Hundreds of investments on a single platform. How ECHO Investment consolidated its scattered tools

A lack of consistency as the starting point

Before the transformation, ECHO Investment relied on many off-the-shelf solutions and scattered files. Finding the right data, verifying it, and producing reports consumed a large part of the team's time. Process standards were missing too, and the way people worked and managed data differed from one team to the next.

This approach, combined with the scale of the organization and its business model, produced an ecosystem of separate applications that were hard to integrate and maintain. The company concluded it had to change its approach.

Commission, buy, or build?

A company that wants to digitalize its processes can choose one of three delivery strategies. It can commission custom applications from a software house. It can buy off-the-shelf systems. Or it can choose a platform that lets it build new applications as the organization's needs evolve.

Criterion	Custom applications	Off-the-shelf products	Platforma WEBCON
Time to launch	Long. Coding from scratch is time-consuming	Long. Every rollout is preceded by budgeting, system selection, negotiation, and purchase	Short. Fast prototyping and deployment
Flexibility of change	Low. Every change requires IT involvement	Low. Every change to the system depends on the vendor	High. Changes made quickly, without stopping running instances
Scalability	Low. Each application is a separate undertaking	Low. Every new need means another tool in the tech stack	High. New applications on a shared data model
Integration options	Yes, but integration has to be built from scratch for each solution	Yes, but integration projects are difficult and time-consuming	Yes. A shared data model, with no manual mapping

„It was also hard for us to change fast enough, because every IT project took a great deal of time. That was true both of rolling out new software and of making changes to existing systems. It wasn't helping our continued growth. We realized we had to change.”

Agata Skowrońska-Domańska, Vice President of the Management Board and CFO at Archicom

Many needs, one tool

ECHO Investment weighed all the options and chose the platform approach. This is how the company addressed needs across five key business areas:

• ProjectFlow. This application handles construction project management: team allocation, budgets, scheduling, risk management, and cash flow.
• BudgetFlow. Standardizes back-office processes.
• ContractFlow. Digitalizes and automates contract management.
• MoneyFlow. Shortens invoice handling, what once took the organization weeks now happens within days.
• Business Partner 360. An electronic database of the clients, vendors, and subcontractors ECHO Investment works with.

As it digitalized more processes on the platform, the company eliminated many smaller, older tools. It centralized its master data and began managing it from within the applications built on WEBCON.

Three levels of benefit from consolidation

Every process digitalized brought the company closer to its goal: greater efficiency, better reporting, and a coherent work environment. Consolidating applications on a single platform paid off on three main levels.

Time recovered. Thanks to applications built on a single platform, the company saves hundreds of hours of key employees' time every month. Invoice handling, which once took weeks, now closes within days. Instead of gathering and reconciling data, the team can focus on what comes next.

Cheaper maintenance and freed-up IT capacity. One coherent environment is easier and cheaper to maintain than dozens of separate systems. Consolidation gave the IT department far more room to build new solutions that support the company's business goals, rather than managing a scattered environment.

Changes in minutes, not months. With InstantChange™, the company makes changes the moment a need arises. The platform's architecture means modifications are available in the applications immediately, and every workflow in progress adapts to the change.

The organization gained the ability to build integrated, coherent solutions quickly, with business users and IT working together. New ideas for implementations and improvements keep coming. See how ECHO Investment organized collaboration between business and IT, and what it gained as a result. >

„Once the transformation gains momentum, a snowball effect kicks in. Demand for business applications skyrockets."

Paweł Hołdak, Partner & Digital Transformation Leader w bpmRiders

Consolidation results in your company

Want to bring order to a scattered environment on a single platform? Get in touch, and our expert will walk you through the options for consolidating your applications on the platform.