What does “TITN Development” do?
My name is Jordan Cohen, and I am a Partner at TITN Development, a medium-sized development company in South Florida. We do everything from spec homes to office buildings to townhome projects. We do everything in-house—we buy the land, develop it, build the project, and then rent or sell it out afterward.
Why did you start looking for a software tool? What was the need?
We are already using various tools, such as QuickBooks. However, none of the tools help us track job costs exactly as the job runs. None of them allowed us to track purchase orders. These tools didn’t simply and easily let us view every project—where we were in that project and what was still left to be paid out.
There was no way to compare the original estimates to the revised forecasts, so there wasn’t any proper way for us to forecast our project outcome.
How would you explain Planyard to another construction company in Florida?
I would say that Planyard is a great way to quickly and conveniently track your job costs in one place. It shows the original estimates and the revised forecasts. It keeps track of all the documents and the numbers in one place. Additionally, it shows how much was paid, and it’s the detailed documentation of the payments.
It allows you to compare projections to real-time job costs to the subcontractor bids. It also allows you to get those bids, easily enter them into the system, and then track the subcontracts once they are going on.
I would say that Planyard is a great way to easily and conveniently track your job costs in one place. […] It keeps track of all of the documents and the numbers in one place. Jordan Cohen from TITN Development
Different members of the company can come in and see where you are, and they won't be confused by a new process that takes four weeks to get them up to speed. They can just jump in since it is quite self-explanatory and very user-friendly.
How easy was it to get started with Planyard?
Once you put a project in and start working with it for a week or two, you get a good feel for it. You just have to initially play around with it a bit to see how user-friendly it is and all the functions. If you just logically do what makes sense, then it’s really going to help you out a lot.
There are many videos about the platform. For example, when you go to upload your budget, there’s a video right there that tells you to follow a few steps verbatim, and your budget will be uploaded. If there’s some problem with the budget, it just tells you what you need to fix, and you’ll be fine.
It just thinks a step ahead for you.
If there’s some problem with the budget, it just tells you what you need to fix and you’ll be fine. It really just kind of thinks a step ahead for you.Jordan Cohen from TITN Development
What was the software sourcing process like?
We had probably interviewed about 5-7 different software companies and conducted 2-week trials with 2 to 3 different ones from those companies. And they didn’t really solve all of the problems. Some of them were too robust and had 5,000 features that they wanted you to use.
Whereas Planyard is focused on job costing. Planyard makes sure that the job costing part of the business is really under control. The others are trying to do a thousand things at once and thus don’t do any one thing well. They do 50 things poorly, whereas Planyard seems to have the job costing part done well.
What do you think is the status of small and medium construction companies like TITN in the US?
I think many companies rely too much on Excel or think they need to buy these huge software packages that require months, if not years, to learn. In the end, you end up not using 90% of the features anyway.
I think many of these small—to medium-sized companies would be better off focusing on Planyard. They could integrate it quickly to track their job costs, and all of this without wasting time, manpower, and money trying to learn 5,000 different weird little pieces of software that they don’t need.
I think a lot of companies are relying too much on Excel. […] I think a lot of these small to medium-sized companies would be better off focusing on Planyard.Jordan Cohen from TITN Development
Would you like to add something else about Planyard?
One of the significant parts of working with Planyard is the team. If I need something, I can quickly jump on a video call, and they’ll explain it to me. Not only that, but they will also think about how they can improve the software in the future so that I don’t run into that problem again. Or at least that it would be a little more efficient. Or that my time spent on Planyard is better in general.
The Planyard team, really, for me, has helped make the experience better. The quality of the support and the ease of use are why I have decided to stick with this software compared to how it went with the others.