Insights and Advice for Enabling More Efficient and Sustainable Construction

Collaborate with CostX®: The Benefits of a Network Setup

September 23, 2019
4 mins read

Enterprises looking to excel in our industry are turning toward network solutions to reach their potential. Efficient and timely client service has never been more important, and it’s now common for quantity surveying firms to employ networked software for this reason.

In general terms, businesses often opt for computer networks as a reliable way to share necessary resources and data. A well-organised software network may allow users to mitigate avoidable errors and improve consistency, due to everyone working from a single source of information.

When it comes to estimating software, the benefits go beyond data sharing. Our latest blog post looks at the advantages of running CostX® in a networked environment for your business.

Why Choose a CostX® Network?

Exactal offer a variety of licencing options to support our flagship estimating solution. While Standalone and Portable options are often popular with smaller businesses and individual enterprises, we are seeing more and more firms opting for a Network setup to support their efforts.

A network environment allows our CostX® software to be installed on multiple systems, working around a central database that is installed on a server. This central server may just be a chosen PC at your office or place of business. As an example, you could choose to purchase 6 network licences to share among 12 employees, with any 6 users able to access CostX® at one time for project collaboration.

Whether your business is working with BIM or not, there are a variety of benefits you can expect when choosing to run a CostX® network. If you’re dealing with tight deadlines or complex projects, a network configuration is a flexible and cost-effective solution that allows teams to work together efficiently and close tasks quicker than ever before. Team members can collectively perform takeoff on the same drawings from within different dimension groups, access shared resources in the Costing View (such as rates, values, codes and constants), and even work collaboratively between offices over a Wide Area Network.

One of the standout features of CostX® is comprehensive live-linked workbooks, and a CostX® network can support your team as they work simultaneously to carry out tasks within a workbook. Users can even work remotely through a VPN and access centralised databases of Standard and Custom Reports for use in client presentations.

From a management perspective, there are significant project control advantages too. Managers can monitor productivity and overall progress with ease, effectively track design changes with a full audit trail, and trace all cost plans and estimates issued to clients. Administrators can even restrict user access to certain projects or functionalities as required, while database backup can be easily automated for peace-of-mind.

While each CostX® licencing option has its own benefits, we expect networked configurations to keep growing in our increasingly collaborative industry.

Find Out More

To learn more about what is possible with a CostX® network, or to determine if the option is suitable for your location, feel free to book a demo! We operate our business from nine worldwide offices, so CostX® users under maintenance can rely upon timely product support from our network of qualified Product Specialists and IT staff.