In recent months, Ultra has had the opportunity to work with a new vendor, COINS Global.
One of Ultra’s unique construction clients was considering them as a potential vendor, and as a result, Ultra was able to learn about what the solution has to offer.
Construction Enterprise Software Needs
Through our engagement, we realized there are certain necessary features in an ERP for construction companies, including enterprise project management, project costing, and resource scheduling, as they are huge components of the business.
Companies need to be able to schedule a variety of different jobs, and also be able to track those jobs to different variables to collect data and ultimately improve their own processes.
In addition, payroll and accounting functionality is necessary for different taxes and reports that are mandated by various governments for certain projects for compliance.
Furthermore, the construction industry also faces challenges in managing permits, inspections, contracts, and all the political elements of being in the industry. Without proper supervision on these elements, legal issues are not far behind.
Our construction client was looking for vendors with strong enterprise project management and job costing capabilities to keep account of the many projects and involved in their business, and also to plan and track according to budgets, timelines, employees, equipment and multiple other variables.
In the same vein, robust workflow was also an important factor. Workflows needed to be easy-to-use, as well as detailed since there are many tasks such as contracts, quotes, and approvals that must go through multiple departments for quality control and support.
Workflows would also help instate a single source of truth and a traceable information chain.
Furthermore, the ability to handle certified payroll was a must-have for this client, as it is for many other construction clients, since much of their workforce is unionized and requires different kinds of reporting.
Without this ability in the finance section of their functionality, an enterprise software system wouldn’t even be worth looking at.
Lastly, a fixed assets management module was imperative for this client as they maintain their own custom machinery and resources. Of course there are other elements to their company, but their focus was on finding a system that could handle the functionality discussed above.
What Sets COINS Global Apart from the Pack
During Ultra’s Vendor Qualification Sessions with the client, it was clear COINS Global had a lot to offer. Born out of the United Kingdom, COINS Global specializes in the construction space and is constantly innovating to cater to those customers.
Company Info
COINS Global has been a player in this space for over thirty years, going through a few iterations before becoming the solution it is today. The company is global, with offices in Australia, Ireland, Russia, Belarus, United Arab Emirates, the United States, and of course in the United Kingdom.
The company prides themselves on being socially conscious, with multiple charity endeavors and conferences to promote innovation, all while maintaining an extremely loyal client base consisting of users such as Osborne and Gulf Contracting Co.
Throughout the Vendor Qualification Sessions, COINS distinguished themselves because of their highly-specialized work in the construction space, and their project management capabilities.
Usability, Navigation & Workflow
Furthermore, their system is attractive, clean, and easy-to-use. Also apparent was the value placed on continuous innovation within the system to create constant value added for their customers.
When we explored COINS Global further, we were able to gather even more details about what their solution has to offer the industry.
First of all, not only is the general navigation of the system easy to follow, but it is also simple to set up workflows for any activities and for any role or user, and have those notifications push onto a ‘workbench’ that appears on the COINS dashboard.
This can be used for version control, traceability, and of course, approvals or checks on work across the business.
The most important part of this whole endeavor for the client was, of course, the project management and costing capabilities of a potential solution.
COINS software proved to be adept at tracking projects, managing tasks, assigning cost codes, forecasting demand, and setting up work orders, as well as a whole host of other project-related capabilities.
Currently, they are also working on releasing a more robust job scheduling function to be able to schedule resources for large and small jobs across multiple variables.
Fixed Assets Management
COINS Global also offers robust capabilities in fixed assets management. The solution allows a user to assign rates, costs, and people to equipment to track usage as well as handle depreciation.
Additionally, the software can be set up to trigger product orders for replacement parts or materials, and notifications for inspections and checks.
Document Management
If all of this wasn’t enough, COINS also offers a lot of sophisticated functionality. Document management was a prevalent theme throughout our interactions with them since you could attach documents to other files, store them, and even search within documents to easily pull out relevant information.
Human Resources
Another notable element of the system was the Human Resources functionality. The unionized payroll function was most relevant to the client for reporting purposes, but the solution can also:
- Integrate employee portals
- Track paid time off
- Handle onboarding and offboarding
- Track employee information like certifications or trainings
- Manage key performance indicators
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Lastly, COINS was also able to show us fully fledged Customer Relationship Management (CRM software) capabilities that manage opportunity pipelines and a 360 degree view of the customer.
Over the course of our demos with COINS Global it was clear that although we hadn’t interacted with them much before, we had been missing a great vendor in the construction industry.
Apart from the functionality already discussed, they have various other tips and tricks that make the lives of their customers easier every day.
The Future of COINS Global
Moreover, they hold exceptional user conferences where they have gained numerous insights into how to make their customer experience even better.
COINS was able to share a few things that were in development such as resource scheduling, more robust mobile capabilities, and other modules that were on a release schedule, whose creation was spurred by existing customer’s needs.
Overall, Ultra had an excellent experience with COINS Global and their team and we would not be surprised if we start seeing them more often in the future.
For more information on COINS, visit their website here.
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