Speaker: John Carolan, Founder / Director, SKOPE
What challenges did you face before using Premier, and how has Premier helped you overcome them?
John Carolan: The challenges that we had with our previous software prior to using Premier was really the integration with our estimating system was one of the major issues. Um And the support that we had with our alternative software or previous software was that uh was was very limited and very expensive. Um And we found uh obviously Premier are able to support same day. Um And with very good explanations and a big, big resource library of um of help is available there. Um uh The other problems we really had were visibility of our project budgets and reports. Um We had very little flexibility in the reporting and we'd always need external consultants to prepare reports for us, which was a very costly thing to do. Uh Premier really overcome those issues um due to the excellent on onboarding process initially, which was very smooth. Um And the training uh and and onboarding was very good. Um And the ability to use the software from anywhere as a cloud based software is really important to us as as many construction companies are finding the software is very intuitive. Um And so it's been very uh very easy to train and on board, new people, uh, and it, it's constantly being improved. There's always, um, new ideas coming through and they're taking those on board and we're finding that there's, there's always improvements occurring.
Why did you choose Premier over your previous software and others on the market?
John Carolan: We chose Premier over our previous software because we felt that our previous software just wasn't growing and we could say the Premier was making big efforts to improve from where they were already in a good position. Um And it was a reasonably priced software in comparison to a lot of the software that's available out there for con for the construction industry. Um And we had an extensive list of questions um because it's very important to us this, this type of software um to run our business and those questions were all answered and they weren't fobbed off, they were answered properly and they spent the time doing that. Um That is what you would expect with such an important investment. Um I think the, the software is also, we felt that it was gonna grow with our company. Um And it wasn't going to be starting from a position where it was not fitting our company right from the start. Um And so that's really important as well. I think the software, we just felt that the software was gonna be suitable for a, a business that was smaller at the time and we, we'd be able to grow into or it would grow with us.
What Premier features do you rely on daily, and how do they improve your business?
John Carolan: As a CEO of scope, uh I would rely on certain reports that would be different to a lot of our staff. Uh But I would easily be able to obtain a report myself and not only need to ask my staff to, to bring those reports to me. So I would be looking at broader reports and I job project dashboards showing me cash flow budgets, profitability. Um Look obviously looking at A P accounts payable and accounts receivables uh general ledger. Um It basically takes a lot of the guess work out. Um And uh the staff um who might be in the contracts administration part of the project, they would rely heavily on subcontract reviews, um supplier um and subcontract review reports and they can get a gauge of exactly where um any subcontract is at that time, um which is really important for them. Um And, and as I said, we're looking at, you know, knowledge of budgets in projects is very easy to find. Um the profitability and completed project review is also important. Um We can look back at our jobs and say, you know, this is, this is where something might have gone wrong or went right and we can feed that information back to our estimating department. Um So I, I think, um, there's a, there's a lot of different, um, parts to premiere. Um, but, uh, and, and everyone has, um, something that, that, that they will have on their favorites list, um which, which is within premiere. So, um I'd say that's probably the main modules that we would use.
What advice would you give to companies thinking about transitioning to Premier?
John Carolan: Say, I'd say if you're a company that's already looked at premiere and, and been through the process in of comparing Premier with other types of software. I'd say for us, we've been using it for uh nearly four years now and we found it transformational for our business. Um The software we were using before was very restrictive. So changing software um was always gonna be a move up for us. Uh But Premier has uh really improved the way we do things and we feel that it's done it in a way that is probably not as expensive. Um not only to go into the software but to implement the software as well. Um One of the big issues for construction companies and probably any other industries is trying to get the software implemented into the business and transitioning all of that old data into the, the new system. And we just found that that process was very smooth but not, not only smooth but quite inexpensive um in terms of actual dollars spent, but also uh in the time that it the resources that took uh for the people within our business.
