by Michael Tardif, Assoc. AIA
Contributing Editor

Summary: Contributing Editor Michael Tardif, Assoc. AIA, continues his exploration of technology that is changing architecture practice with a look at ArchiOffice, software created by Steve Burns, AIA, and Gary Beyerl, AIA, to manage their small firm. ArchiOffice, is now used by more than 600 firms worldwide ranging in size from 5 to 125 employees.

Many architects fear that technology may forever change the nature of architecture practice. A select few, such as Kimon Onuma, AIA, whose Onuma Planning System was featured in this column in August, are determined to shape the future of architecture practice directly by applying their architecture design skill to the design of software architecture. Steven Burns, AIA, of Chicago is another member of this growing cadre.

Last month’s article about the information management tool Newforma Project Center caught the attention of Joan Pomaranc, program director of AIA Chicago, who urged Burns to contact us. We’re glad she did. Burns is the CEO of Orange Loft, LLC, and one of the visionaries behind ArchiOffice, his company’s flagship practice management product. Several years ago, Steve and his partner Gary Beyerl, AIA, set out to create a software tool for managing their firm, Burns + Beyerl Architects. Burns and Beyerl felt that the available tools for customer relationship management (CRM), accounting, and project management just didn’t fit the needs of a typical small office. About one such application, says Burns: “It looked daunting; I could never imagine myself using it. In our office it would have been like a jet engine in a Volkswagen bug.” The cost of many business management and productivity tools was also a barrier to making their technology available to smaller firms. “Firms shouldn’t have to mortgage their future to buy their technology,” notes Burns.

Enter ArchiOffice
So Burns and Beyerl set out to develop ArchiOffice, which is now in use by more than 600 firms worldwide ranging in size from 5 to 125 employees. Earlier this year, Burns left his architecture firm to focus on the software company full-time, though his ties to practice remain strong. Beyerl, his former architecture firm partner, is a cofounder and board member of OrangeLoft.

The product is something of a hybrid, bringing together essential elements of CRM, document and information management, project management, and accounting into a single interface. “We started developing ArchiOffice before we understood what CRM meant,” says Burns. “We were thinking about the problems that architects have managing their businesses and built modules around what architects do.”

From the beginning, ArchiOffice focused on the business needs of smaller firms. “Small firms think of themselves differently than large firms,” says Burns. “Firm principals think of themselves as architects, not business managers. We wanted to create business tools for architects doing the work in the trenches, to let them be architects.” Mason Radkoff of Strada, LLC, in Pittsburgh describes the tool as “a single portal to a lot of information. We may have 5,000 contacts and hundreds of projects in our firm database, but my ArchiOffice desktop displays only ‘My Contacts’ and the 22 projects that I am working on.”

Among the most useful features of ArchiOffice is its project budgeting and time/expense tracking module. Most accounting applications, particularly those designed for smaller firms, lack the ability to create project budgets and track project time and expenses on a project-by-project basis. Measuring actual project costs against common architecture service contract provisions and benchmarks—such as percentage of construction cost and percentage of completion—can be even more difficult. “ArchiOffice allows you to budget your project and bill your clients according to industry standards,” says Burns.

More like a business, less like a studio
“We wanted ArchiOffice to answer one simple question,” says Burns. “The question is: ‘How am I doing?’ You don’t want your project managers to have to wait for the part-time bookkeeper to come in on Tuesday to find out what the financial status is of their projects. Project managers need a high level of financial information to manage their projects and negotiate with clients.”

Ion Webster of Steven D. Pults, AIA & Associates in San Luis Obispo, Calif., views the project tracking of ArchiOffice as one of its most valuable features. “Our project managers have the ability to mine historical data easily,” says Webster. “When we prepare a proposal, we can look at [the historical record of] similar projects, how time was spent.” Easy access to project financial information has also improved performance. “Now that we have the ability to create project budgets [and measure performance against the budget], I’ve noticed that our project managers do a better job of adhering to their fee proposals,” says Webster. “They have access to a breakdown of their own projects and can always see exactly where they are.”

Webster’s observations are echoed by customer after customer. “We can now measure our efficiency on a daily basis,” says Robert Siegel, AIA, principal of Robert Siegel Architects in New York. “And it’s graphically based, which we love.” Siegel underscores the value of easily accessible financial information in measuring personal as well as firm-wide performance. “I can give myself targets for percentage of billable time, and then work to hit those targets,” he notes. “It provides a constant barometer of how the business is doing, whether at the individual, project, or firm level.”

ArchiOffice brings together many other business and workflow management features, including a firm-wide contacts list, calendar, and project document management. “We conducted a thorough review of available products to simplify our lives,” says Siegel. “We had been using a combination of [a contact manager], spreadsheets, and [a sophisticated accounting application] to run the business. It was inefficient; we couldn’t decipher all the numbers. We wanted to be able to measure our performance, plan for the future, and get a quick, intuitive read of the health of our business. Now that we have this tool, we can think more like a business, less like a studio.”

Document and workflow management
Customers have been slow to take advantage of ArchiOffice’s document and workflow management features, a weakness that Burns attributes to insufficient orientation for new customers, and which he plans to correct. “Document management is the great unsung hero of ArchiOffice,” says Burns. “For firms that are well organized and have systems in place, ArchiOffice does not change the way they work; it mirrors their existing paper or electronic document-management system. A lot of smaller firms don’t have systems in place, so they don’t realize all of what ArchiOffice can do. With a little orientation, though, it clicks how much time they can save creating and retrieving documents.”

Bradley Touchstone, AIA, principal of the DodStone Group of Tallahassee, Fla., had the advantage of deploying ArchiOffice when he founded his firm several years ago. “We were fortunate in that we were starting the practice from scratch. It was really easy to integrate [ArchiOffice’s document management] because we did not have an established system. We’re using all of the features: checklists and document templates for letters, transmittals, and RFIs. Everything is cross-referenced by project and recipient. It is as close to a paperless office as you can become.”

Even established customers are warming up to the document management features. “We just finished a $50 million project,” says Siegel. “We weren’t going to change our filing system midstream. But as new projects start up, we are using the document management module.”

Orange Loft will be launching EngineerOffice next month, to be followed by DesignerOffice (for interior and landscape designers) and BuilderOffice early next year. Burns also plans to improve ArchiOffice’s integration with Quickbooks—the most commonly used accounting application in small firms—from the current (and somewhat limited) import/export ability to full bi-directional syncing. The company is also planning to migrate the product from a client/server software architecture to a Web-based architecture to improve remote access to ArchiOffice data and functionality.

Customers consider the continued growth and development of the product vital. “I’m hopeful they will continue to expand,” says Siegel. “As they grow, they can offer more. We’d like to see them flourish, so that we can grow as they grow. I can’t imagine how to manage my practice without it.”