If you have ever attended a CFMA Annual Conference, you know how immersive the experience can be. This year’s annual conference took place in Grapevine, TX, just outside of Dallas, and as always, it was filled with an abundance of educational and networking opportunities. Upon arriving at the Gaylord and checking in, you were greeted by a large sunny atrium that is filled with areas to sit and drink coffee, work, chat, or grab a bite to eat.

Just after the sun rose in Grapevine, TX, on Saturday morning, with your laptop in tow, you made your way to the Texas Ballroom for registration and breakfast. The event center is already buzzing with other industry professionals catching up and greeting each other. 

As a specialty contractor you have decided to dedicate yourself to attending all the sessions that you know are part of the Specialty Trade Committee’s focus.

The Power of Microsoft BI for Specialty Trades

You entered the Power BI session where you anticipated expanding your knowledge of Microsoft Power BI. You were unsure what to expect of this session, but once you realized you were amidst a mix of new to experienced Power BI users, you were confident you were surrounded by fellow professionals looking to learn from and support one another.

Use of technology within the industry is rapidly increasing, and the Specialty Trade Committee wanted to make sure you, as a construction financial professional, are kept up to speed by starting with a basic understanding of this powerful tool that will streamline reporting and provide you with an easy way to track and measure various key performance indicators (KPIs) in real time to aid in your business decisions. Power BI allows you to pull data in from multiple sources and apply security at multiple levels, creating a custom experience for end users.

During this hands-on session, you were provided with personalized access to a Power BI demo site where you were able to navigate Power BI using real data as Michelle Werkmeister, Preferred Strategies Training Director, led the group through each step in the process and several examples. Michelle explained basic Power BI definitions including:

• Designer mode vs. consumer mode
• Fact tables vs. dimension tables
• Dimension fields vs. measure fields
• Types of visualizations, filter levels, and slicers

Some of the most used visualizations include KPIs, waterfall charts, pie charts, decomposition trees, and trend charts. You can create a report using multiple visualizations; it is recommended that you utilize templates to provide you with a starting point for the creation of any new report, so the data, layout, and formatting are consistent. Once reports are created, you can add drill through capabilities allowing you to navigate from one report page to another to view details or related information without creating clutter on the main page report.

Once you are ready to utilize Power BI for your business, you will start by building and optimizing a data set to feed into Power BI. This will allow you to seamlessly begin building reports and dashboards in Power BI as shown during this session.

Even if you may have been overwhelmed by the power of this tool and the information consumed in the short four-hour session, you can still access the Power BI demo site once you’re back at the office to continue exploring and you have fellow CFMA members to lean on as needed.

Michelle included detailed notes and step-by-step instructions to help you learn and recreate the report examples repeatedly as you work your way toward becoming a Power BI expert.

The Many Hats of the Specialty Trade Financial Professional

As a specialty trade contractor, you are all too aware, as a construction financial professional (CFP), that you are likely wearing many different hats and have a hand in lots of areas of your company. 

This session was a moderator and panel of three CFPs from specialty trade companies, discussing their roles in banking, surety, IT, and risk management. As each member of the panel discussed one major section, there was a lot of audience engagement and questions. The biggest common denominator in all these things was looking for people of good character, building good teams, and understanding that you can’t do it all. There was also a great discussion on stress management and how each person handles the stress that a job like this can have. 

The key takeaway is to find something that you enjoy because taking care of your mental health is something only you can do. Exercise, hobbies, taking care of your mind and body, and realizing that your life outside of work is what is most important.

Hey Specialty Trades, Let’s Get Into the Weeds on WIP 

This was a real-life discussion on what and how data is pulled and collected, formats, tools, and communications, as they relate to work-in-progress (WIP). 

The session panelists showed high interaction and engagement, and you were provided detailed responses to questions and experiences with different software tools, approaches to automation, and how involved various team members in the WIP reporting process. The discussion also included specific questions about the impact of service jobs on WIP reports and the methods used to gain buy-in from project teams. There were several audience polling questions about the frequency of producing WIP reports, the desire for process improvements, and the degree of automation in their current WIP processes; these were then discussed amongst the panelists.

The company sizes and head counts varied from $32 million in revenue to $240 million in revenue with 85 employees to as many as 1,000 employees, offering various perspectives from the different-sized companies. 

One of the biggest takeaways was that your company is not alone in the struggles to improve WIP reporting processes, many of the attendees still use Microsoft Excel for their WIP reporting, and it’s a hybrid of manual and automated processing. Additionally, the conversation about the impact of service jobs on WIP and how that is reflected on their reports particularly helpful.

Empower Your #1 Asset: How Specialty Trade CFOs/Controllers Navigate Human Resources

This experienced panel consisted of two California specialty contractors and one multi-state specialty contractor. It was moderated by an employment law attorney covering a variety of topics including:

• Best practices of hiring for culture, onboarding, and increasing employee retention
• Training mid-level management on personnel issues and topics key to lowering risk, compliance, and legal issue
• Discussion on generating employee buy-in when introducing new policies, programs, technologies, and more
• Leveraging relationships with business partners, peer groups, and CFMA to fill knowledge gaps

It was apparent that many specialty contractor CFOs and controllers had the Human Resource (HR) function as a part of their responsibilities. Best practices include self-educating via CFMA, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), and subject matter consultants was a common theme. 

Discussions ensued between the attendees and the panel on the importance of training middle management for sensitive employee interactions. The engaged audience proved that HR is a difficult yet important function that drives the success of our companies, knowing that our people are the heartbeat of our business.

Conclusion

In closing, after attending these sessions it was clear the unique issues that those in the Specialty Trade’s face on a daily basis. These sessions bring to light that we are all in the same boat, regardless of our size or specialized work. Bringing together this community in these sessions not only builds on your network of other specialty trade contractors, but can also be greatly comforting in hearing the stories and issues that each one of us face.