The ROI of Commissioning Software

March 10, 2014
March 10, 2014

In talking with our customers I find that many are concerned about their return on investment, or ROI, with adopting commissioning software. Their concern is generally not with CxAlloy TQ specifically, but rather with the whole concept of commissioning software. As a typical example, they may be currently using Excel, Word, and email as their “commissioning software’ which comes at no additional cost, is highly flexible, and which all their associates are already familiar with. Why invest in new software and the concomitant training and growing pains it brings?

“Is it really worth it?” they ask. They are at the beginning of the journey, unsure of that first step. But while they vacillate, we have become only more resolute in our answer: Yes! As ones that have experienced the journey with many firms, we have a clear view of the immense benefits made possible by commissioning software.

The Benefits of Commissioning Software

What are the benefits? How can it possibly be worth the software cost and training time? Let’s look at what a firm, fully up-to-speed with commissioning software, will be able to do for their clients:

  • Deliver organized, searchable, and linked final commissioning reports containing all project data with near-zero administrative work.
  • Deliver standardized, importable asset data for import into the owner’s CMMS system, saving their facility group hours of unnecessary data entry.
  • Send out formatted site visit reports (including photos) before even leaving the site.
  • Automatically notify interested parties of the completion of functional tests, checklists, and issues, in realtime, as they are completed.
  • Generate up-to-the-minute status reports at any time and at any point in the project.
  • Send out automatic daily progress reports.

The benefits of commissioning software are actually two-fold. The first is in what it makes possible to deliver, highlighted above. The second is the efficiencies it can create in delivering it. Let’s look at the efficiencies the commissioning firm will be able to leverage internally:

  • Eliminate the need to coordinate multiple issues logs or multiple versions of the issues log.
  • Quickly and easily create checklists and functional tests from a company library of standardized templates.
  • Eliminate duplicate data entry by syncing field-entered data. No more need to spend hours back at the hotel transferring notes into a report.
  • Be notified of changes as they happen, minimizing the impact of mistakes.
  • Push work out to the person best positioned to do it. For example, instead of transcribing, uploading, or organizing contractor checklists, have contractors fill them out directly in the system.

Finally, we can look at the problems that commissioning firms may currently encounter that are avoided with the adoption of commissioning software:

  • Incomplete information for all or some project participants due to separately tracked, unconsolidated issue logs.
  • Time delays in getting new issues to all project team members.
  • Inaccurate or incomplete picture of project status.
  • Brand dilution from inconsistent report formatting and branding.
  • Administrative overhead of consolidating and coordinating reports from contractors, commissioning authorities, and others.

Effectively implemented, commissioning software has the potential to enable a firm to take on more work, with no drop in quality or often an increase in quality. It can vastly reduce the administrative overhead of the firm, increase the proportion of time that commissioning authorities spend using their expertise rather than doing paperwork, and deliver a level of service to the owner that is not possible with traditional methods.

What About Costs?

Of course, benefits, no matter how great, do not equal ROI. It’s only when the benefits exceed the cost that real value is generated. You’ll want to look at each offering’s price structure, training package, and ability to adapt to your approach to determine the exact ROI.

At CxAlloy we want to make the evaluation easy by offering a simple pricing model, free training, a focus on ease-of-use, and intuitive but extensive configuration options.

There’s Still Time

The software revolution is only starting in the commissioning industry. A firm exclusively using Microsoft Office and email may well compete for several more years, albeit with lower margins, but eventually the impediment will be too great to overcome. When the time comes that the only way to effectively compete is to leverage these technologies, wouldn’t you rather be a firm with years of experience in using them?

We believe that the trajectory of the industry is clear; the benefits are unmistakable. We are striving to be at the forefront of these incredible changes. If you want to know more, please visit our site, www.cxalloy.com, email us at info@cxalloy.com, or call us at 855-312-0096.

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