A Successful Sales Story “Selling Software as a Service” PlanWell Collaborate

One of the fastest growing and most successful, privately owned, minority Class ‘A’ general contractors in the US Mid-Atlantic region, has made the commitment to invest in PlanWell. This progressive GC has the proven abilities and track record to take on some of the most challenging of construction projects in the area. They are committed to meeting their clients’ goals by making investments in education, technology and their employees, so they are able to avoid costly delays, keep projects in budget and deliver high-quality work.

Solution Selling Process:

This GC was interested in online construction technology. When they were initially contacted, PlanWell and BidCaster were discussed. However, after doing a thorough and complete needs assessment of their company and total document workflow, the sales consultant found a further opportunity to also introduce PlanWell Collaborate.

 The client was quick to realize that many of the current administrative processes that they were engaging in on a daily basis were antiquated and needed to be overhauled. This administrative workflow was taking focus away from their core focus, which was delivering high quality projects within budget.

The client immediately saw how PlanWell Collaborate (PWC) could help in their project and document workflow. Prior to the actual product Solution presentation, the client obviously researched the application in some detail. During the initial presentation of PWC, the client actually stepped through each of the main points of PWC and explained how it would be used and what benefit he would receive from it. In fact, the client more or less presented the application to the PlanWell Reseller instead of the other way around. It was a most interesting (yet refreshing) demo!

Besides using PWC, the client still intends on using both PlanWell and BidCaster throughout each project for most current set tracking, addenda and bulletin tracking as well as bid solicitation functionality.

Sales Objections and Solutions:

The sales consultant demonstrated Planwell Collaborate and Planwell / BidCaster to show them all the attributes each application had to offer their company. There were so many things the GC’s employees could utilize from PlanWell that they did not know where to begin. For example, should they phase in their network system? Do they get Collaborate in first? Would bringing in printing equipment at this stage be premature to their work flow needs, to mention just a few.

 Eventually it was agreed that the GC needed PlanWell Collaborate right away because of all their immediate needs to order prints and to move/organize files. When the sales team discussed them using Bidcaster and staffing opportunities (staffed FM) for their bid packages they loved the idea of us putting a person (staffed FM) in their office to help with administrative process of PW/PWC we thought they were going to flip out. They said “can we start on Monday”!

 So the solution for them after the initial PWC phase was implemented was a manned FM with new network system, new computers, small format printers and a Color Wave 600 to run all their design build packages.

The great thing about establishing a partnership with your customers is that once they see your product, they realized the potential in convincing their clients to use your solution. In fact, this GC was so positive about the workflow and the benefits that they brought one of their clients in to sit in on Planwell Collaborate presentation. They too were blown away by the product, so much so, that they are trying out the product and if all goes well, they too will be purchasing 15 seats.

Learnings:

PlanWell Collaborate has tremendous versatility as it can be used in all phases on a projects life-cycle, in this case the GC found great benefit in using PWC in helping them to manage the following processes:

• Project E-mail storage and archive
• Daily project logs and project specific calendars
• Virtual storage location for meeting minutes, owner and architect information, prime contractor information, payment records, RFI, ASI, etc.
• Storage location for all project documentation with integrated file viewer

 Opportunities with Account:

PlanWell Collaborate was just the beginning with this account. As noted above, this account has turned into a staffed FM, which will include PlanWell Collaborate, PlanWell / BidCaster, and printing services as well. In addition, the reprographer will be providing both large format and small format printing equipment as well as a complete network structure (including servers, backup devices, etc). Furthermore, the GC has already gotten the PlanWell Reseller in front of other clients to present PlanWell Collaborate and those clients have initially committed to a trial working.

Today many reprographers are finding out that talking to customers about workflow and technology solutions, that solve real business problems, can provide significant opportunities to grow market share and revenues, are you ?

Sincerely

Shaun Meany

Shaun's Corner "Sell Technology Not Print"

I was in Up-State NY and Boston last week to meet with several of our PEiR members and their AEC customers to learn about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for our industry in 2010.

One thing is abundantly clear: While opportunities to sell customers printing services appear to be declining, the opportunities to approach customers with technology solutions are huge and growing. The days of throwing bodies (labor) at problems are long gone. Every AEC company recognizes the need to use computers and software applications to improve productivity and efficiency.

Whether they use AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, Timberline, Prolog, Primavera, SharePoint or whatever, they are all accustomed to budgeting for technologies. They simply need reminding to extend that technology review to their reprographics services. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the bidding process.

The contractor community, has a limited number of funded projects in the works. As a result, contractors are required to do a lot more bidding to win a project. The bidding process used by many contractors is oftentimes very inefficient, and as a result, can create technology sales opportunities for those reprographers who can demonstrate the value of their bid communications and document distribution services.

In an effort to keep costs down and in some cases to keep their doors open, many contractors are trying to cut any costs associated to pre-construction activity, in order to survive. Remember, contractors don’t make money by bidding, they SPEND money. To stay in business, they need to make the bidding process as cost effective as possible. To most, that means reducing costs in bid set printing by eliminating them entirely, or passing printing down to subs by simply distributing their bid documents digitally.

That’s where we need to turn into technology promoters.

