MDOT continues to involve users in FieldManager's development, from inviting groups of eight people to test new features to yearly conferences of 50 users to suggest future changes. "You know the things that you say are going to count," says Sandra Aldrich, records technician for the Road Commission of Macomb County in suburban Detroit, who's worked on MDOT projects for nearly 20 years.

It's been so helpful to private consultants that contract with local government offices to oversee MDOT projects that they use it for their non-MDOT work as well. "My background is civil engineering. It's not bookkeeping," says Stuart Laasko, an engineering specialist for Grand Rapids, Mich.-based engineering company Fishbeck, Thompson, Carr & Huber, who pays $15,000 a year for a FieldManager license. "I no longer spend my time adding numbers from report to report." The software has more than paid for itself by enabling him to work on more than one project at once. "The amount of work you can push through with this is amazing," Laasko says.

You can reach Senior Writer Stephanie Overby at soverby@cio.com.