November 4, 2025 • 48 mins
Thomas Berrington discusses the role of data-driven decision-making in the construction industry. He shares insights from his journey into construction and IT, focusing on technology's impact on French Brothers' operations. The episode covers challenges in securing leadership buy-in for new tech, strategies for non-technical communication, and the importance of historical data for efficiency. Thomas also explores Power BI integration for executive and customer insights, the debate between third-party solutions and custom development, and adapting tech for a younger workforce. He concludes with thoughts on data management, AI roadmaps, and offers final advice.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Yeah.
(00:00):
And it it really becomes it becomes lessemotional and more data driven.
Right?
Because you can really like a trade becausethey're funny and, you know, because they
always come and make you laugh, but they canalso cost you the most money in terms of delays
and rework and everything else.
And separating the emotion from the data hassuch an impact on the business that that having
those reports in in front of you really make abig impact on the bottom line.
(00:23):
Have
you ever wondered how successful architecture,engineering, and construction companies scale
their business?
Or have you ever wanted guidance on how to getmore growth, wealth, and freedom from your AEC
company?
Well, then you're in luck.
Hi.
I'm Will Foratt.
And I'm Justin Nagel, and we're your podcasthosts.
(00:45):
We interview successful AEC business leaders tolearn how they use people, process, and
technology to scale their businesses.
So sit back and get ready to learn from
the industry's best.
This is building scale.
Hey, listeners.
It's Will here.
Our mission is to help the AAC industry protectitself by making technology easy.
(01:09):
If you've ever listened to our show, then youknow that the three pillars of scaling a
business are people, process, and technology.
So if you suspect technology is your weak link,then book a call with us to see where we can
help maximize your company's IT cybersecuritystrategy.
Just go to buildingscale.net/health.
(01:30):
Today's guest is Thomas Barrington.
He is the chief information officer at FrenchBrothers, where he's led technology strategy
and operations since 2022.
Previously serving as the director of IT,Thomas has been a central piece to French
Brothers digital transformation, enhancing bothcustomer experience and operational efficiency.
In addition to his role at French Brothers, heconsults with homebuilders nationwide advising
(01:55):
on technology strategy and developmentprojects.
He holds both his BBA in information systemsand his MBA from New Mexico State University
along with multiple professionalcertifications.
Thomas is an active member of IT and homebuilding industry communities, continually
pushing innovation forward.
French Brothers is based in Southern New Mexicoand West Texas and is a production home builder
(02:18):
focused on first time homebuyers.
The company is a multi time national housingquality award winner known for its commitment
to customer experience and quality.
And with all that said, Thomas, welcome to theshow.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
It was a wonderful introduction.
Yeah.
I'd love to say that it was all me.
It was mostly AI.
But, you know, I I put my own twist on it.
(02:39):
So it's my AI, though, so that therefore, youknow, gives gives a little bit more color.
But I I said all this fun stuff, but you tellus the real story.
What how did you get into the constructionspace and and IT specifically in the
construction space?
And then tell us about French Brothers.
Yeah.
So really, it came from a a transition out ofthe food service industry.
I I went back for my MBA and and really wasinterested in technology more so than than food
(03:05):
service.
As I was in my MBA program, French Brothers waslooking for a data analyst program.
They were early in their journey of adoptingnew technology and modernizing their reporting
systems.
They realized that they needed somebody inhouse with that special skill set to be able to
do that properly.
So they approached the University, New MexicoState University, looking for a candidate.
(03:27):
Luckily, the two of us connected.
And so I joined them as a data analyst atfirst, working to migrate them from Excel
reports into Power BI and some dynamicreporting.
And through that progression, I moved into adirector of IT role and started taking on more
strategic leadership roles.
And as of 2022, took on the chief informationofficer role where I lead our kind of road map
(03:53):
for technology strategy and operations.
Got it.
French Brothers, tell us why maybe before youwere there,
but tell us why that they had such a drive togo into the technology.
How why know, lots of companies, lots ofconstruction firms out there are behind when it
comes to that.
Why were they so driven to really harnesstechnology and innovation?
I think desire.
(04:15):
It was beginning to become popular within theindustry.
Some firms were starting to do it.
But also, we've recently gone through anownership change, and our younger leadership
now has kind of been more focused on the dataside of things.
