You Already Have the Data

In this episode of Hard Hats and Data Chats, Fraser Gallop and Steve Gross dig into a key insight for contractors: you don’t need more data—you need to better use the data you already have.

They share practical, real-world examples of how information captured in ERP systems, timesheets, and billing processes can be activated to improve productivity, simplify time-and-materials billing, and reduce manual work. From tracking quantities alongside labor hours to replacing spreadsheets with system-driven reporting, the discussion focuses on small changes that deliver meaningful impact.

The episode also touches on earned value, forecasting, and why consistent data discipline creates better visibility, scalability, and profitability over time.

If you’re looking for ways to unlock insights from your existing systems and work smarter—not harder—this episode is for you.

Learn more about Steve’s work with eCMS Cloud Construction ERP Software at  Computer Guidance Corporation or Fraser’s work transforming construction data into actionable insights at Onware.

Transcript

Fraser Gallop 0:00

Welcome to Hard Hats and Data Chats. I'm Fraser Gallop and I'm here with Steve Gross. And we're here today to talk about the idea that you already have the data. So our theme today is, you know, you already have the data. And kind of the central idea behind that is that contractors don't need more data. They need to unlock the value of the data that they already have. So before we get kind of too deep into that, I want to say, like, you know, how was your weekend, Steve? What did you get get up to over this past weekend?

Steve Gross 0:36

Oh, good morning, Fraser. It was it was a great weekend, long weekend. And I was busy working on automotive tech. I I have a new a new truck, and I was decided I was going to install the power running boards that fold in and fold out. And these running boards, they talk to the computer in your in your truck. So I usually don't work on stuff myself, but I thought, well, since I'm a tech guy, I'm going to install these myself. Well, long story short, everything went great except when it got to the point where I plugged the trigger wire into the main bus of the truck. It told me connect the blue wire to the white wire and the white wire to the blue wire. Well, there were four or five white wires and blue wires. So long story short, I had to get on the web and they there was an addendum to the instructions where they actually told you the real PIN number. So after a lot of trials and tribulations, it's working like a champ nose. So anyway, that's how I spent my holiday weekend.

Fraser Gallop 1:37

Well, that's that's nice. I I feel like I'd be like just calling the garage and saying, take this over for me. So it's great that you were able to kind of work through it. I I was doing most technical stuff, but of a of a different nature, actually. Um with my with my son at home, we're we we have these vintage computers. Um so like we have a couple old uh Apple uh like iMacs, like the ones that kind of they look like a lamp, you know, they have the rounded base and then the L C D screen that kind of swivels around. I remember. Um so we we we have these uh this one and an old laptop set up to do LAN games. So we're we're playing like no internet, like these are games kind of pre-dating the internet. Um we're we're we're playing these games over the LAN at home. And you know, this is something that I did like when I was younger, and the internet and like you know, gaming over the network was like a new thing. But uh uh it's actually like I feel really good for like a seven-year-old because it, you know, you get to play with the computer, but you're not exposed to necessarily like any of the bad stuff on the internet at the same time. Yeah, but that was a historical perspective for your your kids. Exactly. Yeah, this is this is how it was funny because he's he's talking to the computer, and like you know, we'll we'll play like me and him against you know the computer. And and today it would be like, oh, you know, it's like an AI, right? But this one is it's not a very smart computer, like you know, you play it a few times, you know exactly what the computer is gonna do. Um, so you can kind of uh be smarter than the computer. But if you're seven, you know, you don't necessarily figure it out that quickly, but it's fun nonetheless. All right. So um so so trying to you know get get onto our topic here. You you already have the data. Um I guess let's let's let's maybe kind of jump into um you know some of these big ERP systems um that contractors are using, they're they're they're doing a lot more than just um you know capturing cost and the financial side of things. So what are some of the other kind of pieces of information that are you know kind of being captured day to day in systems that you can kind of talk about?

