Firms Say No. 1 Challenge Is Keeping Up with Technology

construction.com August 23, 2001
By Judy Schriener

Marketing professionals of AEC firms and their clients claim that their number one challenge today is keeping up with technology. Next in the queue of challenges is finding and keeping good employees and training existing workers. Not surprisingly, firms say that the biggest advantage of e-technology is improved availability of information, whereas loss of personal contact is the most significant disadvantage.

Clients say they use the Web to research AEC companies, and there they expect to find contact information, brochure-type information and, preferably, current projects. Some want pricing data too. An AEC firm's e-technology savvy is not currently a top criterion for selection, say most clients, but they indicate that it will become more so in the future.

These findings are from a national Web-based survey of client expectations of e-technology commissioned by the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) Foundation, the education and research arm of the SMPS trade organization; they were announced at the recent SMPS National Marketing Conference in Orlando, Fla.

SMPS members were sent three e-mails explaining the purpose of the survey and inviting them to participate, and they were urged to invite their clients to respond to the client version of the survey as well. Four hundred seventy five (or 10%) of 4,527 members who were e-mailed the invitation responded between June 15 and July 9, resulting in data with a confidence level of 95%, with a standard error of +/- 4.25. Since only 52 clients filled out their surveys and there was no accurate report of how many clients received the invitations from SMPS members, the client information is not statistically valid and "should be viewed as directional information," according to the study.

Both clients and members suggest "improved communication" to improve e-technology skills, says Judy Kienle, whose company, Kienle Communications Ltd., Dublin, Ohio, commissioned SRA Research Group, Inc., Jupiter, Fla., to do the study for the SMPS Foundation. "No matter how successful we get with technology, they're telling us that nothing will replace human contact," says Kienle. [Source: SMPS e-Technology Survey]

Advantages

Nearly half (47%) of SMPS members thought their clients would say that availability of information is the primary advantage of e-technology. Over half (52%) of clients do say that. Members overestimate the importance to their clients of time savings and underestimate the value of centralization of data. About 39% of members thought that time savings would be named as the major advantage of e-technology by clients, but significantly fewer, 27%, cite time savings as their number one choice. Only 8% of members thought that centralization of data is of primary importance to clients, but 13% of clients name that as their first choice. Larger member firms are more accurate in those predictions than smaller member firms, according to the study. Cost savings, named just 5% of the time by member firms and 6% by clients, "does not appear to be a driving force," the study says.

Disadvantages

SMPS members correctly predicted that clients would name loss of personal contact as the biggest disadvantage of e-technology; 35% of members said their clients would point to that first and 38% of clients do. Second choice is "inconsistent use" of e-technology, named by 23% of SMPS member respondents and 21% of clients.

Third is information overload, fourth is security and fifth is incompatibility. Nearly twice as many members predicted that security would be the number one problem for clients as clients that named it, 18% and 10%, respectively. However, all but about 6%-7% of both members and clients say they are either "somewhat concerned" or "very concerned" about security, even if other problems are a bigger driving force.
Source: SMPS e-Technology Survey

Compatibility issues can be solved by good old-fashioned conversations about what kinds of drawings, photos, documents and other files each party will send. "You don't just start sending these things," cautions Barbara Allan, president of Sunbelt Research. Have a meeting; discuss who will be sending what and whether the formats and platforms are compatible, she suggests.

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