Contractor Foreman works well for subcontractors and GC’s who don’t have the budget for higher-priced platforms (like Procore) but still need estimating, scheduling, daily logs, change orders, and job costing in one system. For example, a 10–25 person construction company can replace separate tools (Excel, QuickBooks, text messaging, and whiteboard schedules) with Contractor Foreman and immediately improve organization and accountability.
I think this holds true to almost any CRM, but if you want to truly utilize it you sort of need to go all in. This can become tough with WMJ because it doesn't offer some critical options that many other CRMs do, like the ability to create and send emails, e-newsletters, to throttle and invite outside clients to look at projects, etc. As such we're pairing Workamajig with Hubspot (and slowly phasing out Mailchimp) and trying to keep the data clean and flowing between them all is pretty tough. I'm also not aware of any API bridge from Wordpress to Workamajig so while I can program and feed my leads from my site into the other spaces, Workamajig remains a manual entry for any insertions you want, even if simply as a CSV import.
But - if you're not worried about that and simply want to manage projects, budget time, and scope things, it's a robust system allowing you to do so.
Auto-schedule population - The most inconvenient thing about using JIG was that the dates wouldn't auto-populate. Example: I move the review date but the rest of the dates stay the same. Depending on each project level, if one date is adjusted the rest should update as well. That way we aren't spending a lot of time moving dates around manually.
Notifications - JIG should have desktop notifications so we can see when tasks are on us even when we aren't in JIG.
Mostly great, especially for the price. The features appear to have definitely been designed by a team with a depth of construction specific experience. I also highly rate the usability because of the vast vast amount of customizability inherent in the system. It appears that almost all forms and features are customabizable on the company level and even specific to different individual users.
Many times we had issues that turned out to be errors and bugs. At first, we would be told forcefully that there were no bugs, then we would document them, and we would get an acknowledgement but no apology for essentially either gaslighting us or being ignorant of their system
Absolutely top notch! They were always there to help and immediately. Very happy with the communication they provided and the knowledge they had of their product. I would venture to say that they are one of the best in terms of support in their space.
I used Projul and Buildium when I was primarily managing rental properties rather than full home builds. Projul was great for estimating and invoicing, while Buildium served its purpose well at the time. Now, as a small construction company, Contractor Foreman provides everything we need in one platform, making project management much more efficient.
We've used QuickBooks and it didn't align well with our business, so there were a lot of insights I wanted from the numbers, but couldn't get. We use Basecamp, which is easy, but can get disorganized pretty quickly and takes discipline to stay structured.
Cost Savings. Integration with QuickBooks and Bills improved financial control. 0-15% cost savings per project.
Time Savings: Streamlined project management led to a 20-30% reduction in administrative time, boosting on-site productivity, and with project tracking a 15-20% reduction in project delays.
Enhanced Collaboration: Centralized documentation and real-time updates improved team communication, increasing collaboration by 5-10%.
Overall, CF has provided a 10-15% return on investment annually through increased efficiency and cost control.
The subscription expense and IT overhead has been substantial. That being said at the time of implementation, most other competing platforms were in line with their pricing.
As more competitive alternatives have come to market we would have probably gone with an entirely cloud base alternative at a lower price.
We ended up with ClickUp as our primary project management platform. If our finance/accounting software wasn't already so integrated with Workamjig we would probably switch to it entirely.
