Selling season 2026 – long on uncertainty and short on Spring mojo – is keeping many private homebuilders up at night and on edge all day long.
The challenge is no longer just about generating traffic to homebuilder websites and new neighborhood sales centers, converting buyers, or managing incentives.
It also concerns whether the business is prepared to react quickly and adapt effectively to conditions that change – frequently and fast. So much rests on whether leaders can see what’s happening in real time, reduce costs without causing chaos, and keep operations moving smoothly without overwhelming teams with workarounds.
In this light, Tennessee-based Parkside Builders’ recent digital transformation stands out as more than a software investment and cutover story.
More importantly, Parkside Builders’ pivot is an operations story in which the team’s imperative is to build resilience in the moment it’s being tested on the ground, as we speak. It is a case about what private builders need to consider and act on, when the market remains full of uncertainty, demand is choppy, and the margin for waste – in time, labor, communication, and decision-making – keeps vanishing.
The operational pivot
Parkside’s shift to Constellation HomeBuilder Systems’ BuildTopia platform followed years of using an à la carte software setup in which construction operations and accounting were not fully integrated.
In the Parkside case, company business leaders state their goal of unifying construction and accounting, removing manual data entry, decreasing errors, and providing teams with real-time insights into budgets, approvals, and job performance.
The platform linked BuildTopia with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, while also adding field mobility through BuilderGo and trade-focused features via TradeTopia.
For Amanda Davenport, Parkside’s Director of Finance, the old system had become harder to justify.
“It was still very manual, especially on the accounting side, which wasn’t great,” she said, describing the company’s years working with BuilderMT on operations while finance used separate systems.
That friction amounted to more than a matter of annoyance, extra work, and tedium; it was costly to operate.
As Davenport explained, accounting often required accessing another system, manually pulling data, and trying to keep everything aligned. The result was not just extra work but missing information, weak visibility, and a growing sense that the company was carrying too much hidden strain.
“Things would just disappear sometimes,” she said. “I was just following the instructions I was given, and I started missing purchase orders, which was driving us crazy.”
Parkside’s Davenport mentioned that purchase orders, budgets, and sales data did not flow automatically between construction and accounting, requiring manual updates and making it harder to spot problems early. As Parkside grew, she noted, “scaling the business started to feel risky.”
That’s where Parkside Builders’ strategic and operational leaders drew the line.
Operationalizing agility
For a private builder, especially in a market where sales pace is inconsistent and leaders must stay opportunistic on expenses, pricing, starts, and production velocity, disconnected systems create more than inconvenience. They can become a direct threat to nimbleness. If accounting lacks visibility into cash demands, if field scheduling lags reality, if approvals happen in batches rather than in flow, and if teams depend on email and memory to solve problems, then management’s ability to react is dulled at exactly the moment when sharper reactions are needed.
In Parkside’s case, the force factor – and deadline – for change was BuilderMT’s impending sunset.
“In today’s market, disconnected systems slow decision-making at exactly the wrong time,” said Sean Wilhelm, Vice President – Business Solutions at Constellation HomeBuilder Systems. “Builders need real-time operational and financial clarity to stay nimble when conditions change fast.”
Davenport said Parkside had seen the change coming. “Our accounting software kept saying that they would stop supporting BuilderMT,” she recalled. “I kept telling the operations team about this because I felt it was inevitable.”
Change management 101
But like many builders, Parkside also had to navigate the human side of change.
“They weren’t eager to switch because, even though it was clunky on my side, all plans and details were set up in the current purchasing/operating system, making it feel overwhelming to start over with how we do things.”
Eventually, though, the decision practically made itself.
“They announced they’d sunset BuilderMT, and that forced our hand,” Davenport said. “It forced our operations team to say, ‘Okay, here we go.’”
What followed was not a simplistic rip-and-replace exercise.
Parkside had already implemented Microsoft Dynamics NAV for accounting and did not want to change accounting systems again. Davenport said the company weighed three alternatives and eliminated one because it would have required another accounting change, and ultimately chose to upgrade NAV to Dynamics 365 Business Central and pair it with BuildTopia.
