Ready to invest in construction management software? There are clear benefits to moving away from spreadsheets in construction.

But, the path gets hazy when deciding between turnkey construction management software or custom-built applications. Especially when low-code makes custom application development much more affordable.

Turnkey construction management software may seem like a quick-and-easy fix. But, you'll miss out on many benefits that custom applications provide.

Custom construction management software is the superior solution. A custom program is a worthy investment in the long term.

To convince you, these are nine benefits of custom construction management software.

1. More Control of Your Business

Turnkey construction management applications are generic and broad. They're designed to fit a wide market, so they can't narrow down on specific problems or provide unique solutions that give your business a competitive advantage.

Instead, you get a plug-and-play application that may have some surface-level of customization but doesn't quite solve your unique business problems. As a result, the tool controls and limits your business.

With a custom construction management solution, you get a unique solution designed specifically for your business. The team can tailor it to your unique challenges and build it to your specifications. This prevents the tool from controlling or driving your business. instead, you're free to accomplish your business goals.

2. More Cost Savings Over Time

While a turnkey solution may seem like the cheaper alternative, you can spend more over time. At some point, you’ll need to add new features to support customers or your internal teams’ needs. And when you want to integrate your software with other systems, you have three options:

  • Pay people to manage the data transfer.
  • Build integrations to connect new platforms.
  • Migrate to new software with new features.

All of these options require additional costs. For example, if you pay someone $30 an hour to manually manage data for 10 hours a week, that's $300 a week or $15,000 a year.

With a custom construction management solution, you can reduce costs over time.

You will pay more upfront to build the solution (though a lot less if you build it in low code.) However, over time, you'll see cost reduction as you can easily integrate platforms, automate tasks, and add new features.

Rather than pay someone to enter data into a spreadsheet, you can have that person focus on more strategic tasks. Plus, integrated and automated workflows help you avoid costly manual data entry errors.

3. Greater Competitive Advantage

You need a competitive advantage to drive your business to success. But, you lose your competitive advantage with turnkey software. If your competitors use the same platform, then you're all working off the same infrastructure.

It's hard to stand out.

Custom construction management software solutions amplify your competitive advantage. Think about what makes your business unique. Next, imagine amplifying that with a custom solution.

With custom construction management software, you can increase your operational capacity and amplify those advantages that make your business unique.

You can also build out features that your competition doesn't have and seamlessly integrate them into your existing software infrastructure. This helps you better serve your customers and exceed their expectations on projects.

4. No Need to Adapt Your Business to Your Tools

Your business is a thriving entity, and you should not be adapting it to your tools. Instead, your tools should be adapted to your business. With turnkey construction management software, you eventually face a challenge that it doesn't support.

When that happens, you have two choices:

  1. Work much harder to provide the needed feature on the side and manually move data between those systems and your existing infrastructure.
  2. Ignore the feature and focus on the channels your legacy system can support.

Neither choice is ideal.

You'll either spend a lot of time and money. Or, you'll miss out on opportunities while risking your brand's reputation.

With custom built construction management software, you’ll never have to make that choice. For example, if you're looking to tap into critical workforce management features, you simply need to build the modules you need and integrate them into your existing infrastructure. And this is super simple using low code.

As a result, you're free to build out the best version of your business

5. More Accessible

As discussed, turnkey construction software has limitations. To fix these drawbacks, you need to add more software layers to fill the gaps. Plus, each new platform means you'll need to train your staff and figure out how to work them into your existing business platform.

And then there's data management...which will probably end up in spreadsheets (putting your business at great risk.)

All of this can create a massive headache.

You won't have that problem with a custom construction management solution built in Quickbase. You can simply add on additional solutions to the existing infrastructure. Your team, already familiar with the platform, will quickly learn and use the new features. Meanwhile, all your data goes into a single source.

There's minimal additional training. Minimal costs. And minimal frustrations with data management. In the end, your team will be more productive, focusing on high-level tasks instead of staggering between an increasingly complex forest of various applications.

6. Complete Ownership

You don't own your turnkey construction management software. You may pay a subscription price or pay for the platform outright, but you don't own the system.

This can be problematic if support goes down, updates become less frequent, or something is frustrating about the application that your team or customers don't like. You're pretty much stuck with what you got.

Custom construction management software gives you complete ownership. You own the code.

You have full control over the program and any changes you want to make to it. There are no rules or regulations to impede you. The program is yours, and you can do what you want with it.

7. You Get What You Pay For

Out-of-the-box construction management comes packed with a range of features. Depending on your business, you may not use a lot of those. Still, your business pays for them.

With custom construction management software, you get what you pay for. You pay to build out the features that you need. If your business doesn't want or need a specific feature, you don't waste time or money building it.

8. Security

Hackers are more likely to know the vulnerabilities of popular, out-of-the-box solutions. They're bigger targets. In fact, construction is the top industry for ransomware attacks.

Worse, you're at even greater risk if you use other applications and lean on spreadsheets to move data between all those systems. This is because spreadsheets are notoriously unsecure.

With custom construction management software, you get improved security. You'll have fewer spreadsheets to manage, reducing risk there. And if you choose to build your solution on a low code platform, you'll have the added security provided by these cloud-based platforms.

9. Get Support on Additional Business Systems

Getting support for turnkey construction management software can be frustrating. At times, it can feel like you're at the complete mercy of the software company. There may be times when support is amazing, but then management may shift, and support goes down the drain.

If you build a custom construction management solution, you can work with your developers directly to get the support you need. And if you work with a technology consultant, you can get customer support built into your partnership.

At Quandary, we work with construction companies to build custom applications in low code. Whether it's estimation software, workforce management systems, inventory tracking programs, or many others, we work closely with our partners to train them on their systems. As a result, they have a dedicated member on their team they can turn to for answers. Or, they can reach out to us directly for help.

Either way, you won't feel locked into a platform with subpar service. Your questions will be answered, empowering you to focus on your business's real challenges.