Overcoming Integration Challenges: Making Construction Data Work Together with BI Tools

Construction companies deal with a massive amount of data every day, from project schedules and budgets to design files and on-site field reports. As a result, construction data integration and synchronization are among the top-priority challenges of modern businesses in the field.

Due to poor data management and silos, teams spend hours merging and updating spreadsheets, rather than analyzing the results to make smarter, more accurate decisions. To address these issues and optimize the use of available resources, most modern construction companies have adopted Business Intelligence (BI) tools.

If integrated and used correctly, such software solutions can significantly boost the efficiency and accuracy of your business by bringing all that information together and turning fragmented data into actionable insights.

For better clarity and illustration, we wrote this article, where we are going to:

1. Explore why data integration is such a challenge in construction
2. Discuss how BI tools solve these pain points
3. What features should you look for when choosing BI for construction

Understanding Data Integration Challenges in Construction

First of all, we have to discuss the importance of construction data integration and management, its impact on the rest of the business operations, as well as the core challenges of working with data in the construction industry.

Let’s take a step away from the specific industry first. The modern world is 100% data-driven: a modern person is exposed to more information in a single day than an average person from a century ago has been in a year. According to Dr Martin Hilbert, noisy information can affect humans’ decision-making, making it more biased.

So, while informational overload is a common issue for regular people nowadays, imagine how challenging it is for dedicated specialists to make informed decisions after studying gigabytes of data related to the construction industry, which accumulates alongside other informational noise. Not to mention other affiliated operations, such as gathering, analyzing, updating, and proofreading new data inputs manually.

Besides, the construction industry has its specifics when it comes to information: data updates rapidly and massively, and the very next day, all your previous calculations and estimations might already be outdated.

To achieve higher efficiency and better results, you must find ways to streamline operations and simplify data-related tasks for your construction management teams and specialists in niches like BI or data management.

Fortunately, the construction business intelligence software market offers countless solutions for such purposes. However, to find proper construction software, you have to know the core data integration challenges in the construction industry. Otherwise, you can implement a software with multiple features and services, that, despite their variety, can’t address the core issues.

Multiple Software Platforms Across Departments

The first and most common issue is the variety of software platforms used by businesses. Each separate department has its preferences, needs, and demands. For instance, the financial team has numerous requirements and niche-specific features, such as Bills of Quantity (BOQs). At the same time, the project management department demands high-scale instruments for efficient team management and progress tracking.

Long story short, finance, project management, scheduling, design, and field operations all rely on different systems. Without integration, managers face delays and blind spots. As a result, with poor data synchronization methods, your teams will have to export data manually, which will negatively impact performance and introduce other issues, such as version control.

So, the first important factor to ensure, when looking for business intelligence instruments for the construction business, is BI data integration within other used platforms. This will ensure the immediate and unified data updates, providing your BI specialists with the latest information.

Data in Different Formats

Another essential feature, worth paying attention to, is the support of multiple file formats. Data variety in the construction industry is related not only to the prices for resources, and the on-site situation. In fact, this field is vibrant in various documentation formats, many of which are very specific and niche.

Cost data and BOQ may live in Excel, schedules in Primavera, RFIs in Procore, and compliance details in PDFs. Trying to unify these formats is nearly impossible without automation. Thus, it is already a challenge to sort out all the documentation, not to mention the need to constantly check with some files like construction BIMs.

Thus, another critical factor when choosing BI data integration solutions for construction is either the built-in support of required data formats, or the possibility to enable one on demand. Otherwise, your team will be slowed down because it is forced to work with multiple applications at once, making the decision-making process overwhelming and confusing.

How BI Tools Solve Construction Data Integration Challenges?

Software for business intelligence in construction industry acts like a central database. Ideally, such tools should be able to gather information from all used systems automatically and sort this data within one platform.

This makes it much easier for your BI specialist to skip a few extra steps and tasks, such as hunting for information through different spreadsheets, accounting software, apps for on-site workers, and prioritize working with preprocessed information instead. This will not only save your time and effort, but also help to avoid informational overload by performing many routine and manual data-related operations automatically.

By doing all the foregoing, BI for construction helps turn scattered and inconsistent data into something reliable and usable. Here’s how these solutions address the key challenges:

• Centralizing data across all construction systems
• Standardizing formats for clean and accurate reporting
• Automating updates so decisions are based on the latest data
• Creating role-specific dashboards for executives, PMs, and field teams
• User-friendly interface for improved software usability

Centralizing Data Across All Construction Systems

As we said before, construction projects involve dozens of systems. If they are not integrated, managers have to manage and share data manually, bringing a lot of challenges like version control, missed details, lack of cooperation, etc.

BI tools eliminate these problems by pulling data from multiple platforms into one centralized dashboard, working as a single source of truth.

