Build Projects, Not Problems:

Of course. Here is the transcript with line spacing to make it easier to read.

By way of introductions, my name's Lance Kohler. I'm a account executive here at Domo. And for those that are, are, uh, not familiar yet with Domo, Domo is an AI and data products platform, and we're gonna talk about what that means in the context of construction. So this'll be valuable, both for those who are general contractors and subcontractors. Joining me today, I have Melinda, Hans, and Morgan from my con general contractors. And to kick things off, maybe I'll turn some time over to the three of you to introduce yourselves, and then also to, uh, introduce myON as well.

All Thank you, Lance. Uh, my name is Melinda Dickinson. I'm the Chief Financial Officer for my con general contractors. We are a large commercial general contractor operating in, uh, Dallas, Texas, Nashville, Tennessee, Phoenix, Arizona, and College Station, Texas. We started back in 1987, trying to remember off of one, one year off of my birthday. And, um, we have been rapidly growing in the last few years and are excited to be here today.

Yeah. Um, I'm Morgan Misra. I am the manager of business intelligence here at myON. So all things Domo are the things I touch. So really getting everything off the ground in relation to dashboards, visualization analysis, really drive our business forward and make sure that we're as profitable as possible.

All right. And Hans Bower, I'm the Director of Office Operations. Um, here at myON. We have, you know, a split between the field operations, office operations, so I'm responsible for, uh, project coordinators, project engineers, project managers, uh, overall project level finance, as well as some corporate finances. Well,

Awesome. Great. Thanks, team. Um, by the way, so we're gonna just jump right in, but there's a place to ask questions. I see a lot of you are kind of commenting in the chat, please. This is not just for the four of us, but if you have any questions as we're going along, please throw 'em in the chat or the q and a we'll a answer those along the way. Uh, any any questions that you have to kick things off? Where I really wanna start is to, to kind, so I, I, my understanding is that myON team, you've been with Domo, you've been using Domo for about three years or so. I really like to hear what got you searching for a data platform and what challenges were you originally looking to solve? And then, um, maybe that starting point, the pains and challenges, and then how we can segment that into Domo and how it, uh, how it helped you address those challenges.

Yeah. Um, I could take it, Melinda, go ahead.

Um, basically we started out using, uh, power BI and kind of connecting in our data very manually. We also had some siloed Excel usage throughout the company. Um, people just creating their own reporting and presenting that out to leadership as they solve it. So we really wanted to get a more just standardized centralized reporting structure that allowed us to like both read data and not have any issues with like, overload and RBI, and then also be able to kind of visualize that data too and push it out broader than just leadership. So kind of going from just that, like, individual being, or the individual just doing their job and not really having an, any idea on how their job impacts the data structure. But now we're able to push out the information from the top down so that they can really see like how their work truly impacts the business

To, uh, great. So it sounds like you were pretty siloed mm-hmm. Everyone working off in their different spaces, but really bringing it all together is one of the use cases here. And Melinda, it sounded like you had some comments as well.

Yes, we have all of these systems, right? And they're, they're fragmented and it's really difficult to align the data together. And so what is a system that could work with, you know, our open APIs that we've, uh, aligned with our technology stack so that we can then pull the data from, you know, my payroll system, my project management system, my financial system, my, uh, my CRM system and ask different questions of it and, and really aggregate that information together in a way that is meaningful to stakeholders, rather than spending all of this time in this preparation stage just to then have that data be stale by the time that you analyze it to actually drive, you know, take action and drive results.

Interesting. So I, I heard the term stale data there. Like, talk to me a little bit about those challenges. And presumably if you had stale data before old expired, now you're into the Domo solution that overcomes that challenge. How has that changed your business and how you approach things?

Well, actually, uh, I have a great dashboard to show for that on our projected performance. Let me show you that.

Perfect. I, The more we can see the better.

Yeah. While she's pulling that up, I also wanna kind of speak to that like stale data aspect too, of before the manual uploads of like Excel spreadsheets to get visualizations, and now we're able to pretty much have live data coming out of Procore and coming out of Spectrum to be able to have that analysis done more real time daily, rather than waiting for every like month end to look at data.

Great. So what this dashboard is doing is actually projecting what our revenue forecast is going to be, and I can oscillate that between revenue and contract fee as well. So instead of me having to wait for a month end close, get the whip to where the backlog is, and then go to my opportunities and figure out what to forecast from there, this is actually doing that for me. So what I've selected here is opportunity name. And so if I wanna say, Hey, what are the projects that we need to win starting, you know, that have activity in June, I can highlight them and they'll tell me which projects are aligned with, it'll tell me how much of it is my actual backlog versus how much of it is my opportunities. And then I can select those opportunities to say, okay, well if I'm at the finish line, what does that look like? If I've got these high probability opportunities, what does my forecast look like there? And so, instead of me having to work in Excel, now I'm utilizing this and coming up with what my metric value is and what my potential is for my overall forecast.

