Over the past decades, Backes AG has established itself as one of the leading construction groups in Saarland and the surrounding regions. Today, the corporate group, founded in 1932, operates as a full-service provider in infrastructure construction, bundling capable companies from various fields of the construction industry into one effective overall concept. With locations in Tholey, Saarbruecken, Homburg and Dillingen in southwestern Germany, around 350 employees and an annual construction output of around 100 million euros, the group pursues the goal of high-quality and on-schedule execution of construction projects.
In 2021, the implementation of a new ERP system was on the agenda. Management's wish was a completely seamless representation of all core processes in one system. The interface problems well known within the industry, caused by isolated solutions, were to be avoided as far as possible by setting up the commercial and technical IT landscape completely anew. In order to prevent errors as far as possible, no master data from previous programs was to be carried over either; instead, all information was to be recorded completely afresh.
Software from the Stuttgart-based construction software manufacturer RIB has been established at Backes for more than 20 years. Due to largely positive experiences and a successful, long-standing collaboration, the decision was made to roll out RIB 4.0 group-wide — at the time still a very new system — which was intended to lay the foundations for such comprehensive data continuity. Project management was taken over by Kathrin Peter, Head of Central Purchasing. Her task: to sensibly connect technical and commercial activities and, on this basis, create new processes within the corporate group. All divisions — whether estimating, purchasing, construction billing or financial accounting — were to be integrated into these new workflows and ideally work together more efficiently.
No easy undertaking — but creating a completely new structure of tasks within the company using an ERP system that, at the time, still had low market penetration brings advantages alongside numerous challenges, as Kathrin Peter recalls: "RIB's experts overcame many hurdles together with us. As pioneers of such a seamless process, we worked especially closely with the software development team, which made some things easier. In some cases, the software could even be specifically adapted to the practical needs of construction," reflects the head of purchasing. Throughout, her very good team of key users always had her back. The team's solid practical knowledge is indispensable: the successful implementation of innovations only succeeds through genuine, strong teamwork.
The corporate group started with the procurement structure of RIB 4.0, the core of the ERP system. Peter prefers the term "company structure" here, since this is precisely what this decisive building block of the software represents. After all business partners and stakeholders had been completely re-entered, the Backes Group implemented estimating, purchasing and billing step by step. Payroll and finance followed. Last but not least, part of the chain is a document management system recommended by RIB that docks seamlessly onto RIB 4.0, as well as RIB's resource management combined with mobile construction data capture software on the construction site of a former RIB partner.
The organizational and technical innovations at Backes are characterized above all by the fact that projects/business partners/materials carry a shared numbering system in truly every single work step — from the order through estimating all the way to financial accounting. In practice, this means a significantly leaner and more streamlined process. "Where we used to set up a project separately in every area of work — for example in estimating, in accounting and in equipment data capture — everyone in the chain now has the same data, and it can be represented seamlessly throughout," she explains. Delivery notes with items, for example, form the foundation for target-actual comparisons; site managers have the quantities available for billing, and estimators in turn use exactly these same items for their calculations, and in the end controlling also draws on the material data once again. The advantage: performance reports can be created via such a process without much effort, because all the gears mesh perfectly.
By now, the Backes corporate group covers all central areas of work seamlessly: estimating, purchasing, construction billing, financial accounting, resource management, payroll and surveying are integrated into the shared, self-contained process chain and work on the same data basis — whether directly in RIB 4.0 or via seamlessly connected partner products. From the first estimate of a construction project through to the final billing, everything runs together in an integrated way.
"The basis is always solid data maintenance," says Kathrin Peter. As the head of purchasing reveals, however, this also means that teams from different areas of expertise have to move closer together. "Details become relevant for team members who played no role in the past. Transparency too — that is, a concrete insight into what others are doing — is a novelty for many. Everyone is required to understand the other areas of responsibility and actively participate in the overall process. In the first instance, this is extra effort for our workforce. Many do not yet see, at this point in time, the advantages that gradually emerge in all areas, which has often made my work and that of my team more difficult. But we are on a good path," she adds.
Kathrin Peter herself has long since recognized the added value, as have the managing directors of the Backes corporate group. Because the increased data expertise offers an optimal basis for making the right decisions time and again, every day.
As model-oriented planning and construction is also moving more into focus at Backes, it is optimal to already have established a good data basis for this. "The market demands BIM (Building Information Modeling), even from large mid-sized companies like us," Kathrin Peter is convinced. We are also best prepared for this step with RIB 4.0. We already use the RIB Civil CAD system on our infrastructure projects.
Finally, the head of purchasing praises the consistently good support provided by RIB Software GmbH as a partner. Even in the case of unexpected IT problems, RIB's representatives showed enormous commitment in order to get the systems up and running again quickly. For Kathrin Peter, this is a great collaboration with a software company, and one that is by no means a given.
In any case, the course has been set for further steps in digitalization at Backes AG. And with the unified data basis, the foundations are in place for ever better decisions in construction operations, day by day.
Photo captions:
1. Zettelmeyer road roller, built 1928, from the early days.
2. Headquarters of Backes AG in Tholey, Saarland.
3. New asphalt mixing plant in Tholey.
Photo credit: Backes Bauunternehmung AG & Co. KG
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