In 2019 the word “integration” is going to be a hot topic. Integrations among cloud-based apps that you access via web and mobile are all the rage and will continue to be so. There is even one entire company that is devoted just to specializing in the “integration technology” itself and that is Zapier. Their tagline is “connect your apps and automate workflows.”
PlanGrid Connect—Towards Automation
PlanGrid Connect is a relatively new offering that the company—recently acquired by Autodesk—is showcasing as an Enterprise level option and you can get a free demo by signing up. (see link below)
Powered by technology by Azuque, which enables you to quickly connect hundreds of SaaS applications into powerful automated workflows, the new PlanGrid Connect operates in the same spirit as what Zapier is doing in the general SaaS app market.
01 – Smartsheet is just one of the PlanGrid Connect ecosystem partners.
In the marketing demo video, PlanGrid is connected into an intelligent workflow with Smartsheet, a SaaS offering that has many big enterprise-sized customers and is growing in popularity with some general contractors. The workflow example is simple. A person in the field uses PlanGrid on an iPad to record a field condition that needs resolution (punch list item perhaps) and that issue, added to PlanGrid, automatically triggers a new line item on a Smartsheet used by the contractor to manage time and costs impacts on the project. The guy in the office then inputs schedule and cost data and that data then automatically carries back to the issue item in PlanGrid in the field.
Robotizing What Humans Do Today
People today make these back-and-forth connections of information by copying or manually inputting data between different sets of applications used by different players in the AEC process. This is par for the course. It is also time-consuming.
02 – PlanGrid Connect is a new part of the company’s enterprise offering and really marks the future of how work gets done with SaaS cloud-based apps.
SaaS tools offering “integrations” eliminate this human-controlled process by automating it. This speeds up the overall workflow and as long as the integrations are easy to set up and dependably stay connected so that the data flow is actually happening as it should, time and money should clearly be saved.
The PlanGrid Partner Ecosystem is one of the healthiest in the AEC market. Just some of the partner SaaS offerings include Asana, Basecamp, DocuSign, Gmail, Excel, Slack, Tableau, Smartsheet, Wrike and Salesforce. Cloud storage players include all the big names plus EgnYte and OneDrive.
To learn more about PlanGrid Connect go here.