Benefits of a Modern Technology Platform
If you ask prominent home builders to name the most important keys for success, the list will likely include premium land positions, dependable trade partners, desirable designs, and effective sales and marketing strategies. Other areas of focus include purchasing and supply chain management, customer care, construction project management, and accounting and financial management. In addition, a modern technology platform on which to operate the entire business is equally essential.
Today’s large national home builders can be much more efficient, productive, profitable, and competitive by adopting and running their companies on a single, comprehensive, open, and highly flexible cloud-based platform. Most home building organizations haven’t yet made the transition, but there are significant benefits in doing so. Not only does this represent an improved approach than what is offered by the legacy systems that many builders are currently using, but several leading technology service providers are limiting enhancements and are even phasing out support of these solutions. This means that the underlying technology is in danger of becoming obsolete.
Current Technology Challenges
To manage the enterprise, many home builders are using a collection of older, legacy technologies that have been cobbled together over time – in some cases 25 years or longer – and therefore, often are poorly integrated. Builders are typically leveraging cloud technologies only on a limited basis to manage back-end systems, and are more often using internally hosted, on-premise solutions that don’t natively work seamlessly with one another. These solutions can require labor-intensive, time-consuming, and error-prone manual intervention, workarounds, and ongoing management. Critical files are often shared via email, which can be inefficient and can limit collaboration between builders and their industry trade partners.
Consequently, builders often end up with volumes of siloed information that can be difficult to access, rather than being easily available in real-time across the organization. This can hamstring the enterprise during critical processes, such as ensuring that bids are awarded on a timely basis and then promptly moving from the bid stage to the approved contracting stage. Another example would be quickly identifying and addressing issues such as changing market conditions and being able to swiftly make updates to pricing.
Outdated technology can also make it difficult to attract and retain high-quality, younger-generation talent. Older solutions and interfaces can be alien to newer-generation recruits who typically expect to be utilizing user-friendly, mobile-first, cloud-based systems that are increasingly becoming the norm.
In addition to established home builders, the fast-growing single-family rental/build-for-rent (SFR/BFR) sector is facing a different but related technology challenge. While some new market entrants are teaming up with existing builders, many are working independently and must set up an operating infrastructure from scratch with a technology platform that is appropriate for success in an increasingly digital industry.
Improved Technology Solutions
Whether they are industry veterans or newer entrants to the market, home builders can benefit extensively from utilizing a single, open, and flexible platform that can empower them to operate more efficiently and profitably. This type of platform should accomplish the following:
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Enable efficient and accurate management of all aspects of the home building process with a single source of the truth across the development and construction life cycle, including land acquisition and development, marketing, sales and contracts, estimating, bidding, and contracting (including bill of materials and turnkey projects), flooring, trade management, scheduling, closing and warranty management.
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Afford real-time insight into all data related to the above-listed functions via informative dashboards and preconfigured reporting.
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Offer scalable, integrated, cloud-based database storage, robust data aggregation and analytic toolsets, mobile capabilities, artificial intelligence, and native reporting with strong integration capabilities into other key systems, as required.
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Utilize a next-generation interface that greatly improves the user experience and workflow for home builders as well as their vendors and customers.
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Make available a fully integrated measured options/flooring module as part of the solution, if appropriate for the builder.
Just as important as selecting an effective technology platform with these features is selecting a suitable technology solutions partner. This technology provider ideally will have a strong focus on the home building industry, regard and treat its solution for this market as a core offering, and continually provide product enhancements and support while actively collaborating with home building market leaders. Builders who currently use solutions from vendors that fall short on these criteria for success have actively voiced concerns in recent years and are primed to make a change as modern, robust solutions are now proven in the market.
High-volume production home builders optimize business processes, operations, and margins by leveraging the power of HomebuilderONE. HomebuilderONE is a single end-to-end modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution built on Microsoft Dynamics 365, which connects critical aspects of the business. Designed with input from top national home builders and real estate experts in North America, HomebuilderONE is considered by many to be the most comprehensive operations and accounting platform currently available for the home building industry. Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and the Microsoft Azure PAAS infrastructure, HomebuilderONE is designed to work natively with all Microsoft products that an organization already has in place. As an additional reference, the Microsoft Dynamics 365 enterprise platform is also utilized by a multitude of Fortune 500 companies, including Delta Airlines, Lowe’s, Starbucks, Walmart and others.