Steve Gross 4:07

Yeah, so you know, it's it's interesting. Uh it doesn't have to be that hard, I think is kind of what what I'd like to say. And I think chances are you're capturing data that is not being put to use like it could be. Like, for example, we have a a customer. Oh, they do, they're an electrical contractor, and of course, labor productivity is very important to them, how how effective their crews are. Labor is the number one cost component on their jobs, and you know, they want to make sure everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing and being as productive as possible. So the key to really zeroing in on that is units, quantities. And we had this customer was they were keeping track of quantities on a spreadsheet, all right? But it wasn't getting pumped into the system. But we sat down and talked with them, okay. Well, how can we be capturing these quantities? You already have it right there. And the the idea came up, well, why don't we just add it to the timesheet? So they were using an electronic time entry program. We added a quantity column to that. And before you know it, we were not only capturing man hours, but we're outing quantities to the job. You know, so all of a sudden they have this ability to not only look at what they're spending and how many man hours for the spend, but how much did we, how much cable did we pull, how many little feet for that spend for those man hours. So it really took off from there. They they came up with some earned hours computations and they started measuring budgeted productivity, the actual productivity, and they'd come up with this earned hours rate, and it really made their cost reports added a whole other dimension to their cost tracking and how their crews were being managed.

Fraser Gallop 5:46

So beforehand, like they were just kind of making note of quantities on a piece of paper and kind of it ended there, right?

Steve Gross 5:54

Yeah, that's right. That's right. They they were well, they were using it in spreadsheets, they're plugging it in the spreadsheets. Okay. And then just a little extra effort, you know, add it to the timesheet, boom, it goes right into the system.

Fraser Gallop 6:05

That's just like the foreman, right? Like it's not not like they're entering quantities at like per guy. It's it's just the foreman kind of puts the quantity and as a very insightful comment.

Steve Gross 6:14

That's right. What you know, they whether enter the units for the for the lead guy, for the super or whoever. And uh it was really, really a nice solution.

Fraser Gallop 6:23

So yeah, well, because that's like we often have that same kind of conversation, and and people want to use that data, right? Like they they know that it's it's been something that they they had in their their estimates and and before they even started the job. Like they're they're putting in you know what they think the quantities are gonna be, but then they have no way to kind of relate that information to like their actual production and what's going on on sites. Absolutely. Yeah, so that's we we often have that that same kind of conversation, like, well, uh, you know, how how can you get that quantities data into your database? Because you've already you're already collecting the hours. You know, you're you on a daily basis, somebody's you know putting in the hours for everybody because you gotta pay, you've got to pay those guys on site. So in addition to that, can you you know collect the quantity information and have that feed at the same time? Um, because that'll power so many other different things that you have to do anyway, right?

Steve Gross 7:21

Yeah, yeah. So you know, another example of this is a case where you know a contractor is collecting and has hard copy or image data of transactional information and and they're having to manually assemble it for some reason, like maybe billing. And you know, that that's another another area that comes to mind.

Fraser Gallop 7:44

Yeah, our our you know, I really love this example um because we we we did some work with with a contractor who was doing uh time and materials billing. And so the um the challenge that they had is uh you know, they worked with um, they actually had a rental company, uh, like one of their divisions was a rental company. And so a big aspect of their jobs is you know the equipment coming from the rental companies, and they would have that hitting their hitting their job costs, those charges for the rentals, but they wanted to be able to see on the invoices, you know, what were the rates that related to that, not just like the total amount for the rental, you know, it was X dollars a day or you know, X dollars an hour for these rentals. Um so we we had access to both systems, like we had their um TM billing information, we also had the rental uh information. And so it was actually relatively easy to kind of relate those together because they would put in the rental contract numbers when they put in the charges. So we were able to use that rental contract to go and find the information on the rates and bring that in uh to their T&M kind of details that went behind as the backup on the billing. So we kind of got that figured out. And then the the second ask that came was that they also had a whole bunch of credit card charges on their T&M billings. Um, and they did have the credit card statements where it would say, you know, here was $31 at Home Depot. Um, but of course, on the T&M billing, it just said, you know, credit card charge, and it had some some you know gibberish behind that to kind of identify the credit card charge. But that was actually something that we could use to kind of relate it back to the charge itself. Right. Um so we were able to kind of take those, you know, the credit card information, the um the rental billing information, and make a new set of T&M backup reports uh for the billings that actually had like all of the detail kind of assembled in into like one report. So instead of kind of going and cross-referencing kind of three stacks of paper, they just had uh you know one report that they could they could use. Um one of the advantages of that too was that like when they when they were doing their their draft invoices for T&M, they would run that report so that they could actually see that everything kind of came through like they expected. And you know, a lot of times they had to go back and like, okay, we got to go fix this, right? And so they would go, they'd run the draft report, go and fix it, run the draft report again, be able to see that it was it was corrected before they finalized the billing. And I think that also kind of helps that process so that they're not um, you know, sending out invoices that need to be corrected after the fact, because that's gonna delay their their payment process at the end.