Kevin Jewell, our President, assumed that rolewhile I've been with the company, has really
been focused on that data driven decisionmaking process more so than our past leadership
(04:38):
where it's kind of been the old school, we haveall of our napkins, we know what we're working
on, we're kind of the hands on business ownersand entrepreneurs, whereas having kind of more
of a business oriented leadership, it's reallybeen let's focus on the data, how do we look at
growth, how do we grow this company from whatwe've inherited really to the next stage.
(05:00):
So, you know, I'm curious, what was how longhave you been doing this for?
Like five years, I think?
How long have you
Yeah, about five years.
So in that five years, what's been sort of thenet effect from when you started and started
actually implementing technology andleadership, obviously backing those changes and
the costs that go along with it?
What has been sort of the net effect for forthe business?
(05:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
So when I joined with the company, we weredoing about 150 closings or so that first year.
And I think our headcount was just north of 70people, probably 75 people ish through and a
lot of those people were in our administrative,in our corporate office, preparing reports.
There was there was more people on ourpurchasing team reviewing information.
(05:46):
All of our builders had assistant builders tobe able to maintain scheduling and everything
else.
And in the couple years since then up untilnow, this year, we'll do roughly 200, just over
200 closings, and we have a headcount just over30.
So we've made tremendous reductions inheadcount, being more efficient, having data
(06:08):
available to our entire team, and having a lotof those processes that were really just moving
data from one system to another, having thoseautomated and allowing alerts and automation
systems to carry a lot of that workload.
So I'm just gonna put that into math terms herefor a second.
33% growth, right?
If I'm doing my math right.
(06:29):
A 33% growth and over the same period of time,reducing really the salary capital overhead, or
human capital overhead by, like, 50%.
Is that about right?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Oh, and so really from a net effect also,profitability had to have increased.
So why did you, were you able to, what was thementality of leadership where they went, yeah,
(06:55):
we should invest, invest more dollars for mostcompanies, especially in the construction
arena, they go, well, if I spend more dollarsin IT, I'm going to essentially take away from
profitability.
Is that, but obviously you're showcasing thatthat's not really true.
So So I think it was really a learningexperience for the business and for myself to
(07:15):
see how we could benefit each other.
And when I came on, I came on in really a parttime role, and it was how do we make this
business better?
I didn't have much experience in home building,so it was new to me.
It took me a little while to understand theindustry really.
But with that, it would have had a goodunderstanding of how systems work and
information systems in general.
(07:35):
So our approach was really, let's look at thereports we're currently spending the most time
on to generate, and that most people arelooking at.
For us, it was scheduling information, whereevery home we were building at was at in the
process.
And at the time, it was very difficult.
It was being stored in an Excel spreadsheetwith no permissions or anything else.
So if somebody went in there and modified it,it broke the whole day's report.
(07:58):
It was something we, the first person in themorning had to run and generate so that
everybody could see that day.
It was a very manual process, and it took asignificant amount of administrative hours to
produce it every day.
That was the first one that we migrated into aPower BI report, and with dynamic refreshing,
we had it refreshing hourly at that point.
So then not only was we freed up all of thatadministrative time to then be spent on
(08:22):
operational tasks, but we also had data thatwas more valid because the velocity of
refreshes was that much higher.
So we had a more accurate reporting systemmoving it into the Power BI.
And just based on licensing cost and the amountthat we saved on that single report, that
really justified the cost of, okay, here's ourcost of the Power BI service.
(08:44):
We've already recouped that cost in this singlereport.
As we start building more and more advancedreports, particularly on our production side of
things and purchasing to look at BPOs, we'venoticed significant increases in those
performances.
Our variance went from multiple percentagepoints a year.
I think now we're just over 0.1% variance frombudget, and that's having those more accurate
(09:09):
reporting systems so that we can see not onlyhomes that have completed, but we can see homes
in the middle of the process and adjust Woah.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Multiple percentage points of variance
at
two point less than 1.1% variance.
That right there is like points ofprofitability.
That right there is literally points ofprofitability that just drops the bottom line.
Holy cow.
Continue.
(09:30):
Sorry.
I just wanted I just wanted listeners to likeunderstand like just how big of an impact it
can have.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And I mean, really what what I I like to saywith our team is all I focus on is the
visibility of that information.
We have a phenomenal team that's been able totake the visibility of that information and
turn it into action.
So from the Power BI perspective, all it reallydoes is give you the visibility of the
(09:55):
information.
