When disaster strikes, businesses across the country call Interstate Restoration. The company’s extensive network of 200 employees across seventeen locations serves customers in every state. With a workforce and equipment distributed across a vast geographic area, Interstate Restoration needs practical and reliable methods of sharing project details with its teams. Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate (formerly Sage Timberline Office) delivers the tools Interstate Restoration needs to keep its teams communicating and its projects on track.

Sage 300 CRE Flexible Solution

In 2007, when Interstate Restoration merged with another company the decision was made to adopt Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate as the enterprise-wide solution. “We had outgrown ComputerEase, the construction software package we had been using,” recalls Tom Reeve, CFO of Interstate Restoration. “We had researched Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate and knew it to be a robust and flexible solution so it was an easy decision to roll it out to the entire company.”

Access to Vital Project Data

As the company grew and expanded, the ability to rapidly and efficiently exchange customer and project information between the job site and the home office became even more critical. “Our remote teams would have to access our VPN and generate the reports they needed,” says Reeve. “It was time consuming and cumbersome—yet if they didn’t do it, they wouldn’t have access to the latest job data.”

Now the company uses MyAssistant, an integrated alert, report generation, and document distribution tool. “We are able to automatically generate and deliver critical project status reports to our team on a defined schedule. It arrives to them as an email attachment. They can access it on their mobile phones or their computers. It is an ideal way to put vital project data in the hands of our field staff.”

Monitor Critical Conditions

In addition to the dispersal of vital reports, Interstate Restoration has configured the software to generate email alerts notifying staff of critical conditions relating to projects and finances. “For example, I receive an email notification when a job’s profitability is under a set margin threshold and a notification of jobs that are completed but not billed,” says Reeve. “Information like this, delivered in a timely fashion, focuses our attention on potential problems and helps us quickly take corrective action.”

While much of the company’s communications are internal, Interstate Restoration also utilizes MyAssistant to communicate with its vendors. “We use it to monitor worker’s compensation and liability insurance expiration dates. We send an email automatically to each vendor prior to the expiration date,” explains Reeve.

MyAssistant saves us an enormous amount of time staying on top of worker’s compensation and liability insurance.

Powerful Reporting Tools

Reeve prefers using Microsoft Excel® as a reporting tool and makes extensive use of Office Connector, a tool that facilitates data exchange between Excel and Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate. “I often design complex reports in Excel, and bring data directly from Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate into the report where I can easily sort columns and find the data I’m looking for,” explains Reeve. “I can refresh the data instantly, and even write updated data back into Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate.”

Company-Wide Use

At any given time, Interstate Restoration may have 250 or more open projects. The software adeptly handles the large volume, providing the company’s accounting and human resources staff, project managers, construction managers, and management with integrated job data.

“With Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate, we are more efficient. And the information we receive from the system is accessible, timely, and accurate,” says Reeve. “Our whole business runs on Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate – from inception through final billing, it is used at every level of this organization and every phase of our projects.”