Date Posted: 6/1/2005
Dexter + Chaney’s Forefront® Construction Management Software Helps Royal Electric Win ‘Vision’ Award
Sacramento company honored for its use of technology
SEATTLE, April 26, 2005: Royal Electric of Sacramento CA has won a prestigious “Vision Award” from Constructech magazine for its use of advanced technology, including Dexter + Chaney’s Forefront® Construction Management Software. The Vision Awards recognize companies “that have realized the advantages of advanced technologies in their everyday businesses,” according to Constructech, which covers construction-industry technology.
Royal Electric won a Silver “Vision Award” in the specialty contractor ($26 million to $100 million) category. The 44-year-old company serves commercial and residential customers in California and four other Western states. In its application for the award, Royal Electric emphasized the benefits of its use of Forefront, including sharing information between remote sites and the main office, and its Document Imaging capabilities.
“Forefront has been an essential productivity tool for Royal Electric,” said David Brown, Royal Electric’s Special Projects Manager. The company purchased Forefront in 1999. Although its annual revenues have increased 50 percent (to $42 million) since then, Royal Electric has reduced its accounts payable staff from three employees to one and its purchasing staff from four people to three.
Using a DS3 line and virtual private network (VPN), remote locations in California and elsewhere “are now able to input payroll, purchase orders, invoices and project documentation (into Forefront) from the sites, as well as review job cost reports,” Royal explained in its Vision Awards application.
Royal Electric also explained that, with Forefront Document Imaging, the company has a completely electronic invoice approval process that allows it to take advantage of discounts for quick payment, eliminate lost invoices and improve the accuracy of cost coding. The approval process for vendor invoices has been reduced from a 30- to 45-day period to one to five days.
“Forefront Document Imaging allows us to closely monitor vendor pricing, since all the information is instantly available for review,” said Brown. “Accessing the information in Forefront saves us time, effort, and energy—all of which translate to higher productivity and, ultimately, greater profit for the company.”
More than 3,500 total users make use of Forefront’s Document Imaging component, which addresses a typically painful problem for contracting firms: giving management, office staff and project managers the fast access they need to important documents like AP invoices, change orders, payroll timecards, contracts and others.
According to John Chaney, Dexter + Chaney’s co-founder and president, other Forefront users will benefit from Royal Electric’s experiences.
“Royal Electric provides an example of how to ‘do it right’ with technology,” said Chaney. “They use Forefront to full advantage and share with us suggestions for new features. We rely on customers like Royal Electric to ensure that Forefront meets the business-management needs of all our customers.”
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More than 1,000 construction companies throughout the United States use Dexter + Chaney’s Forefront Construction Management Software. Forefront includes 30 integrated modules that handle accounting, jobs, project management, human resources, document imaging, remote connectivity and data sharing. Companies that use Forefront report they have improved profitability and have grown their businesses more than 300 percent without adding accounting staff.
Forefront placed first overall in the Job Costing/Accounting/Payroll Applications category of the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) 2004 Information Technology Survey for the Construction Industry, fifth edition. Dexter + Chaney also finished first in service-management software for the specialty-trades category.
For more information about Dexter + Chaney or Forefront, contact Brad Mathews, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Dexter + Chaney, 9700 Lake City Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115-2347; phone: 800-875-1400 or 206-364-1400; fax: 206-367-9613; e-mail: info@dexterchaney.com; www.dexterchaney.com.
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