And if you build it correctly, you have theright information in front of your fingertips
as quickly as possible, as quickly as it'sgenerated.
You still need a phenomenal team to then takethat information and turn it into
So information, being able to get more accurateinformation way faster, and essentially without
having the hiccups that happen every so oftenfrom the manual processes.
(10:19):
Also for those that don't know, or have beenliving under a rock, Power BI is a reporting
platform through Microsoft.
It can connect to a lot of the different datasets, everything from Excel spreadsheets to
like subject custom, to custom applications andjust allows you to report, right?
That's really what it comes down to.
That's where the power is at.
(10:40):
And then, so faster decision making, when youfirst started all of, when you kind of started
the journey over the company, started thisjourney, were you, were you and the company
ready to just start making these changes towhere you're at today?
Was it all readily available where you couldjust start making these changes, like slap of a
finger?
Absolutely not.
(11:00):
It was certainly a process to get where we'reat.
Building the reports would not take the fiveyears was, as we've always said in our company,
it's really flipping over the rocks and seeingwhat's underneath.
Sometimes you find gold and sometimes you findmaggots, right?
Sometimes it's so much garbage that you justturn that rock back over and you go, You know
what, we'll deal with that later.
We found ourselves particularly productiondata.
(11:23):
We're using that scheduling report as anexample.
We were looking at how long homes were takingto complete based on that data, and it was off.
It was incorrect data.
And we found that it was simply because some ofour builders were not running their schedule.
They were not entering it in midweek.
They may be waiting until the end of the weekand then going, okay, here's all the activities
(11:43):
that completed throughout the week.
Instead of daily.
Yeah.
That's not the way our process was designed.
When I was kind of doing some background on onyour guys' podcast, I love your your slogan,
people process technology.
And when one of those is failing, the wholebusiness fails.
So we found when that process was failing, wewere able to use one of the other key
(12:05):
components or one of the other key pillars torealize that we were able to use technology to
see that our people weren't following theprocess.
Super cool insight.
And because of that, you had to fix thingsreally on the operations side before you could
get good data to report properly, right?
So that's kind of how to work?
Yeah, it's really just about operations, makingsure that we understand what data is driving
(12:31):
those reports, and then that our fieldunderstands where all that information is being
driven from.
So that is they maintain their schedules moreaccurately, we started seeing more accurate
data.
We could identify where issues were in the homemore accurately and put more effort into fixing
those issues.
Whereas before, it was everybody wasmaintaining their own schedules and separate
(12:55):
Excel spreadsheets or on their phone calendarsor sticky notes or whatever else, and it was
very hard to see, well, do we have an issuewith a certain trade or with a certain
milestone within the home?
Having it pulling out of your system and usingyour system accurately, whether it's an ERP
system or whatever technology you're using,using it accurately makes such a big
difference.
Was there, obviously there was some pain.
(13:17):
You described one of the pain points, which isaround, well, data was missing or the data was,
we'll call it dirty.
Were there other, we'll call it hiccups orwork?
Because reports are not as hard.
It's just understanding what's the end goalyou're trying to get to.
What were some of the other missteps orstepping stones that you had to get to before
you could sort of fully fledge and go, okay,now I'm getting really good data.
(13:40):
What were kind of like the major steps formajor milestones that had to change in the
company or otherwise to be able to get there?
So the first thing is really buy in fromleadership, buy in from the top.
As we were making the transition, obviously,from from one reporting system, which was
Excel, into another one, which was Dynamic andPower BI.
There were issues where one of the report wasinherently different than the other one, and
(14:03):
there was inaccuracies.
Having that buy in and working through thoseinaccuracies is really the first step so that
everybody was running off of the sameinformation.
Having those processes redefined, making surethat everybody in the organization understood
where that information was coming from was kindof the next step in that.
And then working to refine as we're identifyingwhat the KPIs are, working to identify how
(14:28):
we're managing those KPIs.
If it's, you know, we've always looked at ifthe data is becoming more negative, ideally,
you want to focus on the problems, That's whenyou're trying to solve problems.
If the data you're looking at is inherentlybecoming more positive, then you want to start
looking at, okay, what are we doing right?
What can we maximize?
What is our force multiplier, if you will?
(14:51):
Yeah.
No.
That makes sense.
Were there as you were, you know, what was someof the gold, if you will, that you uncovered as
you were going through this, whether expectedor unexpected?
