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September 2003

Research reveals Business Collaborator as the Construction industry's favourite collaboration software

In industry-wide independent research, Business Collaborator scores the highest levels of customer satisfaction, with a client score of 8.7 out of 10.

E-business implementation specialists, Compagnia, has completed a substantial research project based on data gathered from all the major UK users and suppliers of collaborative software. The research reveals whether collaboration software actually delivers and how the available software products compare. Download Report here

Sanjeev Shah, Managing Director of Business Collaborator explains:

“We are delighted that the Compagnia survey has shown us to have the most satisfied customer base in the industry. We were also amused to be described as the "most cerebral group in the market" and we believe the main reason users are so happy with Business Collaborator is its flexibility. To install a new software system is change enough for any organisation to handle. Staff then shouldn't have to deal with changing the way they work in order to use a new system. It is essential to acceptability, ongoing usage and effectiveness that the system can support the way staff work, not impose a way of working on them. ”

Mike Halsall, Managing Director of Compagnia, summarises the research findings:

“Our high level findings were that the adoption of collaboration software throughout the construction industry could reduce costs by at least 4.28% of annual revenue. Collaboration software leads to significant organisational improvements due to the collaborative processes that evolve and the potential to provide tremendous benefit far outweigh any risks. One potential area of risk is the selection of the software tool. Our research reviewed each of the available collaboration software products by talking to the users of each product. ”

One of the many Business Collaborator customers interviewed for the research project was Costain, the construction company. Costain has an outstanding reputation for major projects within its primary markets - building construction, civil engineering and process engineering - both within the UK and worldwide and has recently completed the implementation of Business Collaborator. BC was chosen after a stringent selection process involving sample costings and a weighted analysis of the tender documents.

Mark Bew, Business Systems Director at Costain, explains:

“Business Collaborator best fulfilled our requirement for a complete solution combining an Enterprise Portal and document management capability with a p roject management facility. It also offered optimum support for Best Practice deployment, plus other key value added applications. In addition, Business Collaborator has a large AEC customer base and understands the issues within the construction industry, reducing the learning curve. ”

The Compagnia research represents feedback from over 70% of those responsible for having made decisions relative to collaboration software in the construction industry. All of these users were positive about the benefits.  

91% of respondents believed that collaboration software provides their organisation with significant financial benefits. 74% believed that client and supply chain relationships were improved when collaboration software was used.

Scored on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being poor, 10 being excellent), the scoring relative to to what extent would you recommend the use of the collaboration system was an average of 8.96. When asked to what extent does the collaboration software system provide your organisation with operational benefits the mean average response was 8.48.