Man on construction site looking at tablet

Digitalisation: How Construction Can Get Out of a Rut

There are few industries as important to the British economy as construction. From making up six percent of the UK’s GDP and employing about eight percent of the nation’s workforce, the sector is a vital cog that helps our country continue to move forward. Despite this importance, the sector has been said to fall behind other industries in terms of its proliferation of technological adoption. This lack of digitalisation has been frequently cited as a sore-spot by leading experts and commentators. Most notably, in Mark Farmer’s influential 2016 report ‘Modernise or Die’, digitalisation was highlighted as a key issue, which the industry must address if it wishes to continually evolve.

Furthermore, McKinsey’s report ‘Imagining construction’s digital future’ highlighted the plateauing productivity levels in construction, far outpaced by the total economy’s performance. It also went some way to define what is meant by digitalisation. When it comes to this buzzword, we often hear it, see it and even say it – but how can it be defined and by what markers are we measuring it?

What is Digitalisation?

According to McKinsey, digitalisation can fall into three categories: Assets, Usage and Labour. Activities in these areas are given a RAG rating for their levels of digital asset stock, digital spend on employees, digital interactions and digital transactions amongst others. Anyone still receiving faxed orders and carbon-copy proof of delivery documents will easily see how construction can seem stuck in the red zone with only Agriculture for company, when compared with its more digitally advanced fellows in transportation, hospitality, education, government, utilities and chemicals.

And so, against this backdrop, the sector’s current lack of digitalisation may be hampering its ability to improve productivity levels. In fact, when compared to other similarly sized industries, productivity in the construction sector has shown little growth during the past four decades. By comparison, productivity in the manufacturing sector has almost doubled in the same period.

Whilst it’s always been important for the sector to address this problem, the incentive is now greater than ever. At Wienerberger, we believe efforts to implement digital tools will not only improve our internal processes, but also our external customer facing services and ultimately make us easier to work with in the future.

To underpin these efforts to improve the customer’s experience, we recently launched our new Flame campaign, (so called thanks to our iconic ‘flame’ logo) designed to give those in the building sector the confidence that they can get back to work easily and efficiently with our support. Our investment into the rapid implementation of technology and digital tools has helped to facilitate remote working for colleagues and to keep them connected with customers facing similar challenges. As well as helping to make sites safer and giving staff members the confidence to return to work, our new campaign is the first step in a larger movement to usher through a new era of digitalisation at Wienerberger.

Make Your Company Easier to Work With

Earlier this year, when face to face contact with customers and sharing of paperwork and pens in the stock yard became impossible overnight, we rapidly deployed a non-touch collection process moving our haulier communications and interactions digital with a ‘text and collect’ service, which scooped up an award and received widespread recognition at the British Ceramic Confederation HSE pledge event in October 2020. We improved our telephony allowing customer services colleagues to work efficiently from home and we mobilised our workforce via Microsoft Teams in a matter of days not months. Accelerating the use of Showpad has provided a way for our salespeople to share tailored content directly with customers, when pouring over brochures and discussions with a cup of coffee is no longer an option.

We are also working with customers to move away from fax and phone orders and are transitioning an increasing number of customers to Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for business transactions. Adopting EDI allows documents to transfer seamlessly between Wienerberger’s systems and that of our customers speedily processing documents like purchase orders, invoices and shipping notices, freeing up time for our customer support department to talk through more complex queries on the phone and ultimately, saving costs on both sides. Efforts don’t stop there, we are already working on plans to further build on this capability with a new portal which will allow customers to view detailed dispatch and delivery information outside of office hours, provide additional ways to interact with our customer service team and more.

Implement Tools that Deliver Value

These digital tools and processes might see us tick quite a few boxes of McKinsey’s measures of how digital we have become in such a short space of time, thus making us more productive. But what is driving this, is our desire to deliver more value to our customers. In fact, with these endeavors, we’re able to react in a more agile way and ensure that our customers can continue to receive the level of service and support that they’ve come to expect. That’s why we’ve dedicated time to updating key resources, such as our CPD seminars and delivering these live using conferencing tools because we know architects will need to stay up to date with continuous professional development whilst working from home and many prefer an interactive ‘face to face’ training session and not just a recording. Similarly, we’ve ensured that our case studies and site imagery, BIM assets and technical product information are up to date on our website, so that they can be easily accessed, which is important now that many brick and mortar stores are closed. Overall, our efforts are helping to reduce the need for in-person meetings and ensuring individuals can remain effectively spaced.

When combined together, these new tools are helping us to better navigate the difficult times we currently face and ensure that our customers are able to continue working as normally as possible. Through our Flame Campaign we’re helping the construction sector to get back to work as efficiently and safely as possible. Our efforts reaffirm the commitment we have to improving the experiences of our customers, as well as highlighting our continued commitment to driving further digitalisation across the sector. Together, we believe the two efforts can make a real difference and help the industry adapt to this new landscape.