LaunchSite™ is Visual Precision’s response to the calls of the professional Cost Planner & tender bid Estimator. Bigger projects mean bigger clients, and profit-earning estimates and cost plans need more than simple spreadsheets or a chopped-up estimating system to keep you in the game. Gone are the days when you can trade on your personal abilities alone.
As projects and clients get bigger so do their demands, and its cutting edge software that’s now making the difference. Arming yourself with the best weapons in the arena of business is fast becoming the name of the game. Clients, both internal and external, respect intelligent investment in software, especially when it’s reporting on how best to invest their own capital!
Retain your clients
Impressing clients is a key factor in retaining old accounts (as well as getting new ones) and with your clients becoming ever more demanding, your software systems must be right up to scratch. Delivering highly accurate, impressive reports is the name of the game; reports that convert your professional skill into attention-grabbing, account-retaining bid-plans with real punch - plans that are quick to construct, plans that write more to your bottom line, plans with the accuracy to confidently take a project to site (and beyond).
LaunchSite™ is the system to achieve all of this … and more.
Spreadsheets are flexible but..
Right from the start it’s important that you’re in control. Sure, spreadsheets are very flexile but they only go so far in providing the tools that you need. Their upkeep is considerable and true manageable power and flexibility comes at the cost of learning how to design, program and maintain them at some depth. All this takes time - your time - expensive time which you need to use to your best advantage. This means being a cost consultant and cost estimator - not a computer programmer.
You need
So what do you need?
You need a system that’s easy to learn and easy to adopt. You need a system that delivers features and functions by the bucket load but is still understandable. You need a system that allows you to deliver highly professional, flexible, sexy, professional-looking reports based on the data you want to structure, in your way … and you need a system that’s not just better than the way you work now, but that’s better than any other way of working. In short, you need LaunchSite™.
It’s a system that’s been engineered to satisfy the whole business. At the top, management are looking for individual and departmental results that earn profitable fees and generate repeat business; the project manager and departmental heads are looking for demonstrable accuracy and convincing results that are visible to both internal management and to the client, and end users who actually engage with the system are looking to impress just about everybody, with the least stress, the least effort and the highest level of confidence (and they may want to go home on time as well). LaunchSite™ can deliver all of this with ease, even with room to spare, so to speak. It’s a win-win situation.
How it scores
So where does LaunchSite™ score over other solutions? Firstly, its innovative ‘front end’ welcomes new users like no other system. Confidence in the system is immediately high, removing the typical resistance to change barrier and leveraging the users’ confidence constructively. Secondly, the effortless technical ability of the system becomes instantly recognised by new users, enabling them to engage the task ahead with zeal and a clear head. Large projects are no longer seen as proverbial mountains, but are simply and effectively reduced to manageable tasks that users attack with ease, little or no stress and therefore greater thinking and problem solving abilities. Short and pressing time-scales can be engaged with the certain knowledge that the system is up to the job, so each and every user can let their abilities and flair rise to the challenge that is today’s fast-moving construction market.
And there's more...
Of course, these reasons are just the start of why LaunchSite™ is the supreme champion in its field. Our development team have ensured the system is professionally engineered and impressively feature rich. Such examples include functions such as our ‘total measured model importation’, allowing new dimensioned models to be cloned from any number of previous projects and remodelled with just a few dimension changes (e.g. import a total building and make it bigger). And let’s not forget to mention the system’s totally integrated dimsheet system its Crystal Report engine, its real-time multi-user models or its seamless links with our on-screen CAD file measurement systems OnSight™ and EasyEarthworks™, two of the industry’s giants in measurement. It’s real power, it’s impressively easy to use and it’s all available right now.
Taking you from start to finish
So what does it do.? Put simply, it allows users to approach projects in a variety of directions. For some, they need to structure traditional BQ's - it does that. For others, they need a faster approach and need the flexibility to structure built-up rate type Cost Plans, sometimes from scratch, sometimes by 'stealing' segments from other projects - it does that. And other users need very broad brushstroke feasibility estimates based upon footprint or elemental quantities - it does this too. In short, building your estimate, however detailed it is can be achieved in the one system.
