Computers and Contractors Do Mix
SEATTLE -- Microcomputers were new and applications seemed endless in 1981" the year Mark Dexter and John Chaney left Arthur Andersen to launch their financial management software firm.
The "gaping niche" market they sought to serve: the relatively unautomated construction industry.
Contractors -- including clients they'd worked for through the Big Eight accounting firm -- convinced them the time was right. The go getters -- both certified public accountants and M.B.A. grads -struck out, optimistically, on their own, developing flexible software that could be custom designed to meet contractors needs.
It was in training their first construction firm employees that they tasted a first bite of entrepreneurial fear. People were "petrified to touch the keyboard" recalled Chaney, who then handled most on-site training for the firm.
But it was these early sessions that sold them on the following business maxim:
"You can have the best product and you can have the snazziest demonstration," Dexter said. "But what you really need is the best customer service."
Their management plan: Develop service and support first; marketing will come along soon enough. And with luck and long hours things did come around.
They hired certified public accountants to handle training and customer support and have rigged their receptionist's phone to track how long it takes to respond to client calls. (They now average between 30 and 40 minutes to respond to client concerns, of which 90 percent are resolved during the first call-back, they report.)
And today, secure in their own North Seattle building and employing 28 accountants, computer programmers and other staffers, Dexter and Chaney talk "computerese" with their 350 increasingly sophisticated contractor clients.
The firm (which does not make public its revenue figures) is expanding nationally, with more than half its new clients coming from outside the Northwest, Chaney and Dexter said.
AS CONTRACTORS -- along with the rest of corporate America -- become comfortable with computer technology, many more are requesting programs with "open architecture," programs that can be adapted to client needs, Dexter and Chaney said.
In fact, the construction industry may end up leading the way in demanding adaptable software systems.
Billing and accounting procedures of construction companies are much more complicated than a general office, Dexter and Chaney noted. With payments and credits being broken down by job site and type of project, many companies will have about 1,000 to 1,500 invoice categories, they said.
Computer data entry fields also have to work equally well for accountants and job planners.
To accomplish this, Dexter and Chaney wrote their Forefront Construction management software in a fourth-generation computer programming language that is easily adaptable, and therefore cost-effective.
In Fourth Generation Language -- known as 4GL - computer programmers identified some parts of business computer programs, such as customer files and vendor files, and standardized them, Dexter said.
This means someone using 4GL to modify a computer program doesn't have to go into every single part of a program to change one single computer command in one line.
Dexter likened it to writing a computer program to figure out a budget. It would take about two weeks to write such a program in BASIC computing language. The same thing could be done using Microsoft Excel in about two hours, he said.
This means Dexter Chaney can adapt computer programs quickly to meet changing needs, Dexter said. Clients "are never boxed in. They're never painted into a corner."
"People don't want to change their system," he said, noting training staff and re-entering data costs time and money.
"lt's a very unpleasant thing."
CLIENT GREGG BIBA, the controller and owner of a Nebraska construction firm, came to Dexter & Chaney after a nationwide software search.
Biba Co., a 175-employee company that does about a third of the states road paving, has been computerized since original "macro" computer days. During his search for the company's fourth software system, Gregg Biba said he rejected many programs being marketed for ease of use.
Too many companies spend too much time adding "whistles and bells for management and they don't pay attention to the poor operator who has to run it," Biba said.
Also they try to sell you on estimating capabilities, he said.
"They're trying to make one canned program to work for the masses," Biba said. But estimating needs vary both geographically and within the industry in general, he noted. Biba Co. may base its estimates on material tons. Other companies that specialize in buildings or utilities might base their estimates on hours, he said.
The program also allows Biba which has several different holding companies' to show one company owned a piece of equipment and also track a "rental" of that equipment to another of its companies.
It also operates its common pay system, allowing employees to do work for two companies and be paid with a single check, he said. When asked to incorporate this into their computers tasks, "Three companies that we looked at just shut the door."
Reproduced by permission from: The Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce May 1993
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