exigere - Awards Finalist 2022 Case Study

Tell us a bit about your outstanding use of technology

We took the decision six years ago to put technology at the forefront of our business. We began our digital transformation journey by adopting cloud-based technology, moving across to Microsoft Office 365, and migrating all servers and files to the cloud.

The centralised listing of projects on Microsoft SharePoint forms the foundation and cornerstone of our transformation. When a new job comes on board, we register the job on the system, which then fires off workflows, starting the project’s lifecycle automation. Creating a new company intranet supplemented this, sharing best practices and improving internal communication.

We moved on to develop a bespoke in-house digital platform which automates the process of how we collect our data and allows us to significantly improve how we share that data internally and externally to our clients.

Why did you decide to enter?

We have a great transformation story to tell.

We are at the point in our digital transformation journey where notable improvements have been made across all our workstreams, allowing us to see some real, tangible benefits. We are getting great validation in terms of feedback, both internally from staff and externally from clients, which is highly encouraging and has served as motivation to enter these awards with confidence.

From gaining Investors in People Gold in 2021, some notable feedback from the staff was the success of our investment in IT and digital systems improving communications, ensuring remote working was seamless, and giving staff a sense of security of working with high-quality business tools which enabled them to provide clients with highly polished and accurate reports.

A reoccurring theme was the mention of our templates being of high quality and the accuracy, detail and consistency in how we can relay information to clients:

“One of the positive features people highlighted is the quality of the processes and practice in place, with high quality project templates to achieve consistent accurate and high-level output. The company is innovative and continues to review and improve its practice tools which empower and enable people to take ownership of their role and output. The regular meetings encourage people to engage, give their views and influence improvements; this also increases ownership of their practice.”

Investors in People Gold Report

What was the key point of exigere’s entry?

The construction industry is underserved as far as good quality modern software options go. The few platforms that do exist were built decades ago and cannot cope with our modern requirements. We required something built in the cloud, with several different processes integrated into a system, so that’s what we’ve done – independently creating an ecosystem of solutions.

Our biggest innovation has been real-time digital benchmarking. We have developed a ‘Project Insights’ app – a project stakeholder interface where all information is harvested from all our integrated apps, including our ‘Project’ app, ‘Area’ app and ‘Cost’ app. Digital benchmarking has changed the way we collate data and makes it available as a digital experience. We have automated the whole production process of generating benchmarking, rather than being manually sourced and inputted. Single projects can be compared on a stage-by-stage process in their lifecycle or can be compared to entirely different projects built over different timeframes.

We’ve come from a place where everyone produced individualised Excel workbooks, containing their own data, to now having a collective benchmarking platform where all data is centralised and harvested together, improving the consistency and accuracy of our data.

What sets you apart from the other companies in your category?

Harvesting 1,700 data points centrally and developing 25+ apps has fundamentally changed our way of working. Our platform helps us to demystify costs for our clients by delivering concise and informative reports in simple and visually understandable formats, including:

• Interactive dashboard reports
• Benchmarking reports
• Area benchmarking
• Analysis of contractors’ costs and programme
• Functional area benchmarking

In other industries, there is established software already on the market and patterns to follow, whereas we’ve created this whole ecosystem ourselves. As the business grows, the need for technological advancements increases as it becomes harder for everyone to have personal involvement in every project, so the need for dashboards and the like become evident. Having the technology already in place has helped as we’ve grown to ensure the quality of our work remains and we can provide transparency and visibility to clients and colleagues alike.

“exigere’s extensive investment in managing and displaying internal cost management data is very impressive and in my view places them many years ahead of their competition. Their approach to understanding construction cost trends gives them unique insight into the market.”

James Pellatt, Director of Workplace & Innovation, GPE – an FTSE 250 property investment and development company owning £2.5 billion of real estate in central London

What would it mean to win?

It would be a tremendous validation of all the hard work we’ve put in since starting our journey in 2018, giving a renewed vigour to continue ahead.

As a growing business, we are proud to have progressed within Investors in People, and we’d love to be validated by IIP to show our business is at the forefront of our industry to our clients, colleagues and staff, plus new recruits. As we’re recruiting, we know staff are looking for organisations with the recognition of IIP to show we are keeping up with the best standards in the industry. Having this would help us recruit the brightest, most talented people who want to come on this journey with us.