ABSTRACT

This chapter helps us to gain an understanding of the wide variety of software applications used in the landscape industry. The software applications are accounting systems, estimating software, smartphone applications, design software, mobile resource management systems, GIS imaging, and drone diagnostic imaging. Estimating software interfaces with databases of production standards, labor rates, material costs, overhead markups, and profit margins, for example, to generate job estimates. Interfacing the estimating system with the reporting system enables tracking of the job cost status and its projected cost at completion. Design software enables a company to generate scaled multidimensional color renderings of its landscape concepts. Digital computer technology is an integral part of business management that automates data processing and provides instant visualization via reporting formats that can be shared between users. Software programs are icons of production efficiency that expedite data entry and financial reporting and enable management to analyze and implement production efficiency measures.