Your Secret Sauce" Leverage, Don't Replace, Your Spreadsheets
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Want to upgrade to a modern cost estimation solution but don’t want to give up your time-tested spreadsheet calculations? What if you could keep your custom calculations *AND* enjoy all the benefits of a leading cost estimation and control platform? Watch on-demand webinar now to learn how you can keep your secret sauce by leveraging, not replacing, spreadsheets for better estimating and control.
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InEight "Keep Your Secret Sauce" Leverage, Don't Replace, Your Spreadsheets
- 1. © 2016 InEight Inc. All rights reserved. Keep Your Secret Sauce Leverage – Don’t Replace – Spreadsheets
- 2. • Introductions • Keep your secret sauce • Examples of integrating HD and Microsoft Excel • Summary Agenda
- 4. InEight Introduction InEight combines proven ability with a unified vision to help companies visualize, estimate, control and connect all aspects of their capital and maintenance projects, from the back office to the jobsite, across the project lifecycle. • Helping project-driven companies since 1989 • More than 20,000 users in more than 500 companies across 33 countries
- 5. Sample Customers Mining Oil & Gas UtilitiesInfrastructureBuilding
- 6. Speaker Introduction Paul Bennion Director of Training • More than 12 years working at InEight • Estimating and project controls training and consulting services for the construction industry
- 7. Keep Your Secret Sauce
- 8. Let’s Set the Stage – “Secret Sauce”
- 9. McDonald’s Secret Sauce • Key ingredient of its flagship product • McDonald’s has grown to 36,000 locations in more than 100 countries
- 10. Coke’s Secret Formula • Same formula for over 125 years • Company now worth $195 Billion
- 11. Apple’s “Secret Sauce” • Superior design • Most valuable brand in the world
- 12. What is Your Secret Sauce? Secret Sauce Differentiator Value= =
- 13. The Key Ingredient Dashboard Reporting Estimating Software
- 14. Poll: How Are You Using Spreadsheets Today?
- 15. Do You Sometimes Feel Like This? New Software Your secret sauce
- 16. Good News: You Can Keep Your Secret Sauce Your secret sauce
- 17. Examples of Integrating HD and Microsoft Excel
- 18. 1. Update your labor rates 2. Import progress data from the field to HD 3. Link from HD to Excel to leverage take-offs and calculate production Leveraging Your Spreadsheets: 3 Use Cases
- 19. 1. Update Your Labor Rates
- 20. Challenge: “We don’t have an easy way to keep labor rates up to date for accurate estimating.” • You want to use detailed labor rates (e.g., fringes, insurance, etc.) • You want to update them regularly (e.g. twice a year) • A LOT of work to manually to type them in 1. Update Your Labor Rates
- 21. 1. Update Your Labor Rates - Demo
- 22. Solution Benefits: • Spend less time doing manual data entry = More time to win bids • Less likely to put off updating rates, so they stay current • More detailed labor rate breakdowns improve estimate accuracy 1. Update Your Labor Rates
- 23. 2. Import Progress Data from the Field to HD
- 24. Challenge: “How can I get my progress data from the field into a system for status reporting and forecasting?” • You already have a system in place for collecting field data • You want to take advantage of project management software for project analysis and forecasting • Too much work to manually enter progress into a project management tool 2. Import Progress Data from the Field to HD
- 25. 2. Import Progress Data from the Field to HD - Demo
- 26. Solution Benefits: • Take advantage of data you’re already collecting anyways • Get better insight into project status • Save time by eliminating data entry 2. Import Progress Data from the Field to HD
- 27. 3. Link from HD to Excel to Leverage Take-offs and Calculate Production
- 28. Challenge: “The calculations we use for take-offs and production are far beyond what any estimating system can do.” • You would like to take advantage of a standardized estimating tool, but you can’t give up the calculations you use in Excel • Manually entering information calculated on the side is time consuming and error-prone • The calculating abilities of standard estimating systems are limited compared to Excel 3. Link from HD to Excel
- 29. 3. Link from HD to Excel to Leverage Take-offs and Calculate Production - Demo
- 30. Solution Benefits: • No need to learn a new tool for doing take-offs and other calculations • Easy to update your estimate when specifications change • Keep everything together by storing your take-offs and other spreadsheets with your estimate 3. Link from HD to Excel
- 31. Summary
