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IN DEPTH: Technology

Ponderosa Management System Computer Associaties with Warehouse Management System

Labor Shortage Hurts

In part, the catalyst for dealers’ growing interest in technology tools is a labor shortage for both their companies and at their customers’ firms, making it critical that inexperienced employees can work efficiently. Those needs go from logging inventory and putting together orders to doing take-offs and making it easy for onsite employees to succeed.

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“Staffing is low right now, and business is picking up,” MiTek’s McCormick says. “That means the number of quotes dealers need is growing, but there aren’t enough people to turn them out. Ramping back up is difficult, as people being hired are not skilled, so training has to be done.” Dealers are looking to technical schools to learn the lumber business rather than getting construction people and teaching them software. “That’s harder to do.”

Seljax’s Blackwell agrees. “A key problem is that dealers can’t find people to do the designs. That means they need the software to be easier to use and create accurate estimates without a lot of specialized knowledge.”

Customers also are feeling the pinch, says Steven Bumbalough, global software product manager at Alpine. “Most companies see the BIM [Building Information Modeling] train coming. The labor shortage has become acute for framers. They aren’t available anymore. That brings in new people without any training.”

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Even so, convincing dealers to embrace new technological tools can take time. “It’s an education process to show dealers how our program can work for them and how much they can save,” PrebuiltML’s Lentz says. “It’s not strictly intuitive to see how it works. The industry is anchored in pens and paper, and moving it to an era of point and click takes time. The real problem is that they don’t realize what they’re tripping over and how much more efficient they could be. Once they understand it and get into it, they see how much faster and efficient their operation can run.”

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