The challenges of managing options in homebuilding
72% of builders agree that handling change across plans, designs, and communities is frustrating and costly.
Source: Higharc's 2024 Homebuilder Outlook Survey
Option management is a science that involves balancing buyer preferences with operational capabilities. ERPs do a decent job of managing options, but options aren’t born in ERPs; they are born in design. Managing options in an ERP becomes an upstream battle, attempting to maintain thousands of variations and resulting in bloated option catalogs that are difficult to maintain.
Disconnected systems like sales, estimating, and design platforms add to administrative workload, and even minor changes can lead to downstream financial and operational costs. The results are project delays, cost overruns, and dissatisfied buyers and team members who are at the mercy of outdated information, rework, and material waste.
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Transforming options management with Higharc
Higharc streamlines option management, providing a single source of truth that isn’t managed in an ERP, sales platform, or estimating tool but at the very genesis of the design process. Higharc creates a data structure that allows for information management beyond the home plan, allowing builders to manage components that are shared across multiple plans, communities, or regions in one central location.
The result is an intuitive, hub-based management of commonly shared components. Change exterior trim sizes, window specs, and appliance packages for 50 plans at once and update options to respond to market conditions in hours instead of months.
"Intersecting options in Higharc are much simpler than the exponential option structure that most ERPs force us to use."
- Marissa Kaiser, Process Improvement, Buffington Homes of Arkansas
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New Feature: Option Packages for streamlined options management
With Option Packages in Higharc, you can create custom rules that group options together. As you adapt master plans, community plans, and lot-specific plans, you can easily select and deselect the packages you want to apply – no need for additional drafting or model work.
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The Higharc Advantage
Enhance Homebuilding Efficiency
Traditional spreadsheets and task-specific management simply cannot keep up with the pace of information exchange required for efficient homebuilding operations today. With Higharc, you can streamline community and option management by centralizing these processes. Real-time status updates, home plan views, and efficient configuration of community-specific options and pricing, including structural options that automatically update architectural drawings, construction documents, marketing and sales assets, and estimates with just one click.
Managing home plans as data allows for real-time, connected information with the parts of your business that need to stay in step when plans and options are updated. Higharc Showroom and Procure are always in-sync with the source data, allowing an unprecedented level of efficiency for builders. Learn more about Showroom and Procure below:
Elevate the Homebuying Experience
Higharc Showroom allows homebuyers to visualize and personalize their homes in an interactive experience. It elevates the home-buying journey by showcasing all the possible options in a home plan in a real-time 3D environment.
Support Planning and Estimation
Higharc Procure includes advanced tools for precise takeoffs, accurate cost estimates, and formula-based planning that is always consistent with updates to the source data, be it master plans or lot-specific construction sets.
We help homebuilders meet today’s market demands with greater agility and confidence. Managing options and building homes has never been simpler. Change always happens. Turn options management into your competitive edge with Higharc.
See higharc in action
De-spec plans to meet price constraints, solve supply chain delays, and eliminate warranty issues.
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