Here are some features and benefits of the platform:
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Uses the power and breadth of the Microsoft Dynamics 365, Azure, Power BI, and Microsoft 365 ecosystem (including Word and Excel) to offer additional native capabilities and scalability.
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Helps simplify IT environments and reduce complexities by eliminating disparate systems and shifting much of the overhead back to Microsoft.
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Leverages the power of data hierarchies to simplify lot, community and master plan data management and instead focus on exceptions.
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Drives smarter decision-making with advanced analytics, reporting, actionable insights, and role-based workflows.
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Simplifies the coding structure and keeps unnecessary detail out of the G/L, as the system was designed to include a full job cost sub-ledger; and
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Facilitates training and adoption efforts through a heavy focus on user experience, intuitive interfaces, and mobile applications.
KB Home, RF and sa.global Collaborate to Successfully Deliver HomebuilderONE Solution
KB Home, which ranked number six in the 2023 Builder 100 list of among the nation’s top 10 residential construction companies by volume, has had notable success with the HomebuilderONE solution. Working in close collaboration, RealFoundations and sa.global were able to successfully deliver a full replacement of the KB Home enterprise operating and accounting platform utilizing strong project methodologies, highly experienced consultants, and leading-edge technologies.
“Our ERP replacement initiative was a tremendous success, delivering innovative technology to our organization, while retiring archaic legacy systems and platforms. Our internal business and technology resources partnered with RealFoundations and sa.global to deliver incredible value and new capabilities to our business. I could not be more pleased nor proud of the great results this team produced together, overcoming numerous challenges and hurdles with professionalism and resilience.”
— Greg Moore, Chief Information Officer, KB Home
All operating divisions of KB Home have been running on the platform since October 2022, and efforts to migrate their corporate and non-operating entities were completed in June of 2023. The company is now fully operational on the HomebuilderONE platform, delivering over 1,000 homes per month, and as of the end of 2023 had delivered over 31,000 homes utilizing the solution.
KB has also realized additional benefits such as real-time access to data, ease of reporting, and improved efficiency with trade partners, which translates to increased speed of product delivery. HomebuilderONE has also allowed the company to attract promising, junior talent that can grow with the company.
Help from Real People at RealFoundations and sa.global
We are here to help. We can get home builders up and running efficiently and effectively on the HomebuilderONE platform, helping to reduce risks, improve business processes, and increase profitability. Home builders that remain on legacy platforms indefinitely face predictable, substantial risks of falling behind in the marketplace. Home building leaders should consider transitioning to a next-generation operations and accounting solution that is built on an enterprise-class platform such as the Microsoft D365 ecosystem. Newer entrants into the Build-For-Rent (“BFR”) market that are scaled to 500 homes or more also have an opportunity to immediately benefit their businesses by starting with a truly modern solution. Because it is based on years of feature development and stress/scalability testing conducted in collaboration with leading home builders and real estate consultants who have extensive backgrounds in the sector, HomebuilderONE is a strong contender.
“RealFoundations is uniquely qualified to assist both established home builders and newer SFR/BFR companies that want to implement a HomebuilderONE software solution. We have been working closely with the HomebuilderONE team members since 2012 and are ready to apply our joint expertise to improving your enterprise through the implementation of the HomebuilderONE platform.”
— Dylan Rhea, Enterprise Managing Consultant, RealFoundations
Although the platform is robust and effective once operational, home builders should be realistic about what an implementation can entail. When builders don’t have the technical acumen or bandwidth to execute the implementation without supplemental resources, many enlist the help of outside consulting firms with the requisite expertise in both technology implementations and home building processes to successfully bring the solution online. RealFoundations and sa.global are prepared to work together on a joint basis in the successful delivery of the most complex implementation scenarios in the industry.
Contact Us
To learn more about our experience in designing a scalable information model leveraging HomebuilderONE, please contact our teams at RealFoundations and sa.global. Let’s Start the Conversation.