I called him, texted Chris, but Charlie. So that is one aspect of how stale data is no longer stale anymore because it's refreshing, you know, on every cadence dashboard can actually have a different one. But this is, uh, this is one that we keep update pretty regularly, and now I'm able to see if I've got any pitfalls gaps or anything like that. So that's, that's one aspect of it. And then this one actually trails into, well, if I know what my opportunities are gonna be, then I can look at my workforce forecast and go, at what point do I have enough staff? Green means I have a surplus orange means that I need to fill positions across various roles. Um, so, you know, I can tie in my actual revenue and gross profit forecast to what are the roles that I need to be able to support that. So those are some of the examples of how it's now gone from stale data to, you know, actual, actual information that I can do something with.

So that's a pretty big game changer. It sounds like you're, you're able to, and Morgan, I think you mentioned that this is coming in real time, right? Like you're maybe updating it every day gives you the ability to, to see how things are changing on a daily basis. I'm curious how that's changed, like the team meetings and the conversations that the executives have had or that you're having like together to, to manage the business.

Yeah, Melinda, you go for it.

So, uh, you know, running my executive leadership team meetings now, I run it all from Domo dashboards. It has allowed us to take the information and make decisions a lot quicker. So for instance, um, if I want to decide if we need to add staff, as I just mentioned with that workforce planning, I'll know fairly quickly and I'll be able to plan months ahead of time, which means I can work with my people operations department, my, my head of people ops, to then go source those individuals to make sure I've got the right qualifications and skill sets. So it assists with a manpower. It also says, Hey, we've got gaps in projects. Now, a project that may not have been a must win is now a must win. Uh, in fact, I'll show you an example of my overall executive review, because how am I comparing to last year? You know, what's the trend, uh, what am I doing in comparison to budget? So if I take, let's get this loaded here.

And while that's loading to answer your question, grant, uh, it is pulling information from p uh, from Procore and Spectrum.

And, and he also asked Melinda, where are, where are the, is the opportunity projects coming from? Are those coming from Spectrum or Procore as well?

No, they're coming from UN net and co central. Our UN net, which is, uh, now was formerly known as co, so that's our CRM system.

So we've got Procore for project management spectrum from our financials.

Gotcha. Yeah. And that data's coming together using like the project dates, the contract values on contracted projects out of Procore. And then our, uh, opportunities out of co.

So this is my executive review dashboard. So as you can see, you've got billings revenue and gross profit change from prior year. Then below it's, how am I comparing to my overall budget, red, yellow, green in terms of indicators here. And then I can look at year over year trends, billings from prior months or and prior years. And one of my favorite tools that we use from an executive review standpoint is the w project trends. So one of the things that Domo has been, uh, allowing us to do is actually create an automated wip. And if anyone has ever had any experience with a Work in Progress report, you know that that is a very difficult thing to try to do because of all of the moving parts associated with it. Uh, this represents the, the wip once it's complete, and I can able, and I'm able to aggregate that information by, by geography, by business unit, by overall leader, by product types, by client. So I can go here and I can see, you know, from a client perspective what it looks like and break that down, or I can go product type, so I can see how those projects are overall trending from a gross profit standpoint, and then where they are from a geographic standpoint, and then how they're doing compared to their respective budgets in those areas. So I can get more granular with it, but this has

I remember doing some WIP reports and those are, and past roles, and those can be some pretty bad brain damage in, in Excel. So having IT automated is, is awesome.

I got another question from Grant. It says, what work was done on the front end to make sure that you're getting clean data into Domo?

Yeah. Um, so lots of work. Um, what we do is when we bring data into Domo and we start visualizing on it, um, I put together validation tables just to make sure that the data is accurate for what we're expecting to see. And so it's a ton of validation there. And then, um, sometimes we get, um, into an area of where processes need to change and maybe things need to be captured differently. We ran into that, um, quite a bit with our CRM, just basically formatting it. How do we wanna visualize the data? Let's go backwards and now create the process on what inputs need to be had because, you know, whatever you put in is what you're gonna get out of it when it comes to data and visualizations. Um, I see your question too about SOPs. Yes, that's the biggest thing. Creating standards of practices that the business follows in order to make sure that the data comes out correctly and timely. And, um, it really is a lot of work on the front end, but it is very valuable because of what you get as the output.

And we as leaders have to look at that data to really support the business intelligence team, because, you know, in, they're not gonna know whether that's true or correct as we're setting up this process. And so that's been a true partnership and a good amount of work on the front end. But as we've started to identify, oh, well we have a date issue, so that's what's causing this irregularity. So now we know that dates, you know, this is the driving date, this is what we need to fix on the go forward. And, and then creating, you know, uh, Morgan's done a great job of creating audit reports so that we can identify which projects are, uh, exactly causing the irregularity, and then we can go to those project managers and hold them accountable for making sure that they're doing what they need to be doing from a data governance standpoint as well.