But it doesn't stop there. Other users need to price BQ's that have been presented for pricing rather than creating their own - and the system allows for this too, allowing BQ's from outside sources to be absorbed into a project from a variety of different electronic formats.
Pricing is simplistic too. Rates and resourced based rate build-ups can be sourced from the database and updated in a variety of manners. For feasibility approaches, these may be on an index or percentage uplift, for more detailed tender bids, it may be users need to get down and dirty with individual materials, labour, plant and all the other resources involved in a job. And the system allows for this as well, allowing rate build up down to the cost of a single nail (if you ever need to go that far) at the touch of a key.
The detail available and the finesse of pricing is truly astonishing. And it true multi-user to boot, meaning many estimators can contribute to the same project in real-time and see the updated project at a moments notice - a simple single key press.
Things don't stop here though. Given LaunchSite™ allows rates to be built-up from resources, means creating tender buying lists is also a simple button press. Ever hour of labour, minute of craftsmen, hour of plant and all the buying quantities for materials (from your favourite suppler) can be output electronically or to print at your command.
Version control
But projects change and we know that too. That's why LaunchSite™ allows secure version control on any of its projects. This means that as soon as the state of a project has been reported to anyone outside the team, a milestone marker is inserted allowing the project to be rolled back at any stage for comparison purposes. Any number of versions can be stored, giving the user utmost confidence that they can maintain a full audit trail over the course of the project build.
And the feature list goes on
The system is twin-screen ready right out of the box, features electronic document management as drawings and specification documents roll-in, and even video can be embedded into the system at critical points to aid historic reviews. And we haven't forgotten the importance of external
websites either, hotlinks to websites can be embedded into the database at numerous points to aid downstream project management and future project builds. It all adds-up to a championship winning package. There's an on-line knowledge base too, giving users access to support bulletins and, of course, during normal working hours, our development team are ready to field calls. "But what of updates?" you ask. These are automatically detected by the system whilst in-use and the user prompted to initiate the download. Installation is totally automatic, ensuring our client base is as up-to-date as we can make them.
Help and support
As with all Visual Precision systems, full online help is available throughout the program, but even then it’s special. Concentrating on the central theme of speed and ease of use, Visual Precision have engineered the Help system in full multimedia glory. No longer do users need to wade through endless screens of mind-numbing text, now they simply watch and listen as the multimedia system delivers full real-time video examples of how the system is used. With voice-over narrative guidance and explanations, the multimedia Help system acts as both a reference guide and training tutorial, and engages the user in quick, easy to understand examples. Online Help has never been this easy.
Training and implementation
Of course, training and implementation hasn’t been overlooked either, and our remotely delivered training courses are delivered across the web for minimal office disruption. Whenever you need it, help is at hand, guiding you through new aspects of the system and making sure you meet those important deadlines.
So the next time you want to build a winning tender within tight time frames , think inside the box, think LaunchSite™.
Remember - there's no prize for second place.
And let’s not forget to mention the systems totally integrated dimsheet system, it’s Crystal Report engine, it’s real time multi user modes or it’s seamless links with our digitiser and screen based CAD file measurement systems EasyGrid™ and OnSight™, two of the industry’s giants in measurement. It’s real power, it’s impressively easy to use and it’s all available NOW.
If you would like to download a PDF copy of our latest LaunchSite™ brochure to read at your own leisure please click on the LaunchSite™ brochure icon.
Should you wish to download any other brochures from our range of Industry leading software products they can be found on our dedicated Brochure Download Page.
Software Training
We recognise that implementation of a system is only the start and guiding the client through training of the system is just as important, if not more, than the system itself. Power without knowledge is nothing and our personalised trainer led on-line training sessions deliver everything needed in manageable segments.
From ‘power up’ we take our clients through all the key aspects to our systems to ensure they can press their investments into profitable use as soon as training has completed (and sometimes before) and with many of our systems being delivered with multi-media driven audio video based Help, clients training time is kept to a minimum and uptime kept to a maximum. Post training, we continue to deliver high levels of service and our move to fully automated on-line automatic updating means clients are constantly kept totally up-to-date with the very latest designs.