The construction industry is in the midst of a digital transformation. Sibomat, a construction company based in Zulte that specializes in timber-frame homes, developed its first digitalization strategy back in the 1990s. After more than 20 years, the company felt the time was right for a thorough update and upgrade of its platforms.
“We wanted to continue our digital transformation, further align our various processes, and also make digital applications available to our customers and suppliers,” says Valerie Duthoy, process manager at Sibomat.
We chose Alistar because we were able to adopt a construction solution that we know will evolve over time and in line with the market.
Valerie Duthoy, Project Management Manager
The move toward a single integrated system
Each year, Sibomat completes between 130 and 150 new homes—custom-built to meet the client’s specifications. To ensure the smooth running of all its operations, an ERP system was developed in the late 1990s. Valerie Duthoy: “At the time, we were one of the first construction companies to decide to work this way. A version of Navision was built that fully met Sibomat’s needs and requirements. It allowed us to standardize our processes and track a large number of steps in the construction project digitally.”
More than twenty years later, it became clear that a new digitization effort was needed. “The advantage of a fully customized product turned out to have a downside in recent years: the ERP system became outdated, could no longer be upgraded, and we saw new applications emerge that we could no longer integrate with it. We also had a CRM system for customer management by then, but that, in turn, wasn’t linked to our ERP,” Valerie explains. “In short, if we wanted to move forward to work more efficiently and communicate better with our customers, we had no choice but to switch to a new digital platform.”
Sibomat enlisted the help of GMI, now part of Alistar. After a thorough analysis, a project was developed to migrate the ERP system to the latest version of Microsoft, namely Dynamics 365 Business Central. As a result, Sibomat immediately gained integration with Dynamics 365 Sales, a CRM environment that also includes a range of specific applications. These are part of Gbuild, the comprehensive solution for the construction industry developed in-house by Alistar.
All departments can work in a consistent and efficient manner
For the construction company, this was a far-reaching process. Valerie Duthoy: “As a result of this project, we refined our processes in even greater detail and developed new workflows—for example, on how we could provide even more support to our salespeople through CRM and how that information could also feed into the ERP system.”
Automated integration between the CRM and ERP systems is essential. “We have a great deal of information and data about a project. It starts with following up on prospective customers and ends with the final invoice upon project completion. In the past, a lot of data had to be entered twice in between. Now we have a single digital platform where all data is centralized and enriched by the various departments.”.
Our system is still new, but it's already giving us a much better picture of where we stand, from prospecting to job site follow-up.
“The ERP system is the digital heart of everything we do: sales, pricing, engineering, production… Everyone relies on this data. It helps us work consistently and efficiently,” says Valerie.
Investing in a Digital Customer Portal
“Sibomat is a strong reference in the private residential construction sector,” adds our construction expert at Alistar. “For their digital transformation project, they clearly opted for the Microsoft ecosystem and, more specifically, Dynamics 365 Business Central as their ERP solution. Given our experience in the construction sector, we therefore proposed our comprehensive solution, Gbuild, which was developed entirely within the Microsoft software platform. Gbuild encompasses all construction processes: from cost estimation through to execution. This results in streamlined yet thorough project management.”
Partly due to its focus on single-family residential construction, Sibomat wanted to go far beyond a standard ERP solution. That is why the company also made a substantial investment in developing a customer portal based on Microsoft SharePoint. This now enables them to collaborate digitally with customers, subcontractors, and suppliers alike.
Sibomat had high expectations regarding the quality of its services. This challenged Alistar to immediately maximize the potential of the collaboration platform.
Our customers have quickly found their way to the new customer portal. Here, they can not only view the schedule and certain documents, but also track their invoices. This certainly gives our services a boost.
Applications for Construction Site Planning and Monitoring
One of the new applications that Sibomat has started using is timaster, a program that simplifies yard scheduling. It uses data from the ERP system to create a schedule and then sends it back to the ERP system.
“That’s a major benefit, because planning remains a complex process,” Valerie concludes.