Awesome. And Melinda, you mentioned project managers, maybe Hans, this one's for you. How has it, how has it changed how things done out in the field from an operations perspective?

Well, from an operations perspective, I can probably start with just monthly project accounting or auditing. You know, every company, uh, goes through their iterations of, of monthly project, uh, financial reporting. Uh, here we call it DDRs. And so I can go ahead and share my screen here. And what we've done here at myON is, is previous to us incorporating Domo while it's loading, previous to, uh, incorporating Domo into this practice, we had a, a large seven or eight tab Excel workbook where our project managers would be spending, you know, two to three days importing data from Procore and, and filling out their Excel spreadsheets for us to review. Um, and now this data is automatically captured through both Procore Spectrum kind of a check and balance, but I can go into detail. So every project has its own DDR, uh, form, and this is real time data populates, or I guess syncs with Procore, uh, every 24 hours. So obviously our corrections have to be made prior to entering these meetings. But in these financial reviews, uh, there's certain information that we look for in terms of, you know, leading indicators or potential issues. And on our first page here, we're, we're going through contractual time versus what our schedules are telling us. So we can readily identify if we have a scheduling issue, that would obviously, uh, turn into a monetary problem as well. Um, here we also pay attention to the time in which it takes our project managers to buy a project out. Um, the, the, the faster and more accurately you can buy a project out, the less your risk is, uh, moving forward with project. Uh, we also identify, uh, we input, uh, through Procore, we import monitored resources, uh, so we can track our labor, spend, equipment, fuel, everything like that. So we're looking at how we're trending on those financials as we progress through the project, depending on product, or, I'm sorry, contract type, we establish goal fees and pay attention to our gap value value, which is essentially residual buyout as we progress through the project. Um, again, on a monthly basis, we're reviewing these monitored resources. So we're making sure our project managers are tracking, um, how we are spending our money throughout the life cycle of that project and identifying any of these, uh, potential monetary problems before they arise. So we can change staffing, uh, add remove equipment, et cetera as necessary. And we're forecasting these values on the onset of the project, so we know rather quickly whether or not we have a a problem. And we're also paying attention to the values that we are billing for the project over the course of time. So using the graphs here, we can identify pretty quickly whether or not we're either behind schedule or under billing a project. Um, outside of that, we also utilize Domo. So going back to the field side or just the execution of work, we're also monitoring our, our KPIs or our SMART goals for our, not only our project managers, but our coordinators and, and, uh, superintendents as well. And so on this screen, you're seeing the goals or any PM at any time can jump into their dashboard and review how they're performing against all of these metrics that you see on the screen in front of you. Um, it's been great for a providing real-time feedback for our PM course. So at any given time they can understand how they're performing against these metrics. And more importantly, what it provides for us is, are those leading indicators. An example would be, if I drill down into my project engineer roll up goal for our project managers, I can see how we're trending on RFIs, submittals close out, and obviously their internal meetings. And the idea being here, if, if we're behind the power curve on RFIs, we're not getting responses in time, or if our submittals are lagging too far into the project, that would be a leading indicator, uh, to identify that from an administrative perspective, we're probably not moving as fast as we need to to keep the job healthy. Um, outside of that, we pay attention to our team internal meetings, ensuring they're having the requisite communication with all of the parts and pieces to keep that project going. Um, and we pay attention to the timeliness of our pay applications and how we're managing that, again, that gap or that residual buyout. So from, from my perspective on our operations side, this is providing full fidelity, um, to how these teams are operating on an individual project basis. And all these metrics also roll up, uh, into a corporate dashboard that I can review and see the health of the, of the workforce at any given time.

That's great. And I think Cody had a question there with pe, the PE KPI roll up, that's what you drilled into, correct?

Yes, Correct. So, and I'll share screen again, so, so I can kind of give you a better look. So essentially all our project managers are responsible for the performance of their project engineers that operate beneath them. Um, so they, you know, they, they can review their own project engineers performance. And again, we're, we're just simply measuring the time it takes to, to receive RFIs back that is essentially ensuring that we're providing the design team or our client with enough information to make a timely decision. There are instances in which our question spur revision, which falls outside of our window, uh, but for submittal completion and, and Morgan step in, what I, what I enjoy about this process is working with Morgan and identifying just how exactly we're gonna read these metrics. And, and that's the name of the game. Essentially, we identify what it is we wanna see, and then it becomes a back and forth to understand how we parse the data to accurately display what we're doing. So I'll use the submittal completion as an example. Essentially, every project engineer starts out at a hundred percent, and once we have crossed the 30% threshold in time, uh, for project completion, example being if we have a 10 month project, that 30% would fall at three months.

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