Digital Transformation: Securing the Future of Home and Building Suppliers

Spend now to save later

It might feel counterintuitive, but investing in technological advancements during financially challenging times, such as during the pandemic and resulting world financial climate, is the best way to secure your business. Digitising your building / construction supplier business is the best way to secure its future.

Greg Gill is the Director of Sales for the APAC Region for the Lumber, Building Materials, and Hardlines (LBMH) division of ECI Solutions. He has a background steeped in industry experience, having grown up in the family-owned hardware store —venturing into the Panel Beating and Roof Tiling trades before an eventual return to the hardware industry, managing a successful independent retail store. Since his departure from the hardware store Greg was a sales representative in the building supplies industry before joining ECI Solutions.

Greg has decades of hands-on experience in the building / construction supplies industry—the same industry that now benefits from the Spruce software that Greg now advocates for ECI Solutions.

“I know what it’s like to work in the hardware and construction supplies from both sides, and I know all too well the paper-heavy nature of most building supply businesses,” Greg said.

“I know just how ineffective, frustrating, and time-consuming paper-based working methods are and I know that there is a solution for this industry in Spruce,” he said.

Word of warning for building suppliers

Businesses working in the construction supply industry such as your home and building suppliers, timber and hardware suppliers, plumbers, landscapers, carpenters, etc. have experienced challenging times during the intense COVID-19 period when supply chains were impacted, and borders closed. Coming out of the lockdowns, the conflict in Ukraine has further impacted the supply chains, particularly timber. Construction has further suffered because of inflation and the growing gap between the cost of supplies and the set, locked in building contracts that construction companies are trying to service.

“We saw times where production of timber frames and trusses had a 10-month wait from ordering to delivery; and construction supply prices have jumped at least 30 percent since pre-COVID,” Greg said.

“Timber supplies have increased even more than 30 percent due to many factors, the conflict in Belarus and Ukraine. The Australian and U.S. bushfires, and global export of Australian timbers have also impacted secondary timber markets, and the price of steel fluctuates daily so reverting to steel frames isn’t necessarily an easy fix.”

The key to weathering this volatility is having visibility over your data—you can then be agile and respond quickly to market conditions.

“Adopting technology and digital solutions, such as Spruce, will streamline operations, improve efficiency, and enhance your customers’ experiences. You will better be able to manage your inventory, integrate your e-commerce, and your online order tracking systems will be completely transparent,” Greg said.

“Knowledge gives you the ability to make quick decisions and this, in turn, increases your ability to thrive in a volatile market.”

Why investing in software matters

Software investment is a long-term cost saving solution for construction supply businesses.

“The easiest, most secure method for businesses to get a handle on their data is to adopt software, such as Spruce,” Greg said.

“Given the current economic environment, investing in software might feel like an unnecessary spend, especially if you are already using a hybrid of paper-based and excel inventory; however, industry-specific, cloud-based software will see you better placed to make key business decisions.”

Greg warns against the attitude of being too busy to prioritise changing to Spruce.

“Every day you don’t embrace technology, you are throwing money away. It could be a question of surviving or thriving,” Greg said.

With more and more involved with construction supply using e-commerce and disrupting the industry the role technology plays in sales is growing.

“We have seen the large retailers move their catalogue online; other construction suppliers have followed and that means you need to digitise to stay competitive. You can’t let the large players monopolise online presence and therefore sales,” Greg said.

Greg urges smaller suppliers to also consider younger builders—the ones who are used to shopping online, who finish their workday and build their shopping list while sitting on the couch after dinner.

“If you don’t have an e-commerce solution that is integrated with your stock inventory then you are not an option for the younger generations of builders who only shop that way,” Greg said.

“You can’t build brand loyalty with a new generation if you don’t have a presence in the space they live in.”

Considerations for e-commerce include making sure the e-commerce can account for special pricing on specific customer accounts as well as ensure that it can account for selling in the units of measure you have.

“It’s not just selling stock online that you don’t have on the warehouse shop floor,” Greg said.

The e-commerce solution needs to give customers transparency with their quotes and orders.

“With Spruce e-commerce, you don’t even need your own website to set up an e-commerce business—you can brand our e-commerce platform to seamlessly digitalise your business without having to spend $100,000 and waiting 12 months to create a new website,” Greg said.

Key benefits

Having worked on the hardware store floor, Greg understands the labour-intensive process of some inventory systems and how their integration with purchasing and invoicing isn’t particularly seamless.

Spruce, a cloud-based software specific for the construction supply industry has benefits including:

• Freeing up employee time
• Reducing the number of employees needed to be involved in data entry
• Eliminating the need to invest in computer server infrastructure
• Providing tax incentives if you invest, as a business, in software solutions
• Reducing the time required to pull together end-of-day and end-of-month reports (automating 2-3 days of manual work per month with Spruce)
• Making visible, in real-time, stock counts and other areas of the business so managers can become proactive before a problem becomes a crisis
• Keeping data secure with ECI taking care of back-ups and data stored securely in the cloud
• Giving business owners the time back in their lives to spend out of the business—with family, at leisure
• End-to-end solution, especially with the Spruce e-commerce solution that is integrated with the Spruce core package. Changing the way construction supplier businesses do business
• Having your business sell while you sleep with the availability of 24-7 sales with Spruce e-commerce
• Ease-of-use—Spruce is designed to be intuitive with the layout of the screens the same and the function buttons placed in the same location across all pages. This is especially important for a software dedicated to a non-IT-technical industry such as the construction supplier industry. Spruce also has online help and training videos are embedded throughout.

“Anyone who’s ever worked in construction knows that there is a heap of paperwork involved. Spruce, among other things, is like an electronic filing cabinet. The Document Management feature is a core part of the Spruce software and what it allows you to do is keep together all your transactions linked in one filing system,” Greg said.

“This means you can keep your purchase orders, your suppliers’ payment receipts, your stock management, external documents, delivery and tracking all in linked together in one transaction.

“ECI provides an end-to-end management system where other systems may require you to purchase additional third-party modules such as delivery scheduling and Truck tracking, BI reports and dashboards and eCommerce” he said.

How to transition to cloud-based software solutions

The first step to transitioning to a software solution like Spruce, is to remove the business’s reliance on server infrastructure.

“Moving to a cloud-based solution is more secure for your business,” Greg said.

“Servers are also intensive to maintain, upgrade, and keep secure. A typical server for the construction supply industry costs at least $20,000 every 5 years for maintenance and the required licencing,” he said.

“Then you have the worry that a single corrupted email could mean the whole system comes crashing down.

“My advice is that if you are on a server, get off!

“If you decide to go with Spruce as your solution, you won’t be alone in that process. We work with you so that you are trained in the software over a time-frame suitable for you, your software experience, and your business needs.

“We set you up with a test version of Spruce so that you can test-drive it without worrying about data loss. Once your data has been migrated into Spruce, and you’re comfortable working in the test version, we enact your Spruce software, and it becomes the home to better decision making for your business,” he said.

Read more about Spruce from ECI Solutions and how it can assist your construction supplies business with real-time visibility of your inventory management and supply chains as well as being fully integrated with your financials.