A conversation with Jim Flynn, President & CEO, Maxwell Systems.
How’s business for Maxwell Systems? Is that indicative of the construction industry overall?
FLYNN: Business is pretty good. We’ve seen contractors come out of the recession with a lot of pent up demand to leverage technology to improve their efficiency and profitability. Architectural billings have been in growth mode for the past year, leading to more construction projects. Since our software supports the entire construction lifecycle, we are seeing increased interest in our digital takeoff and estimating products, which drives the need for better accounting, project management, and field solutions. We expect continued growth based on the notion that with more bids won, there are more projects and money to manage and it becomes a continuum.
Additionally, there is a willingness on the part of the leadership in construction companies to become much more tech savvy. They are deploying technology to close the gap of information flow across their companies in order to more quickly identify, react, and remedy situations. That’s exciting.
What has influenced Maxwell Systems and its product offerings?
FLYNN: Maxwell continually invests in our products to ensure we offer the features and capabilities our customers want and need. The influence for our product development comes directly from our customers. Over the years, we have heard contractors express the need for a single solution to manage their entire construction cycle and that has been the driver of our development efforts for the past 5 years.
We put a lot of effort into listening to our customers, especially at our Annual Conference and in our customer-exclusive website where they can easily request enhancements. Our development team carefully reviews the requests to make sure we focus on what’s demanded most and is in line with our development strategy. We are proud of our near 40-year tradition of using our customers as the true experts in the use of our products while we focus on building the right technology to support them.
How have the advances in technology impacted the construction industry? How does Maxwell Systems add benefit for the contractor?
FLYNN: The big change has been advent and explosion of mobility solutions in the field. Traditionally, construction business applications have provided more information to make better, more prudent decisions among back office staff. The field crew has had limited access to this valuable data and has struggled with efficiently reporting back to the office. Now, with the combination of Maxwell’s all-in-one solution, ProContractorMX, and mobile technologies, field crews can more accurately and with more granularity provide timely progress reports that can be reflected accurately in job costing, back office operations, as well as in change management. Ultimately, that detail is what is going to help contractors to better forecast jobs and profit.
We think technology will continue to increase the visibility and understanding of where you have productivity challenges or greater efficiencies than a competitor and that will increase competitiveness on bidding and execution of jobs.
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What is your forward outlook for the construction industry? For Maxwell Systems?
FLYNN: I’m fairly bullish on both. The U.S. economy took a hiatus from investing in construction projects during the recession and now contractors that survived the downturn are beginning to see the start of the resurgence. It all looks very positive for the industry and the merit of technology was largely proven among the companies that invested during the downturn.
The other positive sign for Maxwell Systems and the adoption of technology is the fact that the younger generations are very readily embracing technology and take it as a foregone conclusion that it is an enabler for them professionally. We have a generational shift that will continue to gain momentum and we will continue to see an increase in technology use and also a diversity of new techniques to leverage technology to do things in new and powerful ways for better construction management. ■
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Modern Contractor Solutions, October 2013
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