Non-Construction Software Perfect for Construction

As a construction software company, we know it is hard enough to keep up with all of the latest construction technology let alone all the new tech coming out. We wanted to share some tools we love that would benefit the industry. 

Here are some of our favorites from the DADO tech stack and our top picks for the construction industry and how they might be helpful to you. 

Expensify 

Expense software with a killer mobile app. I dread, put off, and frankly don't even submit expenses because I hate doing them so much. My general experience with Expensify is I usually leave wondering why I put it off,  there is a lot of PTSD there from years of having to fill out unintuitive forms. 

• • Why we love it - it's darn easy to get your information is and it does a lot of the work for you filling in the information for you. Take a picture from a receipt and it detects date, vendor, amount, and more. 
  • How it would be helpful - everyone hates doing expenses, and this makes it so much less painful, you almost don’t mind doing them.

Anecdote: We actually love this software so much it inspired our document automation and templating features - skip having to enter in information and the tedious work, just let the software do the work for you. My philosophy is to let computers do 99% of the heavy lifting and keep a manual override for when you need it.

Slack

A real-time communication tool that started out on a mission to completely eliminate email but it has become so much more. To be honest, I don't love that it can start to feel like a run-on meeting in the background of my day but the benefits far outweigh the cons with Slack. 

• • Why we love it - most people are familiar with the communication tools of channels (groups) and direct messages, what we really love is the integrations such as with our CRM, our document tools, and more. Get notifications across all your software in the one place you are in every day.
  • How it would be helpful - no shortage of opportunities here. Create channels for constant coordination like within your BIM department, Q&A for your fab shop, coordinating deliveries. There are also nice benefits to automated updates to your team like informing when a bid has been accepted.

There is also a really intangible benefit to this tool of bringing the team together - making silly emojis and inside jokes, celebrating good things going on the business with everyone, and developing relationships with people in your team who don't see each other every day. 

Miro

There is not a single person at DADO who doesn't use Miro. It is a real-time whiteboard but there are infinite ways you can use this thing. Our team adopted it the week we went fully remote due to COVID back in March 2020, and we’ve only gotten more out of it the more we use it.

There are so many benefits to moving digital even in collaboration (keeping a record we can search, quick copy/paste/edit when brainstorming,  and leveraging templates to name a few). 

• Why we love it - as a fully remote company we use this tool along with our documentation tool (Slab) to communicate ideas, educate others about the customers and processes, and what we are building next in the product. Each team uses the tool a little differently but we love it because it is easy to get started with and we keep finding new ways to use it. 
• How it would be helpful - there are 2 main benefits to this tool. 1) Quick and easy self-organization - pull planning, on-the-fly coordination, things like this. It's nice because it's easy to create, maintain, and coordinate with multiple people. 2) Real-time collaboration, especially across multiple documents. Imagine creating a Miro board that goes with an RFI, or coordination of and elevator shaft placement to hash out the details in one place. 

Calendly 

I was a little on the fence about this one because I love how much Calendly makes my life easier, but I don't love how impersonal it can feel to not take the time to book a meeting. If you can get over that and just focus on the time you spend with someone it really makes sense. 

• • Why we love it - Just saving minutes to get time on the calendar with people is so helpful and one less thing. Super customizable that we can do group calendar invites and so on.
  • How it would be helpful - for coordinating time with your other software or contractors, GC/Sub coordination, you name it. 

Honorable Mentions

This list could go on forever so just adding a few honorable mentions.

• Slab - online wiki for knowledge sharing and remote collaboration 
• Trello and Basecamp - my favorite lightweight planning tools, they can be used for just one person or multiple. 
• Quickbase - this is a workflow tool with integrated contacts. So if you have an order for your shop this is a great lightweight tool to kick off workflows. 
• Donut - this is actually an add-on in, we spend so much time focusing on work this app blocks time just to hang out as a team. 

I hope you found this helpful and if you are interested in any of these tools, our team has helped our customers adopt new technology while adopting the DADO platform. Shoot us a line or come visit us in person, we would love to chat.