Challenge:
This construction company had a wealth of data, but was held back by manual processes and data silos.

Solution:
Thanks to Domo, Clayco can leverage data in every aspect of its organization.

Impact:
Clayco now has unmatched visibility into its data from the macro level all the way down to specific projects.

Clayco makes data the foundation of a construction empire with Domo.

As one of the top design-build construction firms in North America, Clayco is responsible for bringing thousands of buildings to life over the past four decades. From office towers and high-rise condominiums to corporate campuses, higher education classroom buildings, manufacturing facilities and distribution centers, their structures play a critical role in the way millions of people live, work, and learn.  

While its footprint is national, until recently Clayco relied on the same manual processes used by a local builder. Clayco’s CIO Todd Finders says this is indicative of the construction industry as a whole. “It’s not unusual that a construction company would be underserved when it comes to data and analytics,” he said. “Construction has a wealth of data. It’s just not leveraged.” 

Coming from a corporate background with previous Domo experience, Finders knew the solution could up level the company’s analytics maturity.  

Taking a wrecking ball to siloed systems.

As an experienced CIO, Finders saw the opportunity to significantly improve how the company leveraged its data. He partnered with Diacto, a business intelligence solution provider, to incorporate Domo into the businesses so that every department could improve the way it uses data to make decisions.  

“Prior to Domo, Clayco had a very fragmented, siloed approach to data,” said Om Maurya, CEO at Diacto. “We began with a safety dashboard as a pilot project to show the potential of Domo. With the insights Domo was able to deliver, the safety manager ended up becoming one of our biggest advocates in the organization.” 

A spreadsheet-driven process meant that the company often struggled with reporting. Some reports would take months to compile – if ever. “There was one person who told me that he had been asking for a daily cash flow report for our projects for five years and never got it once. Eventually, they quit asking. A lot of frustration got built up due to past experiences.” Finders said.  

“Within two weeks of hearing that, we built the report in Domo and it blew him away.”  

Creating a stronger foundation.

Today, Domo is used throughout the organization. For example, proposal writers leverage years of past projects when creating bids for insight into the factors that can make a project go over budget, allowing them to create more accurate bids.  

Once a project is approved, construction managers can easily pull data on current costs, budgets, schedules, and change orders to create accurate forecasts about budgets and timelines. “What used to take months now takes days,” Finders said. “Domo exposes insights that were almost unattainable in the past.”

The safety department continues to be Domo’s biggest fan due to how easy the safety dashboards have made their jobs. “They used to spend hours and hours manually inputting data every month. With Domo, we helped them eliminate multiple man-weeks of work every month that was just spent typing data into spreadsheets,” Finders said. 

Human resources uses Domo to manage Clayco’s massive recruiting requirements across the country. “We hired 400 people in the last year, and have plans to hire 400 more. Domo has been a huge tool for our recruiter to track all those positions so he knows where to focus his energy. If we didn’t have Domo, he would be crushed under the demand we’re seeing,” Finders said.  

Executives now have unmatched visibility into the company from the macro level down to specific projects. An executive dashboard provides a real-time view into receivables and cash, while a map dashboard shows all of Clayco’s current projects across the country at a glance. Showing project status, expected completion date, the number of employees dedicated to the project, and more, it provides a quick view into how resources are deployed across the country and markets where the company is finding the most success. Users can dig deeper into a specific project at a click for site information, budgets, and even photos or real-time webcam images of the project in progress. 

Thanks to Domo, Clayco leverages data in a way many of its competitors can’t. “I believe in solving business problems and not complicating them with tools and technology,” Maurya said. “Because Domo is an integrated platform, we were able to deliver value to Clayco very quickly.”

Finders believes Domo allows Clayco to now approach problems with the precision of a tape measure, not a jackhammer.