Like, really, I think one of the first oneswould have been the the VPO reports.
We didn't realize how quickly having thatvisibility on pending purchase orders and when
(15:12):
people were our builders would go, hey, we'rewe need another bundle of two by fours or
something.
And it's well, in the past, we would have justput that through.
Yeah.
That's building material.
Okay.
Let's go ahead and buy it.
Whereas now, when we can see that's pending,wait a second.
We've just revised the budget.
We made sure we have an accurate material listand that pull ups are accurate.
There should be no reason we need extramaterial.
(15:32):
Let's go back to the trade, let's go back toour framers and make sure that they're not
using full sticks for every single cut, andthat they're maximizing the material, and we
were able to kind of identify, okay, there issome waste that doesn't need to be there.
We don't need to be buying extra material.
We just need to work and educate with ourtrades a little bit better.
So then, all right.
(15:53):
So then let me ask you this, was theleadership, because there was a leadership
change, but when you first went into this wholeprocess, did you guys have the technical
maturity to actually understand from your nontechnical leaders, right?
If you're being a, you being a technical oneand at the time you were not in leadership, but
eventually you did get there.
What about your non technical, they had to havethe buy in to say, Hey, we need to make these
(16:18):
changes.
And what we see a lot of times is that nontechnical leaders, they have a hard time
understanding we'll call the tech, thetechnical aspects or whatnot to get, to where
they want to have that return.
Obviously, you may have had some big wins earlyon, which may have helped that.
But how do you convince non technicalleadership to spend more dollars in technology?
(16:39):
Yeah, really, that was a challenge at thebeginning.
Luckily, myself and our President had a greatconnection, and it was really just kind of
wearing down that stone, where early on it was,well, do we really need this?
And there was some resistance.
And I think I struggled with, we talked aboutit a lot on my communication of being too
technical.
I would talk like I was speaking to other CIOsin terms of dataverse and architecture and
(17:05):
everything else, where what I found I needed todo is bring it down to a level that made sense
to the executives, and really talk in businessprocess and business management terms, being
able to have them understand where if the datais in a single source, and we're able to
utilize a dynamic system, we have a much betterinsight into our data, and we have a much
(17:28):
greater ability to pull information and toquery the information that we need at scale.
So, because I know that there are sometechnology listeners and technology leaders,
specifically in the construction spacelistening, and they have a problem all the time
with communication with their leaders aregoing, man, if they could just spend more
dollars here, the entire business would bebetter.
(17:49):
How did you learn or what was the type ofcommunication when you first started versus
today?
Me, if you can, even some examples of like,where you were having troubles, we'll call it
communicating initially.
And then how would you, how do you have thoseconversations today?
I think a perfect example would be when westarted looking into custom app development.
(18:12):
Speaking to non technical people about appdevelopment is very difficult.
It's hard to, without making it sound likemagic, to explain how the application is going
to work, how we are going to build our owninspection app, let's say.
And well, how does that where does theinformation live?
(18:32):
How do people get to it?
How are we going to make sure that the buildersonly have access to their correct homes?
And a lot of times, it really does sound likemagic to somebody who's nontechnical.
When you start talking about relational dataand having row level security or column level
security and role based access, very quickly,you just get the blank stare
(18:56):
The jelly donut
Yeah.
Where where your eyes glaze over and they say,uh-huh, but they don't really understand.
Yeah.
They're they're just hoping that that at theend of the day, they see the results, and they
can just stop listening.
We used joke that, you know, I needed an easybutton that when I would talk and you'd start
getting that somebody was just, you know,whenever I was in meetings, let's have an easy
button.
So when Tom starts talking, we'll hit the easybutton.
(19:18):
You can bring it down a level so so that we canhave an understanding going back from the joke.
That's amazing.
You know, there
there was I remember one specific meeting whereat the end of it, I I talked probably fifteen
minutes about what we were trying to do onbuilding our own inspection app and our own
design inventory app.
And at the end of it, half room was glazed overlooking at me and one of our owners, Tom
(19:41):
French, he said, I have no idea what the hellyou just said.
It sounds really cool.
I can't wait to see it, but I have no idea whatyou just said.
And I think a lot of times that's really how itends up going, right?
It's really hard.
You have to get the buy, and you have to reallySimon Sinek says it great.
Start with the why, where here's why we'removing to this.
We want to have a greater control on ourprocesses and on our data.