Solutions like PlanWell/BidCaster and Sub-Hub can offer better document control, productivity improvements, bid response tracking and better security than ANY analog-based solution. Contractors are still opting to use less sophisticated digital distribution methods (technologies) like FTP and CD’s because they do not understand the savings that your technologies can offer.

Reprographers who are struggling to get GC’s to pay to use their document management solutions need to remind themselves that they must explain to their customers that the technologies they (reprographers) offer actually help solve problems and create value.

Some reprographers are still lucky enough to be printing bid sets for government projects particularly in markets that require bids to be distributed in paper. Others claim that bid set printing is declining so fast that they (reprographers) are finding that they have more print capacity than the market is demanding. I could not help noticing at some shops, production devices and personnel were sitting completely idle. Such circumstances demand a different approach to remain relevant to our customers and viable as an industry.

Don’t lose the chance to help your customers to increase productivity and reduce costs with the technologies you can offer. You may need to price the technologies a bit different but I think you will find that you will have a better chance of getting your customers to accept the costs.

Automating the Bid Communications Workflow in the Construction Office

It is important when selling technology that you understand what problems and inefficiencies you can solve for your customers.

In the bid process you can save the pre-construction department labor, printing costs and increase their chances to win more projects. Effectively doing more with less and that is what the marketplace is looking for!

“Bid Services, Can I Help You?”

By Shaun Meany
The PEiR Group

For the past two years the PEiR Group has been promoting bid communication solutions and some of the opportunities technologies like BidCaster and SubHub can offer General Contractors with their Bid Processes. Some of our members understand this area of opportunity. Many do not - or just don’t see how it can benefit their customers and their own businesses.

I have talked with several reprographers who understand the bid process, have embraced our bid technologies and have enjoyed new sales as a result.

As our industry continues to evolve, many of the traditional services that you have grown to depend upon for sales and profits simply will not be demanded in the same volume as before. As the construction industry begins to crawl out from under its current cloud many of your customers, like General Contractors, will be looking to change the way they do their business processes; particularly the pre-construction or bid process.

When it comes to the bid process (often considered an overhead activity) most GC’s want to reduce expenses and boost productivity. Reducing bid set printing is one of the most obvious areas that GC’s focus on when trying to reduce expenses. There are two primary alternatives that GC’s tend to choose for reducing their printing costs: (1) send out cd-roms (2) post drawing and specs to a FTP site. While both these methods will reduce printing costs for the GC, neither approach improves productivity for the subs and suppliers. Sure, the documents get to their intended parties fairly quickly, but there are still inefficiencies (and costs) that could be controlled more efficiently with bidding solutions like BidCaster and SubHub.

Let's look at distributing bid-sets on cd-roms. The cd-roms still have to be mastered, duplicated and distributed (by mail, pick-up or express couriers). Any updates to the documentation must also go through a similar distribution process.

The next time a GC asks you to create a bid-set to be distributed via cd-rom here are a few questions you may want to ask: Why are the music and video industries moving away from cd/dvd media? How do you (Mr. GC) plan to update your subs when changes take place? How long does it take to update and notify plan holders of addendums? As you already know, with plan rooms like PlanWell or SubHub the documents are always up to date. Changes can be made real-time and anyone who has access will know what the current documents to bid upon is.

The same applies to FTP sites. It may sound simple for a GC to upload documents to a ftp site and send out instructions on how to download the documents. But when you look at this process in more detail FTP actually creates more headaches than it alleviates. First, the sub needs to know about ftp. Second, the sub needs to know a user name and password. Often the same user names and passwords are used by everyone who want access to the FTP site quickly breaching security. Third, how does the GC track who has documents? If a sub just wants to look at a document he has to download it and then view it. This can take a considerable amount of time if they have a slow Internet connection.

Here's something to ask your GC’s: Why do subs want a digital file?

An important component of bidding is tracking who is interested in bidding and who is still kicking the idea around. CD-Roms and FTP sites do not track who is interested in bidding the project. Sometimes this is the most critical information that a GC needs to know. Does he have coverage of all trades required on the project and if not how can he get more bids before due day?

More than at any other time in our industry’s history, it is vital that reprographers begin to market services beyond mere printing - and bid communications offers a perfect opportunity.

There are two approaches that you can consider with bid communications:

1. Offer bid communication software tools such as PlanWell Bidcaster or SubHub that your GC's can learn and deploy.
2. If your customers don’t want to take on learning a new system there might be an opportunity for you, the reprographer, to provide “Bid Services“ as an outsourced service.

One very progressive reprographer I've talked with recently said they've introduced a new department in their business called Bid Services and they've put a person with construction industry experience in the manager's position to make sure things run smoothly.

Either way, be it with BidCaster, SubHub or a dedicated Bid Services department, you will be offering intelligent choices that can address your GC’s needs, help them reduce costs and increase productivity. It’s a win win for both you and the customer!

Attention All BidCaster Users...

The PEiR Group is hosting an educational webinar on how end users can put the power of BidCaster to best use.

Please feel free to invite all your customers to sign-up, they'll be grateful to you.

The Webinar will be held on September 30th, 2009 10am pacific time.

Please click here to sign-up.

If you have any questions, please contact the PEiR Group at 925-658-0215