7 Ways To Simplify Preparing Construction Reports for Stakeholders and Management

Preparing regular construction reports can feel like an overwhelming, never-ending challenge. Stakeholders, owners, investors, and management rely on accurate updates, but pulling these executive reports together often requires juggling data from multiple systems, wrestling with manual spreadsheets, and spending hours trying to create a clear picture of what’s happening on your projects. 

Sounds familiar? Contractors and construction professionals already have a lot on their plates – time-consuming reporting shouldn’t be added to the list.  

That’s where smart construction analytics software like ContractorBI proves indispensable. By centralizing data, automating reporting processes, and providing real-time insights, you can prepare reports faster and make them easier for management to understand and act on. 

Here are seven ways to streamline your reporting process and deliver impactful updates that stakeholders will appreciate. 

1. Bring All Your Data Together in One Place

One of the biggest roadblocks to efficient reporting is scattered data. Sales information may live in one system, job progress in another, and financials somewhere else entirely. Pulling it all together often requires hours of manual digging and consolidation, leaving room for errors and outdated information. 

With ContractorBI, this problem is a thing of the past. Integration dashboards seamlessly blend into your existing software, providing a centralized location to access and analyze critical information across platforms including Procore, Spectrum, Intacct, Sage, and more.

Instead of hunting down data across half a dozen different tools, you can generate a comprehensive report with the most up-to-date insights in minutes with just a few clicks. 

2. Automate the Reporting Process

Manual reporting isn’t just tedious – it can be risky. Every time you copy data from one source to another, you increase the chance of mistakes. Plus, static reports quickly become outdated. Instead, streamline how you create and distribute your construction reports. 

ContractorBI provides more than 45 different dashboards based on the latest data. From weekly project updates to monthly financial summaries to daily bid activity reports, it’s easy to create reports for stakeholders and management that instill confidence. 

 The dashboards include:

• Executive Scorecard/KPIs: Get a quick snapshot of the overall health and performance of all business development and bidding activities, with week-over-week comparisons to track progress.
• Pipeline (Status, Trend, Performance): Visualize the status, health, and performance of your sales pipeline across key business areas, leveraging critical metrics for actionable insights.
• KPIs/Sales and Bid Performance: Track progress against sales goals for each key metric. Pinpoint problem areas and trends for immediate corrective action.
• Forecasts: Generate accurate forecasts for sales, revenue, and labor by combining current pipeline and bid data with active job information, historical conversion rates, and pipeline aging trends.
• Marketing/Engagement: Analyze the effectiveness and trends of your outbound marketing and business development programs to refine strategies and improve results.
• Other Key Insights: Dive into employee usage and activity metrics, as well as integration summaries, for a comprehensive view of operational performance.
  

  3. Tailor Reports to Your Audience

A one-size-fits-all report rarely satisfies anyone. Stakeholders and executives may want high-level overviews and trends, while management is looking for detailed insights into budgets, timelines, and resource allocation. Creating separate reports manually for each audience is a huge time-suck. 

ContractorBI makes it easy to tailor reports to the needs of your stakeholders. For example, you can filter data to view specific time periods, territories, or job types, allowing you to seamlessly prepare reports on the areas that matter most to your audience. This means you can create a weekly financial scorecard that highlights company-wide KPIs for the executive team and, minutes later, prepare a report for sales managers focused on pipeline health and conversion rates.

4. Use Visuals To Tell a Clear Story

Nothing slows down a report presentation like pages and pages of dense text or spreadsheets full of raw data. Busy stakeholders and management teams need reports that are easy to read and quick to interpret – and that means using visuals. 

Instead of presenting rows of numbers, with ContractorBI, you can use charts, graphs, and trend lines to convey key insights at a glance. A sales funnel visualization can show exactly where opportunities are being lost, for example, while a job profitability graph highlights which projects are driving your margins.

Make it easy for stakeholders to immediately grasp the story your report is telling, without hours of extra work. 

5. Take Advantage of Real-Time Data

Static reports are often outdated by the time they’re created. In an industry like construction where decisions are made quickly, relying on last week’s numbers simply won’t cut it. Real-time reporting keeps everyone on the same page with the most current information. 

With ContractorBI, your dashboards pull live data from integrated systems, giving you and your stakeholders a dynamic view of your operations. Whether it’s tracking project progress, analyzing bid performance, or monitoring costs, you’ll always have the most accurate insights at your fingertips. This means you can make better decisions faster, whether that’s reallocating resources mid-project or identifying potential cost overruns before they escalate.

6. Identify Revenue Leaks and Opportunities

Reports shouldn’t just show what’s happening – they should help you understand why it’s happening and what to do about it. ContractorBI helps you identify hidden opportunities and potential revenue leaks by analyzing key parameters like sales performance, job type profitability, and customer trends.

For example, you might discover that certain job types consistently underperform or that a specific division has higher-than-average labor costs. With this information, you can take proactive steps to address inefficiencies and focus on the areas driving the most profitability. You can also compare your bidding performance to industry averages using AI-powered benchmarking data, giving you valuable context to improve decision-making.

7. Save Time With Pre-Built Templates

Starting from scratch every time you need to create a report is inefficient and unnecessary. Pre-built templates are a game-changer for contractors who want to save time while maintaining consistency across their reporting.

ContractorBI offers more than 45 dashboards designed for common reporting needs, from financial overviews to bid activity summaries. Plus, you can edit and create your own customized dashboards, quickly adapting them to fit your needs  (training on how to do so is included in your ContractorBI subscription!).

Whether you need a detailed project update or a high-level performance snapshot, ContractorBI has you covered. Reduce the time you spend on formatting reports and focus on delivering meaningful insights.

Simplify Reporting, Amplify Impact

Preparing construction reports for stakeholders and management doesn’t have to be a time-consuming headache. ContractorBI helps you create visually engaging, real-time reports, streamlining the entire process while delivering valuable insights.

Not only does this save you countless hours, but it gives you and others at your company the information needed to make smarter decisions, faster. 

Take the first step toward stress-free reporting. Request a demo of ContractorBI today and discover how it can transform the way you share insights with your team.