(20:04):
Starting with that, business owners andbusiness leaders understand that mentality.
That's why we're moving to custom appdevelopment.
All of the underneath and the tools and stuffthat you're going to be using, that's really
for me and my team to worry about.
For them, it's, well, why are we doing this?
What is the benefit to the business?
And it allows us to control those processes, tohave better ownership of our data, and to grow
(20:28):
the business in our own way, versus kind ofbeing stuck in the updates of third party
stuff.
When you're going through this, and this isprobably a good example, are you combating the
idea of a third party app that exists?
And then also, are you combating like, couldn'twe just have a form?
Like, you know, couldn't we just have, like, aPDF form or even, a a Microsoft form?
(20:51):
And you're saying, like, no.
We need an app comparatively.
And they're saying, I don't under I don'tunderstand why.
Is that the fight that you're having?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I think, you know, a lot of times it's whycan't we just do this simply?
Or or they'll come to me, hey.
I have this problem.
I'd really like to do this.
And you start getting into the, you know, let'slet's under identify what this solution needs
(21:12):
to be, And it very quickly becomes, this is toomany questions.
You know what, I'll just do anything, so don'tworry about it.
I can do it myself.
And it's, again, getting to that, having themunderstand the why and having them understand
the reasoning for putting it in an app orputting it in a relational database connects
the information so much more, so that right nowwe're not I wouldn't say we're utilizing AI to
(21:36):
its fullest extent, but we have it in ourroadmap.
And by moving that data into a centralized datalake where AI can be leveraged on, down the
road, we'll be able to answer those questions alot quicker versus having these kind of data
siloed forms that are stored separately fromthe rest of our information.
(21:56):
So it's here's why we need to do it a littlemore complex to begin with, because down the
road, it will provide valuable insight.
And I think for businesses in general, theinformation they're storing and the data they
have is becoming more and more valuable.
That's right.
So I'm not going to speak too much on the AIconversation, but just because I heard it and
we do speak about this stuff, I have to bringit up.
(22:17):
So the parts that a lot of non technicalleaders don't understand is that whatever
habits that they formed and their companyessentially formed in bringing in the data,
right?
Might not be the way that it has to be in orderto produce results that you're talking about.
They have to go through this process ofstructuring their data in a way that we'll say
(22:39):
machines, right?
Can understand it so that eventually humans canunderstand it.
And so, and typically there's somecentralization.
What's your source of truth is usually aquestion that has to pop up because inside of
the business, you may have sort of silos ofinformation that happen or a replication or a
dupe, sort of a replication of data, exceptthat it's not one to one, meaning that human
(23:04):
error is introduced because we're copying datafrom one place to the other, or there's error
because someone fat fingered something orsomething isn't lining up in such a way so that
it just makes sense or the system breaks.
Right?
And so your historical data, right?
So been in business for many years.
(23:24):
Does it make sense?
Did you guys use all your historical data tobuild up what you have today?
Or did you say, you know what, maybe there's alimitation to where we don't, and we start with
a new process?
How did that go?
Yeah, for us, it really was finding thatwhere's our breakpoint?
Obviously, for most businesses, processeschange.
(23:46):
We had gone through numerous processes, whichmade trying to build reports on old data very,
very difficult.
We decided that, and especially as the homeindustry had significantly changed from COVID,
2020 was really our year that it was a yearbefore I got there.
It wasn't too much to go back to correct someof that past data, so we would at least have
(24:09):
some historical data to look at, But then wewould move forward from there and not try and
go not try and look too far back, but at thesame time, spend a little bit of time to spend
a little effort to clean up that data so we'dhave some historical data when we first started
building the system.
But yeah, like you say, ends up, especially forbusinesses that have been in business for a
long period of time, unless you have very cleandocumentation on when all these processes were
(24:34):
in place, which is pretty rare, it's anightmare for your technology or analytics team
to be able to build reports that span theentire history of your company.
So you only really started the process whereyou only took a year's worth of data.
You didn't go back any further.
Right.
That okay.
So that might be easy in home building becausemy assumption, correct me if I'm wrong, my
(24:57):
assumption is your build cycles are really nomore than a year in length.
Very rarely does it go beyond one year.
Would that be
fairly Yeah, really in home building we're atninety to one hundred and twenty days.
Yeah.
So everything's done in the same year.
Was there now that you have more years of data,do you get rid of the old data or do you keep a
(25:19):
length of it?