- 32. Keep Your Sauce and Get the Best of Both Worlds Your secret sauce Standardized Database Reporting Benchmarking Schedule Integration Forecasting Complex Formulas Calculations Quick Editing & Revisions Import/Export Between Systems
- 33. From the back office to the jobsite, InEight solutions can be leveraged across all steps of the project lifecycle to provide the visibility and control needed to achieve business success. Single Version of the Truth Bi-directional integration with Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project schedules enables time-phased estimates and schedule analysis Integrations available across leading project accounting and ERP platforms • Create quantity-based estimates and budgets • Change order costing • Benchmarking • Short interval planning, claiming and commissioning • Plan progress and quantities consumed • Equipment inspection and maintenance • Establish resource plans in preparation for interval planning • Quantity-based planning and execution • Quantity-based measurement and reporting • Comprehensive 4-D,5-D, and n-D visual reporting • All as-built details captured in single viewer • Owner benefits from unified visual model with complete as-built details and documentation Enterprise reports and dashboards across the project lifecycle Various design models leveraged to create unified model Bi-directional integration with Microsoft Excel enables embedding of custom calculations and company best practices for more accurate estimates Quantity and Material Take-off (QTO/MTO) speeds creation of accurate estimates Quickly build estimates based on standard cost libraries
- 34. 1. Respond to the post-webinar survey 2. Contact us for more details info@ineight.com (800) 637-7496 (480) 776-2900 www.ineight.com Next Steps
- 35. Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- Thank you John, and good afternoon everyone. As John said, my name is Paul Bennion and I am the Director of Training for InEight. Over the last 12 years at InEight, I’ve been focused on training and consulting with construction companies to help them improve their estimating and project controls processes. To begin today…
- Let’s talk about how you can keep your secret sauce
- But first, let’s set the stage… what do we mean by secret sauce? Let’s take a look at 3 very well known companies and how their “secret sauce” helped them be successful.
- I remember seeing the McDonald’s signs as a kid, of how many billions of hamburgers they’d sold . . . Well, I think McDonald’s stopped counting how many burgers they’ve sold a long time ago. The success of the McDonald’s brand owes much to it’s most popular sandwich and it’s secret sauce (even though it’s really not so secret anymore - you can find the recipe easily enough online today). But, the term “secret sauce” was coined in 1974, when advertising execs realized it was something unique that they could point out, that gave value and made them different from the rest. In a business sense, you could say McDonald’s secret sauce may also include their consistency - you always know what you’re going to get, or their ability to standardize the processes of running a restaurant so almost anyone can do it, and do it efficiently.
- Coca Cola Company has kept their formula secret for over 125 years, stored in a vault to this day. One can argue that sticking to their unique formula (along with really good marketing) is what has allowed them to become a company worth almost $200 billion dollars.
- What is the secret sauce of the most valuable brand in the world? Perhaps it’s their ability to create products whose hardware and software design is so easy to use that my 2 year old niece can use them, but so powerful that they can dramatically help construction companies make money on the greatest construction projects in the world.
- Looking at these three companies, we can easily recognize they all have something special that sets them apart from the rest and increases their value. So, what is your secret sauce? Whether you are an estimator, project engineer, or manager, whatever your role, what is it in your day to day operations that helps you to be a differentiator and provide value to what you do? In particular, what tools do you use that help you be more efficient, estimate projects more accurately, or update the progress of your projects in a more timely manner?
- You know, there are a lot of software tools on the market today to help you get a leg up, but one of the most critical is and will continue to be Microsoft Excel. Let’s face it, Excel is an enormously powerful tool - you can get it to calculate just about anything, and it comes at a very low cost. For many, Microsoft Excel is the key ingredient for their secret sauce.