Steve Gross 10:36

Well, delay their payment. And for sure, here's the thing T&M is great because the margins are good, but it's bad also from an administrator's perspective because it's a ton of work to put together your substantiation, and you have to make sure you're billing for all your costs. So this would help solve billing for all that problem of making sure you're billing for everything you can. And uh yeah, and the the uh the you know, the overhead cost to put it up put the billing packet together and get it approved by the customer is the other bad side of that. So this would absolutely wonderful tool for for automating that process and making it run smoother.

Fraser Gallop 11:14

So yeah, it was it was also like a fun, a fun little job to kind of work on because it, you know, you also see like the guys in the that are doing these T&M billings, you know, they're happier because they don't have to deal with so much of the manual work every time. So they're you know, they're they're having a little bit higher job satisfaction and you know, because they're not doing so much manual stuff, and you know, we were able to help with that. So that was that was really kind of a nice uh nice thing to work on.

Steve Gross 11:44

But you know, speaking of customers, you know, we're talking about billing and so on. I know one of the things that we're gonna be looking at in our next session is what customers of our clients, contractors, what they're looking for, right, Frazier? I think that will be a really interesting session.

Fraser Gallop 12:10

That's uh what our customers, yeah, that's exactly our topic. What are customers really looking for?

Steve Gross 12:16

So I'm looking forward to I'm looking forward to talking about that.

Fraser Gallop 12:20

You know what it's it's been kind of really good to l start doing this podcast and and see you know people already kind of downloading and and starting to uh subscribe. So uh, you know, we're we're having fun here having these chats. And and uh, you know, if you if you are enjoying it and want to hear more, you know, don't forget to do that subscribe button so that your your podcasting app will will just download the next uh next version for you. Um I was I was doing a bit of a uh road trip in like a couple weeks, a couple weeks ago I had a had a road trip there and uh it was a great time to like catch up on podcasts. So you're just driving down the road, you have nothing else to do. It's it's a it's a great time to to to listen to some interesting stuff on on instead of just uh you know just music non-stop. You can you can uh drive and learn at the same time.

Steve Gross 13:19

Right, right. I'm a cyclist and I listen to podcasts when I'm writing. So I know what you're talking about there. It's a good way to use your use your downtime.

Fraser Gallop 13:27

Yeah. Um there's one more thing. I I actually, before we wrap it up here, there was one more thing um I wanted to talk about about, you know, in in the spirit of you already have the data. Um you know, there's a there's a lot of kind of monthly calculations that have to happen. So like there's like the earned, um, you know, the earned value, there's the you know, percent completes, um, you know, estimated cost of completion, though those kind of those metrics that are that are used on the jobs. And and really often we see people are doing that manually in in you know back to Excel spreadsheets. But the a lot of the inputs for those calculations are are already coming from their ERPs. Um maybe you could speak just for a minute, like you know, about like how the you know, the ERP can actually do those calculations for you and and what would be some of the challenges to not just using the calculation that's built into the ERP or why you should use the calculation that's built into the ERP versus your Excel one.