So we're we're just starting to tackle thatproblem now with some of the data.
And I think homebuilding in general, itprobably doesn't create the same volume of data
that some businesses do, In terms oftransactions, there's not hundreds of thousands
of sales.
There's the sale of the homes, you know,there's 150 to 200 transactions.
(25:43):
It's a lot of date based data, but in general,the volume of data is not all that high.
So we haven't really had to aggregate it verymuch.
Now, some of the purchase order data, thatstuff that I don't think past five years, it
makes sense to go back and look to see if wehad a PO to our concrete trade.
(26:03):
Some knowing how long that home took to buildor the total cost of it, yeah, we'll store all
of that information, but we won't storeindividual POs.
We're beginning to aggregate that informationand just store the total cost of the home.
Whereas for the first three years, while it'sunder warranty, and while we may still need to
reference some of that information, yeah,having that very granular data makes sense.
(26:27):
But as you start getting out of the scale whereyou're never going to be looking at it, it
really does just start tying up storage space,that ends up being kind of a hidden cost that
most businesses don't look at, because they'regoing, well, you can just buy more storage, buy
more storage.
And it's when we can be efficient with it, andwe can kind of have a lean mentality of what
don't we need to store, and we have the mostefficient data storage that we can have because
(26:52):
we've aggregated our data to just what we need.
Okay.
Besides Excel spreadsheets, where all are youpulling data from and putting into Power BI?
So the the main place that we pull data from isour ERP system, which is a specific home
building.
We use ECI's mark systems, which is isphenomenal to pull data out of.
We're also pulling it from our CRM systemHubSpot, as well as a lot of external data.
(27:15):
We've connected to realtor.com.
They have some some public MLS data that we canpull for prospecting new communities and and
new cities.
Zillow does the same.
We've also begun pulling some information,again, out of the Microsoft cloud for for all
of our business applications so that we'rewe're tracking all of our inspections, homes
that have inventory items in them, all of thatkind of business information.
(27:39):
Wait.
So you said ERP data.
Don't the ERP systems have their own reporting?
Why pull it into Power BI?
So they do.
And the reason we actually evaluated theirreporting systems the reason we use Power BI is
it's so universal.
Most of the time when you have an ERP system oreven our CRM, they have the reporting system
(28:00):
built in as well.
It's just very difficult to then pull theexternal data into those systems.
So you end up having to go from your ERPsystems reports to your CRMs reports to
external reports, and having it pulled into asingle reporting system, which is really all
the executives are looking at.
They're not in the actual functional systems,they're just looking at the reports.
(28:23):
Having that just built in a Power BI system,that then becomes kind of the the single
application that your executive and mid levelmanagers really need.
They don't need the functional programs asoften.
Okay.
So make a valid case for, you know, why maybeeven though the ERP system, so for the re for
(28:43):
anyone that's looking at ERP and looking at thereporting modules, there may be a reason, you
know, that you just need the data and notnecessarily pay for the reporting modules.
You might have more, when you said I think youused the term more global more global
reporting.
Is that
what you said?
What does that mean?
It it allows us to to really pull informationfrom from any data source.
(29:06):
It allows us to publish it from within thePower BI service, which we find very powerful.
Our reports load to iPads.
Our president travels solely with an iPad, andhe feels he has full visibility on the company
through Power BI.
He can look at any home in the company, whereit's at in schedule, what our financials are up
(29:28):
to the date.
He feels very comfortable traveling, whereas inthe years past, it's just that visibility of
information.
We just haven't had that same visibility towhere traveling it it really felt like, okay,
I'm I'm leaving the company to go do thisversus now where it's I I have the ability to
travel with the company still at my fingertips.
So alright.
So you're taking it from these differentsystems.
(29:49):
Just scheduling was a major problem that youhad you used essentially from, to sort of solve
use Power BI to solve.
You said you also use HubSpot.
Is there a combination of data between HubSpotand ERP data that somehow gets used, whether
it's in metrics or something like that?
Or is it just separate silos?
It's just a single place to go for go for allyour reports?
(30:12):
No.
We have begun combining I said begun.
We've we've combined a lot of informationbetween HubSpot from our sales information to
our ERP system to actually look at what we'rebuilding, just things like how many
communications the customer had as a customer,looking at how that translates into the number
(30:32):
of warranty requests or how much outreach thereis post close.
