How Erilyan is leveraging new tech to maintain a competitive edge

Erilyan is a leading end-to-end construction company based in Australia that is widely recognised for its trust, transparency, and high quality project results. In 2022, the Erilyan team brought ProcurePro on board to transform their procurement processes.

We spoke to Ben Selwood, Group General Manager, Jarrad Bishop, Senior Project Manager, and Stephan Vukovic, Contracts Administrator, to learn more about their decision to digitise procurement and how this has impacted their operations.

What was the manual way of procurement like before ProcurePro?

Jarrad Bishop: Before ProcurePro, procurement was quite a fragmented and disjointed process. We had multiple Excel spreadsheets, lots of folders with quotes and scattered documents. We also found out that we had incomplete contracts.

Ben Selwood: It was always a clunky procedure. The entire process was inefficient and inconsistent. It was always a major pain point for our business.

Stephen Vukovic: I was constantly on the phone with subcontractors asking when they're gonna be quoting, if they're quoting, and when they'll submit their price. That was procurement in a nutshell. It was a mixed bag of everything, and everything was all over the place.

How has procurement been now that you've used ProcurePro for a while?

Ben Selwood: ProcurePro has definitely delivered on what was sold. All of the efficiencies that we thought we'd gain within the use of the platform have been actualised. The staff satisfaction is higher, the ability for us to see what's going on in the business is amazing.

Stephen Vukovic: Having a streamlined place to manage subcontracts, starting from the scope of work all the way to signing a subcontract agreement is a huge advantage. The benefit of having a one stop shop by integrating Jobpac and ProcurePro together has been a super time saver. The ability of not having to double handle between different softwares has been awesome.

I used to spend hours in my week chasing approvals from the team just to approve a subcontract scope, now it's a simple click yes or no.

How do you personally use ProcurePro?

Ben Selwood: As a General Manager, I use ProcurePro once a day to look at what's happening with the workload of the staff and to estimate trends through the data provided through the reporting function.

We can make decisions at a company level regarding what's happening in the estimating department, what resource allocation is required for a project, what the future pipeline of work looks like, as well as the risk and opportunities for trade packages, contractors and the entire workflow.

Jarrad Bishop: As a Senior Project Manager, I go in there to look at progress holistically, and what I really enjoy about the program is that I can have a look at the current status of a live project and see where packages are at, where approvals are at and where contracts are at against project timeline.

What do you feel like you would've missed out on if you weren't using ProcurePro?

Jarrad Bishop: Previously, I had to rely upon CAs to provide me updates, and sometimes they didn't know exactly where they were at. By having it as a live platform with statistics that I can use, I can see how my team is performing, creating easy communication with the directors and executives or clients.

I can say exactly with confidence ‘we're out to tender on 10 packages, these are the packages, scope of works have been done’, which I couldn’t do without ProcurePro.

How has the reporting function of ProcurePro benefited Erilyan?

Ben Selwood: Procurement has always been an under reported process with a high risk element to it. So the ability for us to get real time data on procurement has been amazing for the entire business. The staff are happy because they know that we're understanding the work pressures they're under and that we can allocate teams accordingly.

We can see the contract risks for contracts not signed versus approved, we can see if a subcontractor is overburdened or under burdened, and we're able to have real conversations with the team. Procurement's gone from being something that is a high risk item with low visibility to now a full transparent process with ProcurePro.

What has been the biggest impact of ProcurePro on Erilyan?

Ben Selwood: The consistency and speed for the teams. The teams are now able to collaborate across multiple projects which provides a really good cross section of knowledge share. Our CA staff have always found procurement to be a cumbersome process, so investing in ProcurePro has really helped our CA recruitment, as any investment in tech in that space shows we care.

In the last two months, we've had 150 trade packages that have gone through the platform. On average it's around a 20 hours time reduction per project. That's about 3,000 hours saved as a business.

What was the implementation of ProcurePro like for the business?

Ben Selwood: What we’ve noticed in comparison between other platforms and ProcurePro, is that the speed of adoption for ProcurePro was quick. It's an intuitive system. Now that we're up and running, we can't imagine procuring another way. In the executive space, we've now gone from having no information to having full visibility, which has helped our confidence in decision making.

Jarrad Bishop: ProcurePro was very easy to adopt. I think anyone that has used an Excel spreadsheet before could pick it up and use it. The ability to just run with it has been good. I've seen other software systems being implemented and I'd have to say ProcurePro has been quite easy to understand, to teach to others and then also to help divide between team members.

Stephen Vukovic: It's been a great learning tool for the younger staff or inexperienced staff at Erilyan. They're able to see it all in the one place, the way the workflow works, and how you can take a subcontract from its inception to finish. Overall, the learning process has been quick. It's a super intuitive software.

What would you say to other companies who haven't yet digitised?

Ben Selwood: Digitisation of procurement is the last piece of the puzzle in the construction space. ProcurePro enables executives the visibility and transparency for what the teams are going through on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

It’s been transformational in our business. Procurement is the bulk of your workforce and the bulk of their pain points. The ability to make that a better space to work has been amazing.

How does ProcurePro align with Erilyan’s vision and goals?

Ben Selwood: ProcurePro is a great alignment across all of our business. We've got a genuine ability to see what's going on every day and our teams have the ability to flag issues that they couldn't flag before, and our clients and subcontractors have such a better ease of engagement.

Jarrad Bishop: ProcurePro’s obviously a new technology and a new platform that is moving forward into an integrated system, which is fantastic and that progressive nature is something that we like to pride ourselves on.

Ben Selwood: For us, the efficacious element of this partnership has been that our staff are happy to come to work and that they're getting their job done and they're getting high job satisfaction. Our partners have better transparency and visibility on what's going on, that visibility is paramount in making key decisions on a quick basis.