Steve Gross 14:30

That's a great point, you know, because what we talked about before with uh that productivity example, the other side to that was that you know it's important to be able to see trends and to be able to look at what the productivity was for a week, maybe, or period. For them it was weekly, uh, as compared to the job you know, to date on the project. So from that, if you if you the minute you capture those dates and have the and have the ability through good BI reporting to extract that information and compare this week to last, you know, you can see where things are headed and and just makes decision making and corrective action that you might want to take much more apparent when you have that kind of data plotted out for you. Uh and that really that's that the time sensitivity and uh nature of things, being able to see over time how you're how you're doing really, I think adds a lot to the to the reporting.

Fraser Gallop 15:34

And I'd probably agree with that. I've I've seen like some people kind of set up these really elaborate systems to kind of track their forecasts over time, uh, versus like you know, just putting that into a forecasting tool where it's it's already kind of time-stamping all of that for you so you can see you know over time how how it changes. Um it's it's not a super complicated thing to do. Um I think some of the challenges are around you know getting your your your PMs to kind of review the monthly report and say, yes, this is good, or you know, these are the actual numbers and provide you know updates. Um but if they're if they're doing that and feeding that information into into the databases that you already have, the database actually gives you like a really good um you know point in time where you can say, you know, show me what things look like at this point in time versus today. And you can really kind of pin down if things are going wrong or sideways on the job, you can kind of pin down, you know, when that happened and you know what would lead you in the comp in the conversation to you know, where did it go wrong versus trying to guess at it and try to reconstruct timelines after the fact, right?

Steve Gross 16:47

Absolutely.

Fraser Gallop 16:50

Like do you see like I think like what's the trend? Do you think are more and more people kind of making better use of these tools? Is it is it about the same as as as before, where you know, some people are still kind of doing manual process and you know others are are are using the tools. Is it is it on an increase or is it I think it is.

Steve Gross 17:15

I think I think you know the contractors that are profitable and that are around still have employed this one way or another. Is it the most productive way is the question. But uh these are the kinds of measurements that really you really need to take, especially in a labor-intensive scenario. These days, you know, labor is so expensive. Um, everything's expensive. But I mean, it you just to win and uh to to realize the margins you're looking for to earn those margins, you've really got to be productive.

Fraser Gallop 17:46

And uh like like like you said, like you know, the if you know your goal is to be profitable, and yeah, it may take some extra work to get get the data into these systems properly, but it but at the end of the day, you're you're introducing that rigor. So as as you're growing, you're taking on bigger jobs, you've already kind of got that in place. Yeah. So that you're not having to like panic and say, like, this is beyond you know what we can handle. You've you've kind of put that, uh, put the process in place. Um, so as as you grow and as the jobs scale, the the process will scale with that, right?

Steve Gross 18:20

Yeah, rigor is a good word. It's that it's the reporting disciplines. Once you get those reporting disciplines in place, the information starts to flow, you know, it's gonna pay dividends for sure, in terms of kinds of reports you can get on your jobs and so on.

Fraser Gallop 18:37

And that's like, you know, we like to talk about data activation as you know, something that uh you're you're already doing the data collection, right? You're you're taking that the data and you're putting it into your databases, um, but you're not actually using that data uh effectively. And so that's kind of the idea behind the saying data activation, or we're taking the data that you already have and kind of activating that and making use of it in different ways. Um, not not having to manually do that assembling and calculating every every month for every job, right?

Steve Gross 19:09

Yeah, not not entering data twice, it's just making use of what you have, being efficient with that. Another way of being efficient. It's great, great way to say it, I think.

Fraser Gallop 19:20

All right. Well, I think I think that's all we had kind of to we want to cover about you already have the data. Um, you know, just thinking about ways that you can take that data that's being collected or you know, potentially another data point, adding on to the collection process to make things more efficient and being able to unlock uh new insights. Um, and then in in in a in a couple weeks, we're we're gonna be back. We'll we'll continue the conversation with what customers are really looking for. Um so yes, thanks for for your time today and and look forward to speaking again. And uh if you haven't already, hit the subscribe button and we'll we'll see you again soon. Thank you. All right, thank you.