So we can kind of establish a deeper customerprofile by combining that information together.
So and from there, you can actually then createmetrics that would be, we'll say harder to
create or be able to start making decisions on,let's say a better, who would be a better
(30:58):
client because of that data or improvescommunication.
Is that how that would be used then?
Yeah, absolutely.
It creates that feedback loop.
It allows our sales team to identify and toadjust their processes and identify maybe the
clients they're pursuing.
Are we finding that our customers, first timebuyers, have more warranty issues, and maybe
(31:18):
that's an opportunity for education?
Are we finding that our move up buyers havemore warranty customers, and that's because
they're familiar with homeownership and theyknow what to look for?
It provides that insight into where are weseeing how we can improve that that customer
experience as as a as
a a So how
do you how do you go to decide when it'sappropriate to use the third party, a HubSpot
(31:42):
or your ERP compared to developing a systemyourself?
I'm really looking at the complexity ofdevelopment.
I think software development, the speed ofsoftware development has really accelerated in
the last few years.
So spinning up a solution is significantlyfaster than it has been in the past.
But there are still some that have tremendouscomplexity, ERP systems, CRMs that have a lot
(32:08):
of data scraping and APIs built into them, thedevelopment hours that would go into developing
a system like that and maintaining a systemlike that for the cost of subscriptions and
licensing with the third party solutions,there's really not a benefit to trying to
replicate that.
They've done it so well, they're hyperscaled atthis point to where it just makes sense from a
(32:32):
cost perspective to use those large solutions.
It's a lot of times, it's kind of the one offsolutions from third party solutions that do a
single solitary task that's pretty easy toreplicate within a custom app solution that you
can kind of reduce those licensing costs prettyeasily.
And then what about so obviously, the Power BI,looking at the executives being able to have
(32:55):
that one pane of glass, be able to seeeverything.
It makes a lot of sense.
What about the rest of the team?
How are they adapting to using new and newtechnology if it's developed by you or if
you're going to market to get
Yeah, so that's actually another driving factorof why we've moved to apps and moved away from
Excel spreadsheets.
(33:16):
It's understanding kind of the currentworkforce, right?
We're not hiring the boomer generation that istechnologically illiterate anymore.
We're hiring Gen Z and Gen Alpha that havegrown up on cell phones and smartphones and
apps and TikTok and everything else.
So having processes built around custom apps,it helps our hiring, it helps our recruitment,
(33:41):
it serves as a recruitment tool, because peoplelook at us, we're not a builder where you're
coming to work with a hard hat and a hammer.
You're coming with a smartphone and some appsand technology, and you're really able to
utilize that technology to complete the job,update the trades and update the rest of the
office, so they feel comfortable in using thattechnology more so than some of the old
(34:06):
technology, you know, where it was text basedand calling in to update, hey, Trey completed
this, you know, move on to the next task.
Now we have apps that automate all of thatstuff, we've found that it allows us to recruit
a significantly younger and more capableworkforce.
Okay, I mean that makes a ton of sense for theoffice, in office people.
(34:28):
What about the trades that you work with?
Is that obviously the data, you are as, youknow, your systems are as good as the data you
get, right?
As you mentioned earlier.
And when you have, if it's a trade that'ssomething subbed out to or if it's trades that
you have underneath you, like how how are theyinteracting?
Because then generally, historically, not themost technologically advanced workforce by any
(34:50):
means.
So how are you gaining that data from thefield?
Yeah, so that's And I think it's trade based ingeneral within the industry is typically not
very technologically advanced.
Most of the times they're still using flipphones and it's all phone based communication.
We've found by having the technology in front,at least for our trades or for our builders, it
(35:13):
allows us to have the conversations with tradesand be able to pull up information on them and
have honest conversations as needed and asquickly as possible.
So if we have trades that are taking longerthan they should, we can immediately pull up
and show them the effect that has on theoverall build cycle by missing their completion
(35:34):
date by a single day or by having any rework ona home that can require three or four
additional days and push a closing.
So it allows us to provide that information alot quicker.
Obviously, having a lot of our documents and adocument managed system in the cloud, It allows
us to have iPad based documents and plan setsthat we can refer to.
(35:56):
So our our builders and really our trades arenever at a job site without without the
availability of documentation to see whatthey're working on.
Man, rework.
One of the most hated words in the industryfrom a client experience perspective.
