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Consistently ranked among the Forbes 500 largest privately-owned companies, Webcor is a recognized leader in commercial construction. The Northern Californiabased builder currently has over $2.6 billion in construction business under contract, with eight permanent offices and 32 temporary jobsites.
The Challenge
Webcor’s industry is highly competitive. To maintain and build on its leadership position, the company’s employees must be able to clearly communicate and quickly respond to a wide range of stakeholders including customers, architects, contractors and manufacturers. “The availability and responsiveness of our employees can often mean the difference between winning or losing a contract or getting a job done on time,” says Gregg Davis, CIO for Webcor. “It is critical that our employees be able to effectively communicate whether they are in the office, on the road or at one of our construction sites.” Because of this, Webcor continuously strives to improve the effectiveness of its communications systems and set out to bring high-availability phone and e-mail communications directly to each one of its job sites, without requiring multiple devices or complicated application development on the backend. Webcor also wanted to reduce the use of laptop computers to lower hardware and support costs, and reduce the instances of damaged and stolen equipment.
The Solution
Webcor had invested in hardware and software applications based on Palm OS,® making a Palm®- based solution a key requirement. This effectively eliminated proprietary systems such as RIM® Black- Berry® devices. Laptops with Wi-fiaccess offered poor connectivity within the steel and concrete environments of the company’s job sites. And other e-mail devices still required users to carry a cell phone and a laptop or PDA to manage their dayto- day business.
Good Mobile Messaging on the Palm Treo™ with service from Verizon provided the ideal solution. It allowed Webcor to create the responsive communications system it needed, including enterprise e-mail access, Over-the-Air (OTA) synchronization and centralized IT management, all with a rugged built-in phone and PDA for instant access to tasks, scheduling, calendaring and other key functions. Since using Good Mobile Messaging, Webcor particularly appreciates a number of features, including:
- OTA provisioning — saves time by automatically updating devices without having to be plugged in to a cradle or physically brought to the IT department.
- Good Mobile Messaging console — allows the Webcor administrator to better keep track of users and devices by presenting information in a more intuitive and easy-tounderstand way.
- Out-of-the office response — improves communications and customer comfort levels by alerting message senders that a Webcor employee is unavailable or out of the office.
- Continual enhancements such as file attachment suppor t, sor ting capabilities, and RSS feeds.
The Results
Webcor’s employees are now able to engage in proactive, real-time communications without being hampered by multiple cumbersome devices. Not only are workers instantly responsive to requests without leaving the work site, they can rapidly manage project questions, updates and changes without losing valuable work time or money. In addition, the remote e-mail capability allows Webcor to document all of its communications. This is an important feature when dealing with customers, contractors and manufacturers.
As Gregg Davis, CIO of Webcor puts it, “Having Good devices allows us to be more responsive and accountable to our contractors, subcontractors, and owners, and allows decisions and information about our jobs to flow more effortlessly and quickly.” The Good™ solution has increased productivity and efficiency at every level of Webcor’s organization. It enables workers to be more responsive to their constituents and maintain project workflow with faster communications and decision making.
Onsite staff can walk the job, manage day-today decisions, update changes, review designs and answer questions all without leaving the job site. Davis believes this translates into direct cost savings: “The faster we can get information, the more we can save time, save money, increase productivity and have happier clients.”
According to Davis, the Good solution also saves the company money by reducing the number of lost, stolen, damaged or virus- infected laptops. “Laptops, while portable, are very expensive to maintain and support,” says Davis. “The more Treo devices with Good Mobile Messaging we have out in the field, the better off we are.”
And the internal response has been overwhelming. After gaining positive results in the initial rollout, Webcor offered its workers a Good Mobile Messaging-enabled Treo and a desktop computer in exchange for the laptops they were currently using in the field. The company has already deployed over 100 devices with the potential to deploy another 200. Davis estimates that while the swapped equipment carries about the same price point, they are getting “ten times the productivity.”
Webcor has already expanded the use of Good Mobile Messaging by implementing Good Mobile Messaging Forms that track expenses, timesheets and other valuable functions right from the job site. And Davis reports that product managers are proactively collaborating with other workers and job sites to better manage issues in real time. “The Good devices have created incredible flexibility and productivity for our staff,” said Davis. “We searched 5–6 years for the ultimate mobility device, and we believe we hit the jackpot. Our hats are off to Good.”
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