Housing Giants - July 10, 2008 - (Page 29)

a weekly team meeting that involves everyone from construction superintendents to purchasing managers and sales staff. “We have a lot of different disciplines represented around the table so that we can talk about the activity in a particular community. We manage [to those reports] and work very hard to stay within our budget so that next time we do a project, we can learn from it,” says Thomas. At Darling, the financial reports come from the accounting department and are overseen by the CFO who directs a staff of sixteen. Other corporate metrics reports are generated and picked through the IBM AS/400 back-office system. An automated, Internet-based network shared by sales staff, production and upper management allows everyone to stay up-to-date with contracts and customers. External data is also collected from a land department in each city that compiles a monthly report and presentation for the state of their market. “We gather data from a lot of different places and we use some of the canned reports from the system and also take that data and make reports from other software packages like Excel and Access,” Gardner says. While many reports can be quickly populated from the data in accounting systems and economic reports, other miscellaneous pieces of information can’t be put into numerical format. At MAC Homes, Cave says that local business or economic events — such as the arrival of a major employer to the market or a passing of local tax incentives — can provide critical information in understanding the direction of the housing market. That type of data is often informally aggregated into regular e-mails or executive summaries. www.Housinggiants.com 7.10.08.Housing giants 29 http://www.housingzone.com/GIANTS/article/CA6367316.html?q="salesreports" http://www.housinggiants.com

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Housing Giants - July 10, 2008 Contents Viewpoint News & Moves Tech M&A Critical Management Series Part 1

Housing Giants - July 10, 2008

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