“We decided to upgrade NAV to what is now Business Central and go with BuildTopia,” she said. “We knew links had to be created because they weren’t there.”
The transition period was important because it’s when many implementations either gain or lose confidence. Parkside had to keep operating while rebuilding templates, redesigning workflows, and waiting for the integration link to work properly. For a while, data still needed to be exported from BuildTopia and imported manually. But when the connection finally worked as intended, Davenport said, “everything fell into place. It was incredible.”
Her standard for success was practical, operational, and meaningful in terms of both business and financial KPI.
“I didn’t want to change accounting systems, but I needed the link between the two software systems to be better than the old one,” she said.
The biggest need was visibility. Under the prior arrangement, Parkside processed purchase orders in weekly batches, leaving accounting in the dark about near-term cash requirements.
“I had no idea about cash flow or what’s coming next,” Davenport said. “I didn’t know if the next check run would be 100,000 dollars or a million. I literally had no clue, no visibility, no foresight.”
That is precisely the kind of blind spot private builders cannot afford in a sluggish, iffy, incentive-driven sales environment. If leadership is unaware of what is coming, then the business stays stuck in a reactive mode.
“When leaders can’t see what’s coming next, the business is forced into reactive mode,” Sean Wilhelm said. “Integrated platforms give private builders the visibility they need to plan ahead, protect margins, and respond with confidence.”
End-to-end build-cycle management
Parkside also needed to improve scheduling discipline in the field. Davenport explained that the old system required builders to return to a computer to update schedules, which could cause the gap between field reality and system data to persist for a week or more. With BuildTopia and mobile access, those updates can now happen instantly. The effect, she said, is becoming evident in cycle time.
“We’re now making huge strides,” Davenport said, adding that Parkside is seeing “cycle times cut by 10, 20, even 30 days.”
She was careful not to credit the software alone, but she emphasized a broader point that matters just as much: the system helps teams spend less time fighting with cumbersome processes and more time communicating, planning, and staying ahead.
That same benefit has appeared in accounting and payables. Parkside’s case study states that BuildTopia decreased manual accounting tasks by shifting the team from constantly monitoring data flow to intervening only when necessary. Davenport noted that one unexpected advantage came from the vendor experience itself.
“One of the benefits we didn’t expect was that vendors now have a portal, which reduced the emails we received about payments and POs,” she said. Instead of acting as intermediaries, payables can now direct vendors to the portal, where they can see purchase orders, invoices, and payment status on their own.
A separate time savings came from the real-time integration between BuildTopia and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. With purchase orders now pushed automatically when created and again upon approval, Davenport no longer has to manage a manual weekly upload process.
“That change saved me about two hours a week,” she said, noting that it eliminated the need to manually push POs late at night after hours.
The greater benefit, however, may be accountability.
Davenport said the new system is guiding Parkside toward a more disciplined, transparent workflow where people can see when a handoff hasn’t occurred and where responsibility lies.
“Now the process flows where everyone has to stay on point, stay on task, and that helps everyone do their job,” she said. She also noted that customer-care staff can now answer their own questions by checking contracts and stage status directly, instead of chasing answers across departments. “They are autonomous, able to handle everything on their own, and they’re not waiting on anyone else.”
That is the main lesson for other private builders.
The return on nimbleness
In a volatile market, operational excellence isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s essential. It offers time, visibility, and control. It reduces inefficiencies that accumulate when teams depend on spreadsheets, email chains, and weekly guesswork. It gives leaders a better chance to protect margins and keep their organizations prepared for growth when the sales environment improves.
“Operational excellence isn’t about adding complexity,” added Sean Wilhelm. “It’s about removing friction so teams can move faster, stay accountable, and be ready when the market turns.”
Davenport’s closing advice is worth taking seriously because it comes from someone who has lived through multiple implementations. Builders get comfortable, she said, and comfort can hide possibility.
“It’s hard to see what you’re missing or what’s possible,” she said. But if a company is willing to invest the time to examine a better way of working, “you can make a proper comparison of what it could do for your company.”
Her conclusion is just as straightforward as it is relevant right now:
“You could just rip the band-aid off, overcome the hurdle, and create a whole new world for your business.”
