How Bond Brothers relied on Oracle Textura Payment Management for a smooth upgrade to a new ERP system
April 7, 2022 | 5 minute readJackie Easton knows Oracle Textura Payment Management. As the business systems controller for dynamic East Coast builder Bond Brothers Inc., and its three subsidiaries: Bond Building Construction, Inc.; Bond Civil & Utility Construction, Inc.; and Bond Mechanical Construction, Inc.; Easton played a crucial role in the company’s original adoption of the pioneering payment management solution in 2010.
Fast-forward some 12 years later, and Easton remains effusive regarding the overwhelmingly positive impact Oracle Textura has made on Bond’s operational efficiency. “We’re definitely a very happy long-term Oracle Textura customer,” says Easton, who has worked for the longtime Massachusetts-based general contractor for 20 years. “We’ve enjoyed great success.”
Keeping up with industry solutions
Of course, much has changed in the construction industry since Bond had the foresight to become an early adopter of Oracle Textura. Clearly there’s been a dramatic shift in construction industry software as well. Companies continue to migrate from on-premises to cloud solutions. With Oracle Textura, Bond accelerates and streamlines payment management while mitigating risk for all stakeholders.
But as effective as Oracle Textura has been over the past decade-plus, Bond realized a piece of the company’s digital transformation puzzle was missing. Manual operations still existed in some corners of payment management. Labor-intensive data entry often resulted in needless errors and while creating bottlenecks in productivity.
Digital transformation calls for an ERP
Easton and her team knew it was time to upgrade to a full enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could pair with the power of Oracle Textura’s cloud application while keeping pace with Bond’s growth. With its three subsidiaries and 200 active projects at any given time, it was evident that a more comprehensive system was not a luxury but a necessity for Bond’s future plans.
“Moving to a full ERP was going to allow us to really leverage more of the automation we could get from all possible integration points between Oracle Textura and our new ERP.”
—Jackie Easton, business systems controller, Bond Brothers Inc.
“We didn’t have an ERP before; it was mostly an accounting system,” Easton says. “Moving to a full ERP was going to allow us to really leverage more of the automation we could get from all possible integration points between Oracle Textura and our new ERP.”
Easton, in partnership with Bond’s IT director and with help from consultancy RSM, spent a year shopping around, interviewing people and just “digging into the different options out there” for the right ERP solution. She didn’t want to select an ERP merely because it was popular throughout the construction industry. Selecting the right ERP meant fitting their needs. During the discovery process, Easton was very clear that the solution must seamlessly integrate with Oracle Textura.
A solution to keep pace with growth
After evaluating numerous options, they selected COINS ERP. The ERP is crucial to bringing predictability and consistency while having the capacity to expand with Bond’s five- and 10-year growth plans.
As the builder grows across its mid-Atlantic footprint, COINS provides Bond with clarity and uniformity in back-office staffing by eliminating the need for multiple systems. Previous manual intervention dictated by past systems also left room for errors that hindered efficiency.
Since the COINS implementation began in July 2021, Easton has been pleased with the smooth, cohesive collaboration between COINS, Oracle Textura, and the Bond team.
Because the ERP encompasses operations across the entire company, about 70 people on the Bond implementation planning team came from all areas of the organization—finance, operations, and HR. The planning process was dominated by extensive testing and retesting.
Partnership blossoms between Oracle Textura and COINS
“Our COINS and Oracle Textura teams working on this implementation work really well together. That's been a huge plus. A lot of cooperation, a lot of collaboration, a lot of brainstorming,” Easton says.
It was a three-way partnership from the beginning, and the Oracle Textura team was there every step of the journey, she adds. They held weekly meetings to collectively map out what's missing and discuss new options. Initially meeting offline, once a collaborative online system was in place, they could share data to detect errors. Through their collective troubleshooting, the team found things they could upgrade that weren’t inherently programmed in the previous system.
“The team was really great about coming up with different solutions and options to make it all work,” she recalls. “I can't even imagine doing it without the Oracle Textura team that we've been working with. They always come prepared to the meetings, which is critical to the success of the project. They've just been so great and so supportive.”
Looking toward a bright digital future
With the implementation continuing, the Bond team is beginning to settle, stabilize, and evaluate their new system. They’ll be gauging improvements and targeting inefficiencies.
“We have so much more control, and with a cohesive system the sharing of data is at everyone’s fingertips now, whereas before the systems were disconnected,” Easton says. “You had to go here and there to get information. Pulling it all together was slow and tough.”
Running more analytics is on Easton’s near-term agenda. She likes to call that “the fun part.”
Over the next several months they’ll firm up the underlying data while building employees’ confidence and familiarity with the new system. Easton also is eager to get her C-level executives comfortable with easy-to-use dashboards to drill down into the data so they can find what’s important to them.
While Easton is being patient and wants to take care of the basics first, there’s a part of her already anticipating what lies ahead. She’s eager to see what’s next and implement some of the new Oracle Textura “toys,” as she likes to call them.
Easton also is appreciative of the consistent partnership Oracle Textura has provided over the years and especially through the COINS implementation. “Oracle Textura has been great to us,” she says. “You're always there no matter when I send you an email and you're always there to help out and are very supportive. It’s been an essential relationship over the years and for many to come.”
Oracle Construction and Engineering, the global leader in construction management software and project portfolio management solutions, helps you connect your teams, processes, and data; empower better decision-making; and synchronize activities across the project and asset lifecycle. Drive efficiency and control in project delivery with proven solutions for project controls, construction scheduling, portfolio management, BIM/CDE, construction payment management, and more.
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