I try to keep abreast of some of the US products that provide online construction collaboration capabilities, and have just been contacted by California-based Corecon‘s Norman Wendl.
I was aware of Corecon having read about its web-based estimating, project management, cost control and business development tools back in 2005. With the launch of Corecon 2007 the portfolio has been expanded to include online file storage and portal capabilities to support collaboration (see December 2007 news release), though it is not clear from the product walk-through if the applications’ capabilities extend to online mark-up and commenting on drawings.
The basic product, delivered on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis, is priced competitively to attract interest from its target market (mainly, I think, small to medium-sized construction businesses); the top-of-the-range Corecon Pro costs US$60 per user per month, but the online file storage and customer portal logins are add-on extras charged per customer company (storage starts from $10 for 1GB for 12 months, with portal logins costing from $50 a year for a package of five logins).
Update (05 September 2008): Norman (now the proud father of twin girls) has got in touch again to answer my query above:
… we do not offer markup/red-line capabilities for our online file management. That is normally done by separate software such as Informative Graphics’ Brava Viewer or Autodesk’s Design Review. Our online file management capabilities uses Amazon’s S3 service for storage and allows the user to link files (photos, sketches, pdfs, etc.) to records within Corecon. They can also be shared when sending out emails through Corecon.
Later this year, we will be launching Corecon v7 which will be our largest update in the company’s history. It will handle multi-currency scenarios, localized date formatting, and support various languages. With our integration with SAP Business One (accounting-erp), we will be promoting our product globally and not just US/Canada.
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I just checked Corecon. Now I run PM Hut: http://www.pmhut.com and I always check the latest on Project Management. Comparing Corecon to the other online tools, the first thing that I see is that it doesn’t have a free trial feature, which might be a turnoff for potential buyers.
Additionally, demo wise, screenshots are not enough, videos are much better and much more attractive to the client. The interface (from what I saw) is outdated by today’s standards. The features, on the other hand, are great.
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