It helps to reduce data duplication, creates transparency across departments, and allows team leaders to see the whole picture at a glance. So, teams can analyze performance across cost, schedule, and labor in one place, helping projects stay on track more easily.

Standardizing Formats for Clean and Accurate Reporting

Another solution for the core issue of BI software is the built-in data format standardization. If you have chosen a proper solution with a reliable construction data integration, your BI tools will standardize these different formats into consistent, comparable data sets.

The alternative solution is applying construction software development services. Custom development approach is tailored to your business goals and needs, offering a 100% match with your BI software requirements.

Once the data is harmonized and reports are cleaner, the decision-makers can trust the numbers they’re looking at. This prevents the all-too-common issue of “dueling spreadsheets”. In short, BI must ensure everyone operates from the same, accurate baseline.

Automating Updates so Decisions Are Based on the Latest Data

Manual reporting usually means teams are working with outdated data. A project manager may send a weekly report, but by the time executives review it, the project will most certainly change. To rephrase, you will either need a streamlined construction reporting software on your side or find an efficient business intelligence software.

Fortunately, most modern BI tools create automated pipelines to update as soon as new information comes in from connected sources. So, any crucial changes, such as cash flow updates from accounting, schedule changes from Primavera, or progress reports from the field, are reflected in real-time dashboards almost instantly, providing your executives with the most relevant and up-to-date data for decision-making.

Creating Role-Specific Dashboards for Executives, PMs, and Field Teams

The construction dashboard is also an essential part of your business systems. Once again, there are two potential ways to embody it: you will either have a customizable dashboard under the hood, or you will look for BI solutions with such built-in features.

However, finding a comprehensive construction dashboard is a challenge: different roles in construction care about various details. For instance, executives need high-level insights on profitability and project pipelines, while project managers require detailed breakdowns of schedules and budgets.

BI construction data integration enables companies to create tailored dashboards for each group, ensuring everyone receives the information relevant to them without having to sift through unnecessary data.

This customization improves decision-making and ensures that every level of the organization has the data and visibility they need. Ultimately, role-based dashboards keep teams aligned, reduce miscommunication, and help deliver projects more efficiently.

Summing up all the above, with construction business intelligence software, fractured data silos can be consolidated into a single source of truth, eliminating unnecessary tasks such as version control, ensuring operational transparency, and enhancing the decision-making process, making it both faster and more accurate.

Key Features to Look for in Construction BI Solutions

Let's shift from general purposes and use cases to the specific features you will need for efficient use of construction BI solutions. In that case, it is possible to highlight the foregoing short list:

• Flexible Data Connectivity
• Real-Time Automation
• Custom Dashboards and Reports
• Data Governance and Security
• Software Scalability

Flexible data connectivity enables seamless access to cloud apps, legacy databases, accounting, and field systems, ensuring transparent access to all required data sources for further processing, sorting, and centralization.

Real-time automation is essential for keeping dashboards updated, eliminating the need for manual data export through streamlined pipelines or other data sharing methods.

Custom dashboards and reports will be used for high-level KPIs and daily field tracking, keeping the management staff informed on everything that is happening within the company.

Data governance and security must be applied to ensure that sensitive financial and compliance data remains protected, preventing data leaks and third-party penetration into the system.

Finally, software scalability is needed to cover everything from small projects to worldwide portfolios, complex operations, and business interests.

How Incora Solves BI Integration Challenges?

Thanks to our working experience in the construction field, we managed to create a comprehensive approach to satisfying all kinds of BI data integration for such types of businesses.

Among our core services and advice to our clients, who are looking for efficient construction business intelligence software, capable of end-to-end business or project covering, are:

• Custom Implementation Solutions
• API Development – Build bridges between systems that don’t naturally fit together
• Real-Time Data Automation – Eliminate reporting delays with streaming updates
• Third-Party Systems’ Integration

Custom projects are the ultimate choice for any construction company seeking a long-term perspective that prioritizes business efficiency and accuracy. Creating tailored pipelines for your toolset not only satisfies the most unique or specific demands but also helps save money on upgrading or scaling legacy systems that were used for years.

API development is preferred by those seeking a cheaper and faster, yet still efficient, method to achieve relatively the same results. Although API development offers less control and flexibility and introduces a specific dependence on service vendors, it helps separate systems and ensure data integration between platforms.

Real-time data automation suggests even less coding and development, primarily aiming at ensuring the streamlined data operations within the existing construction system. It offers nothing more than eliminating reporting delays with streaming updates.

Finally, our development team can assist your company in adopting and integrating third-party SaaS solutions, many of which are highly complex and scalable, requiring some level of software expertise and skills. We have experience integrating various systems, including Procore, Autodesk, Primavera P6, Sage, QuickBooks, Revit, Bluebeam, PlanGrid, Fieldwire, and other popular choices.

If you're looking for a free consultation on BI data integration, have questions, or would like to explore our partnership offer, please fill out the contact form, and we'll take care of the rest!