How AI is Shaping the Future of Construction ERP Software

Did you know, the construction industry accounts for 13 percent of the world’s GDP? Isn’t that amazing? However, it is one sector that also faces numerous challenges, ranging from skilled labor shortages to rising material costs to stagnant employee productivity to ever-changing rules and regulations. To add to the list and to stay ahead in the competitive digital world, construction companies are expected to modernize, streamline, and innovate business activities while making efficient use of resources. From project planning to revenue estimation to project control and management to materials management to logistics to sales to every other construction-specific aspect should be handled with minimal mistakes. And to obtain operational efficiency with the available resources, companies should eliminate manual methods. Here’s where ERP technology kicked in.

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ERP is one vital tool for integrated management of data flowing from various business resources. However, over the past few years, ERP technology has undergone several revolutions and evolved not only in terms of functionalities but also capacity. Here’s where the new generation ERP system, more precisely, AI-enabled ERP system, comes into the picture.

To keep pace with other forward-thinking companies, construction companies must stay updated with this newly born ERP software. To understand how this ERP software will help construction companies, we will first know how an AI-enabled ERP software is different from the standard system.

The Potential of AI-enabled ERP Software

While ERP technology has seamlessly integrated and managed every core functional area within any company, we can safely say that AI can take this sophistication to a whole new level.  

Here are a few ways of how AI can improve ERP systems,

While ERP systems were successful in reducing manual data entry to a significant extent, the need was to eliminate human involvement. AI-enabled ERP systems can prove to be helpful and useful in this scenario. 

The NLP element in AI will analyze, interpret, and comprehend structured as well as unstructured data from different data sources. The system will know exactly what data to enter where. This will not only reduce time but also eliminate mistakes that would otherwise occur due to manual data input. 

With AI’s potential to make sense of the voluminous amount of data, companies can gain real-time, accurate, and actionable insights on various business activities, including decision-making processes. 

For example, with AI being able to analyze customer behavioral patterns, companies can deliver personalized products or services as per their preferences and interests. 

AI is well-known for its incredible feature of studying historical and current data from various sources to provide insights on accurate business predictions.

Companies can use AI-enabled ERP systems to estimate the precise numbers for production, thereby reducing the risk of stock overproduction or underproduction.

The Potential of AI-enabled Construction ERP Software

On a daily basis, a large volume of data from various sources gets accumulated in construction companies. From customer-related problems to plot design changes to RFIs to project plans to budget, everything should be analyzed, classified, and categorized to make appropriate business decisions. Here’s where AI comes into the play. AI in ERP systems acts as a smart assistant that sifts through millions of data points, analyzes and interprets it, and provides predictive and assistive insights that are meaningful, critical, and actionable.

Below discussed are a few outstanding areas where AI-enabled ERP systems can benefit construction companies,

A construction company might have to handle multiple projects. That being the case, it might get a little tricky for them to schedule materials, equipment, and workforce for each project precisely.  

With AI, inventory management can become an easy undertaking. AI-based ERP systems will study historical and present data points, study patterns, and reveal predictive insights on stock levels, customer requirements, demand optimization, and other inventory-related processes. 

Ensuring accurate financial reporting is vital for the success of any construction company. With a standardized ERP system, companies can get a bird’s eye view of their financial status, no doubt. However, to get all the data into one platform, employees have to key in data from various sources like invoices, amounts payable, the budget allotted, and more. With humans getting involved in this whole scenario, there are fair chances of errors. Also, this repetitive task can cause fatigue, which can ultimately lead to missed deadlines. 

On the other hand, an AI-enabled ERP software can easily read, analyze, pick critical financial data from sources, and enter the details in the required fields. Also, it can verify reports for completeness, accuracy, and quality by comparing numbers with data sources. 

• Effective resource management

Construction companies have always faced this problem – limited availability of resources. Hence, the key to staying ahead in this competitive market is to devise a powerful strategy for the effective management of resources. Leveraging an AI-based ERP software is one of the best options that can be included in this strategy. 

With AI’s power to forecast accurately, companies can gain assistive predictive information on budget estimation, employees to be assigned, and time for project completion. Also, by tracking the project progress in real-time, AI-enabled ERP systems can help in the reallocation of resources, if required. 

Customer service is more than just the service you offer customers at the point of sale. It’s more about how well the service was, whether the pricing was fair, and how soon did you attend them, and did the work was done as promised. AI-enabled construction ERP software can improve customer service in these areas.

With an AI-enabled construction ERP software, construction companies can have a holistic view of customers’ buying history. This data serves an important point for AI-enabled systems to pick point frequent, long-term vendors/customers and give them the best, profitable, and exciting deals. 

Final Words

The power of AI is immense. And hence, the potential of AI in construction ERP software is vast. From great resourcing to inventory optimization to operational efficiency to project management to a number of other factors that lead to construction project success can be well handled by AI. 

Now that the secret recipe for project success is revealed devise a strategy to implement AI in your construction ERP software or simply choose to outsource. It doesn’t matter whether you decide to modify the construction ERP software within your organization or you choose to select a vendor. What’s important here is having an AI-enabled construction ERP software. So, pull up your socks before it gets too late.