Billy Beane once said: “The idea that you can create a template that will work forever doesn’t happen in any business…you can’t do the same thing the same way and be successful for a long period of time”.
You may be asking, who is Billy Beane? And what does he know about business?
He was the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics Major League Baseball (MLB) team between 1997 and 2015, and was played by Brad Pitt in the 2011 film Moneyball.
Billy and his team used statistics and data-based decision-making to yield the best possible results from their playing budget and push the Athletics to be more successful on the field.
On your own financial journey, you may be faced with a variety of obstacles relating to cashflow, budgeting, or reducing costly inefficiencies within your business. Modernising your business, much like Billy did with the Athletics, could help your firm become more cost-effective and provide valuable long-term savings.
Read on to discover three valuable lessons Billy, and Moneyball, can teach you about using data and information to drive cost-saving benefits and how it relates to software, such as Sage Intacct for Construction.
Billy Beane used statistics and data in a bid to change Oakland’s fortunes
Billy realised that the status quo approach towards baseball recruitment was outdated. It relied too much on human intuition and gut instincts, and too little on cold, hard data.
The biggest problem faced at Oakland was being able to produce a competitive team on a significantly smaller budget than his direct competitors. Billy’s solution was to move away from traditional baseball recruitment methodology and instead adopt “sabermetrics”.
Sabermetrics, coined by sports journalist and statistician Bill James (and referred to in his novel turned film Moneyball), assesses players and recruitment decisions from a purely statistical viewpoint. It aims to eliminate the emotional or personal biases of scouts from the recruitment process.
Billy sought to use sabermetrics to rejuvenate his Oakland Athletics squad and build a team capable of making the playoffs, but on a fraction of the budget of his MLB rivals. The experiment paid off and the Athletics would go onto make the playoffs for four consecutive seasons.
Today, most major sports take a data-based and analytic approach to their key recruitment decisions in a bid to reduce costs and drive success.
So, what can we learn from Billy’s story about the benefits of adopting a modern approach, such as utilising data-driven financial software, to reduce costs and help boost long-term decision making?
Here are three simple but handy lessons:
1. Using data to drive decision-making could boost your outcomes
Billy used data to build a successful team on a fraction of his competitor’s budgets and avoid potentially costly decisions that may have arisen from more traditional recruitment options.
Data is a powerful tool at your disposal and can help drive a more modern approach to managing your construction business. It could allow you to make key financial decisions based on up-to-date and carefully monitored figures, eliminating as much human error as possible from the process.
Sage Intacct for Construction could boost outcomes and reduce costs by:
Monitoring and tracking budget performance in real time
Providing live financial insights with its reporting tools designed specifically for the construction sector
Streamlining processes and eliminating cash-draining inefficiencies
Allowing you access to key documents, such as invoices or contracts within seconds through consolidated data storage.
It could be the key to making smarter, data-driven, financial decisions.
2. Time is money: Making your business more efficient could save you both
One of the biggest costs of traditional baseball recruitment is time. Time spent by scouts on the road; watching players; meeting their families; reviewing their backgrounds; and discussing a player’s pros and cons. Billy was able to reduce the time spent on making important recruitment decisions by simply relying on data and statistics to inform his choices.
As the old adage goes: “Time is money”.
One of the greatest benefits of Sage Intacct for Construction is it allows you to make your firm more efficient, freeing you and other key personnel to focus your time and efforts elsewhere.
Sage Intacct for Construction automates key processes, such as:
Procurement and purchase order reconciliation
Cost allocation during project accounting and job costing
Digital document filing, organisation, and storage
Tax calculations and subcontractor verification within the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) module.
The reduction in time wasted dealing with manual entry tasks and administrative duties could allow you to unlock savings and profits across other areas of your business.
3. Modernising could help your business grow and succeed
Adopting change allowed Billy Beane to take his Athletics to the playoffs multiple times, while making valuable savings.
Modernising your business with a cloud computing option, such as Sage Intacct for Construction, could help you reduce long-term costs by:
- Reducing hardware expenses
- Eliminating the need for regular on-site maintenance
- Cutting internal IT staffing requirements.
Once you’ve adopted Sage, there are plenty of tools within the software that could help you better manage your construction firm’s financials.
Modules relating to budgeting, forecasting, and Work-in-Progress (WIP) allow you to gain a clear and concise understanding of your end-to-end costs with real time visibility of any ongoing changes.
They can help you manage smarter, more profitable budgets that could allow your firm to scale up and grow over the long term.
Ultimately enabling you to push your business forward, much like Billy did with the Athletics, in a more modern and cost-effective way.
Let us help you knock it out of the park, get in touch today
Changing your outlook to decision-making and how you operate your business can be big ask. Change can be scary, it is a step into the unknown, but that’s why our expert team are here to help you address any concerns.
Your business is on a journey, one that will hopefully see it grow and evolve over time. Taking the proactive step to adopt modern practices and technology into your firm’s daily processes could be the difference between maintaining the status quo or unlocking your long-term goals.
You don’t have to rush into any decisions, in fact we discourage it. Our team is here to walk you through everything step-by-step, so when you’re ready to embrace Sage Intacct for Construction at your business, you can do so with confidence.
To find out more, or to book a demo, get in touch by emailing enquiries@solutionscloud.uk or calling 0115 840 5075.
We’re here to put you in a position where you can rest easy in the knowledge that your team is being taken care of by smart, data-driven software. So, your firm can continue to hit home run after home run on its journey to success.
