Software Advice highlights the top software products for North American small businesses in the FrontRunners Quadrant for May 2017. With this article you’ll be able to make an informed decision when choosing a software for your business. All products shown in the graphic above are top performers in their field.
Over 320 construction estimating products were reviewed and only those with the highest scores for their capability and value made the cut. The scores given are based mainly on reviews from actual software users along with other product details. Things like what features are offered and how many customers the company has.
What do the different quadrants mean?
Is one better than the other?
The simple answer is, no, one quadrant isn’t necessarily better than the others. Every product in the FrontRunners Quadrant could work for your company depending on your business needs. Each product in this quadrant offers a balance of what the product can actually do for you and the value of the product, basically if they’re worth the price. To even be considered for the FrontRunners quadrant, the software had to have a user rating of at least 3.75 for both capability and value making every product on this list a top performing software.
All of the products on the quadrant meet Software Advice’s minimum market criteria as well. That being cost estimating, cost database, proposal generator, and they have to meet at least 2 of the following: visual assemblies, historical database, what-if analysis, and pre-built templates. Though products in the Pacesetters and Leaders sub-quadrants are much more likely to offer additional features.
Upper Right = Leaders: The products in the leader’s portion of the quadrant are rated as all around strong products offering a wide range in their functionality as well as a wide range of customers. These software products are considered to be highly valuable to their customers.
Upper Left = Masters: The software in the masters portion are more heavily focused on certain key features that make them stand out as a software and also focus more heavily on market segments. For the customers looking for a more specialized set of functionality, a software in the Master’s quadrant might be best for you.
Lower Right = Pacesetters: Pacesetters are primarily focused on offering a very strong set of features but aren’t rated as highly as others on the value of the software. So a software from the Pacesetters quadrant will most likely have greater functionality than some of the other software but will definitely cost more.
Lower Left = Contenders: Contenders are focused more on a specialized set of capabilities that are typically priced on the higher end on the pricing scale. So for companies willing to spend a little extra cash you can get a software that has more specific features that could meet your company’s unique business needs.