How do you bring an earthmoving business into the 21st century? This was our brief from Western Earthmoving (WEM) for their technology strategy.
Time to change
WEM is a successful, family-owned civil engineering business with more than 200 employees across the Sydney basin. With a long and proud history in Sydney’s construction sector, WEM’s business has been built on strong commercial relationships and a reputation to get the job done.
WEM felt competitive in areas like having a strong, reliable asset fleet. Their revenue and their business performance was consistently strong. But times are changing. WEM’s management team knew if they didn’t embrace technology and innovation, their competitors would. WEM wanted an IT strategy to drive their competitiveness into the future and ensure all their technology work was aligned with a vision. They wanted to grow with confidence, future-proof their business and be able to anticipate the demands of increasingly tech-savvy customers, suppliers and employees. But they didn’t feel well equipped internally and hadn’t found the right consultant to help them shape their future.
The call was made
Carnac Group was recommended to WEM as technology experts with a strong track record assisting businesses in construction. The initial engagement was to conduct a review of WEM’s technology landscape including risks, architecture, security and mobility – and it has grown from there.
Key requirements
- Run a full audit of the IT landscape
- Assess the level of security and the risks associated with IT
- Guide WEM through the desired technology changes
- Define a long-term strategy to make technology a long-term asset for WEM
WEM Before
- Knew they needed to tackle technology, but didn’t know how
- Lacked the skills internally to assess their technology and hadn’t yet found a consultant they could trust
- Were exposed to major risks they didn’t know were there
- Were using an ageing fleet of servers as well as a non-supported email system (Lotus)
- Had limited reporting capability
WEM After
- Reduced operational threats across numerous areas
- Confident in their choice of consultant with Carnac Group
- Using Office 365 to support team collaboration, emails and file management
- Using Salesforce to manage their opportunity pipeline and the project lifecycle
- Using Tableau to consolidate and report data
- Excited to be aiming for cutting edge in their sector
Stage 1: Review & Recommendations
WEM first engaged Carnac Group to conduct a full review of WEM’s technology landscape. The review encompassed a security assessment, a review of the infrastructure, applications and also how technology was perceived by key employees.
We found some significant risks inherent in WEM’s existing technology which could expose them to major – and expensive – operational disruptions if left untouched. We also identified a number of ‘quick win’ projects to help WEM with some key pain points: reporting, tracking of tenders and upgrading to a productivity suite (Office 365). Dealing with these became our first priority for Stage 2.
Stage 2: Rectify
This stage was all about addressing the weaknesses and potential liabilities in WEM’s technology landscape which we’d identified in our review. The mentality here was: what does WEM need to do to simply “keep the lights on”? This included:
- Establishing a business continuity plan to minimise disruption to operations in any unplanned events
- Reviewing some of the security rules to protect WEM’s data
- Transitioning from Lotus Notes to Office 365 to increase the productivity of employees and reduce the supportability risks with ageing systems
- Implement a reporting tool (Tableau) to start reporting accurately on larger data sets.
We needed to deal with these basics of keeping the business running before we could look at anything transformational.
Did you know we are Salesforce experts in building & construction?
Stage 3: Ready for more
Having got this far, WEM is now ready for the next phase: establishing technology as a differentiator and propelling WEM ahead of its competitors. Together with WEM we have laid the foundations for a business-wide cultural shift towards innovation and technology.
Here’s where the real fun starts!
“Carnac Group’s long-term thinking helps us make confident investment decisions about the future for WEM. They’re helping us realise what’s possible with our technology strategy.”
Peter Konstantopoulos, Chief Financial Officer, WEM
WEM is a thriving family-owned civil engineering business specialised in clearing land for major urban development. WEM’s business is built on strong commercial relationships in the construction sector and a reputation to get the job done. WEM has a long and proud history contributing to landmark projects across the Sydney basin.