- What about you? Let’s take a minute for a quick poll. How are you using spreadsheets today? For bidding/estimating For tracking job progress For take-off calculations One-off calculations All the above None of the above
- So we’ve established that Excel spreadsheets are pretty key to what you do. Have you ever been part of a company initiative to update the estimating and project management systems in your office? There may be some good and valid justifications for this: The array and variety of spreadsheets in a typical organization can get difficult to manage, especially when doing project reviews or when reporting on job progress. At some point, the inefficiencies of scattered spreadsheets leads to a search for a more standardized approach, where all project information resides in a single place where managers can easily review it, and where budget and productivity issues can easily be identified. But as an estimator, or project manager, the thought of bringing in some system that will replace your custom-made estimating and project control -related spreadsheets may make you very nervous. You know the spreadsheets you’ve put together are customized to your exact needs and contain the “secret sauce” that help make you and your company a cut above the rest.
- The good news is you don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water. You can keep your secret sauce. Hard Dollar Estimating and Performance software plays nice with Excel so you can continue using Excel for what it’s good for (formulas and calculations, quick editing, moving data between systems) and leverage its results in a standardized project management tool that you can use for your analysis, review, and reporting. On one occasion, as I walked in to conduct a training class for a client, the chief estimator pulled me aside, and the first thing he did was show me his spreadsheets. They were elaborate and catered very nicely to the particular needs of their industry, including the very robust reporting requirements of their clients. He told me “if you don’t show me that you can do every piece of functionality in your tool that I have in these spreadsheets, then I won’t use your tool”. I confess being a little taken aback by this, but the good news for him (and me) was that I didn’t have to do what he was requesting. Where it made sense for him to use our tool, he could use it, but for many of the calculations and output needs he had, he could continue using Excel and integrate it with HD.
- So let’s take a look at a few examples of how you can use Hard Dollar and Excel together.
- First, we’ll look at how you can use Excel to update your labor rates and then bring them into HD using copy and paste. Second, well look at HD’s Excel import capabilities, using the example of importing progress data from the field. Last, we’ll look at a couple of examples of linking to Excel to leverage take-off and production calculations. [Demonstrate these in HD]
- First, updating your labor rates.
- We often hear the challenge: “We don’t have an easy way to keep labor rates up to date for accurate estimating.” Perhaps you want to use detailed labor rates (e.g., include fringes, insurance, etc.)., and maybe you’ve exported these rates from your accounting system to Excel. You want to update your rates regularly, but it takes a LONG time to get them entered into your estimating tool. Perhaps you end up paying an extra admin resource to manually enter them in, or you procrastinate and don’t update them until you absolutely need to.
- Let’s take a look at how we can update our Labor Rates using HD and Excel.
- The challenge we hear is: “How can I get my progress data from the field into a system for status reporting and forecasting?” Let’s assume you already have a system in place for collecting field data could be a third party tool (such as Track) or a home grown tool (such as Excel). It is working well for you and you like its efficiencies and how it connects to payroll. But you want to take advantage of project management software for analyzing and forecasting off of that data.
- Finally, let’s look at how you can . . .
- We often hear the challenge: That “the calculations we use for take-offs and production are far beyond what any estimating system can do.” Maybe you’ve looked into using a more standardized database estimating tool, but you can’t give up the calculations you use in Excel. You could do the take-offs on the side and manually enter them in, but that’s just too time consuming. And the calculating abilities of standard estimating systems are limited compared to Excel.
- Let’s look at how you can use link your
- So by linking Excel to HD, you don’t have to learn a new tool for doing take-offs and other calculations. Instead you can leverage those calculations into a standardized estimating and project management tool. Then, it’s easy to update your estimate when changes in your take-offs occur, and you can keep everything together by storing your take-offs and other spreadsheets with your estimate
- So in summary…
- …we’ve looked at just a few examples of how you can use what both Excel and HD bring to the table and integrate them together so you can play to each of their strengths. Thanks for your time today.. I’ll turn things back over to John now with a few final closing thoughts.