CoConstruct vs. IFS Field Service Management

CoConstruct is a great program for small to mid-size residential and commercial projects. It still has a ways to go with subcontractor engagement but the groundwork is there for this to be a good program. The needs and requirements for a residential or remodel project always are different and unique, but CoConstruct is very well suited to address these needs.

Incentivized

IFS Field Service Management is well suited for ad-hoc reporting and querying of your dataset(s). It also is great for inventory management, processing orders, and handling EDI transaction sets to third party partners and suppliers.

Incentivized

• The integration of all aspects needed to run a remodeling company efficiently: project scheduling and management, financial planning and customer service. Since it’s an all-in-one suite and cloud-based, it enables our team to keep track of all our projects in real-time. Communication breakdown is the last thing we want, so being on the same page is not only desirable but makes for the best possible relationship with our clients.
• Product education - We like how CoConstruct helps new users and get them to start using the tool right away. The dashboard resource materials are incredibly useful. We don’t have to spend a lot of time training new hires on the system and onboarding new clients.

Incentivized

• Order Placement - IFS makes placing orders quite easy. From the simple interface down to selecting inventory, the experience is simple and clean
• Reporting - Querying database records is straightforward and easy to do. Queries can then be drilled down to individual records or exported to excel for further manipulation and analysis.
• Customer Creation - Creating new customers and managing and maintaining existing records is a simple and easily repeatable exercise

Incentivized

• Estimating is still done on third party software and pulled into the program. If you do manual takeoffs and work on a spreadsheet, this is relatively simple to do - and you could probably enter it straight into Co-Construct. However, if you use automatic takeoffs for accuracy and speed, you will end up doing a bit of double handling as you re-enter the output into Co-Construct. Ideally, you would be able to do the takeoffs within the program, entering the data only once.

Incentivized

• Field Customization - Adding fields or inputs to particular entities is not very easy. In a world of point and click development, IFS is behind the curve
• Order Automation - for bulk order placement it would be nice to have an easy mechanism to upload orders via an Excel or csv template. We've written some custom programs to perform this, but a more user friendly, "out of box" solution would be welcomed.

Incentivized

• The customer support for CoConstruct is hands down the best I have ever experienced from a software company. Any time I send a support request through the help center, my questions are either acknowledged or answered and solved within 20-30 minutes. For more complicated items, they will keep in touch with me as the team works through the problem.
• I often offer enhancement requests which they take seriously, and over the years, some of the changes that I have wanted to see have been implemented.
• Excellent customer service!

Incentivized

CoConstruct has a lot of similar functionality as comopared to Buildertrend and when it came down to selecting one over the other, CoConstruct won our business because of this fact. The fact that it does almost all of the same things at a fraction of the cost of Buildertrend was ultimately the reason why we selected CoConstruct for our business needs.

Incentivized

I was not part of the software selection process and cannot provide insight into any of the alternatives in this arena at this time.

Incentivized

• CoConstruct has reduced our time spent estimating.
• CoConstruct has increased profitability by capturing communication details and preventing important items from being overlooked.
• CoConstruct has led to more referrals, as customers are pleased with the software and the way it helps them stay informed about their project.

Incentivized

• Positive - streamlined order processing has allowed our business to scale without requiring additional bodies for that specific need.
• Positive - Reporting has allowed valuable insight into historic business trends which has allowed us to be proactive instead of reactive in many areas.
• Negative - Customizations have proved costly and cumbersome when upgrading to the next version of the software.

Incentivized