From preventing rework, better data canultimately affect client experience by reducing
(36:18):
or removing rework.
Let's say not 100% of the time, but it canreduce it.
Right?
But if the trades that are outside of, let'ssay your control, are you training them on your
systems to be able to sort of be able to getthat data?
Or is it more this is sort of proving what wehave been saying all along?
(36:39):
Like how are you using it to specifically withyour trades?
With our trades currently right now, we onlyhouse it internally.
We haven't exposed the reporting systemexternally yet, and that's simply due to
licensing costs.
But we do have that plan to where we would havevendor available information where they'd be
able to review that.
But currently, we just have it as quarterlyreviews for our trade partners, or as they're
(37:04):
coming to us looking for either more work orprice adjustments.
We're able to review variance information,scheduling exceptions.
We have really a vendor report card that we canpull up very quickly and show the number of
jobs that they've worked on, how that'sperformed to budget, number of warranty
submissions related to that home, and reallyquickly be able to provide them a great insight
(37:29):
into how they've performed as a trades.
Very powerful to data at your fingertips likethat.
Yeah, it really becomes less emotional and moredata driven, right?
Because you can really like a trade, becausethey're funny and you know, because they always
come in and make you laugh, but they can alsocost you the most money in terms of delays and
rework and everything else.
(37:50):
And separating the emotion from the data hassuch an impact on the business that having
those reports in front of you really make a bigimpact on the bottom line.
That I totally agree with that.
What do you wish you had, you know, from thiswhole process, what steps do you wish you would
have taken if you had to do it all over again?
(38:10):
What steps do you wish you had taken sort ofimprove, if you will, the process or improve
getting to the end result?
I think looking at the architecture a littlebit more at the beginning, kind of the
structure of the data would have had a greaterimpact, especially on our custom applications.
I find now we've, you know, our data is justnot set up as efficiently as it could be at
(38:34):
times.
Some of the other stuff, obviously, would belooking at really structuring naming
conventions as you're building out your datawithin, whether it's an ERP system or a CRM,
thinking about the logical naming conventionsand how that data relates has such an impact to
whether you can use built in features orwhether you're customizing a standalone
(38:56):
solution.
And what we found is if we were using astandard solution and had a significant number
of customizations in it, then we probably needto be looking at, well, do we just need to do
this custom?
Because if we have to go through asignificantly more labored process to enter the
custom fields, it doesn't make sense to do itin this interface.
(39:17):
It makes sense to do it in our own custominterface.
So spending the time on that at the beginningand having a better understanding of where
we're trying to go on the roadmap with it,whether it's growth mentality, whether it's
looking to maintain and become as efficient aspossible.
I think both of those have different strategicmindsets in terms of how the architecture of
(39:38):
the data will go.
Anything else?
I think having more education to our to therest of our team about solutions being built
and building from the ground up tends to have agreater impact and tends to have better buy in
than I think we've struggled with in the pastof at the top going, I don't think we have a
great solution on this.
Let's let's build a solution.
(40:00):
And then pushing it kind of waterfall down andpushing it out versus working with our builders
and with our production personnel andsalespeople going, okay.
Show me where the pain points are currently sothat as we're developing this, we're developing
it for you.
I think a perfect example of that would be whenwe were developing our inspection app.
(40:22):
Me, I was going, okay, I've heard that ourfield personnel have iPads, so I developed our
inspection app to be based on an iPad.
And as we were demoing it, every single personthat went to use it pulled out their phone and
said, well, when we do an inspection, we don'twalk around with iPads.
We just have our phone out to take pictures.
So then we had to go and completely change thelayout of the app to be it still had the iPad
(40:44):
as a backup if they were doing that that way,but the majority of people were phone based.
So it was we were on the completely wrongmindset from the get go.
We should have worked with them at thebeginning.
Okay.
How are you planning to use this process?
Now let's build our solution around, you know,the actual use case.
So when you say reviewing processes, youliterally mean, like, okay.
(41:08):
Take me through this and show me rather than anoverview of whatever the documentation or
whatever you kind of know.
You're saying trust, but verify what's actuallyhappening out there.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, don't show me a lucid chart of atimeline of how this goes.
I can make those notes myself.
You will inevitably make a better solution, youknow, really doing a gimbal walk.
(41:30):
Right?
When you put your put yourself in their shoes,walk the actual process and see what's going on
in the field.
You know, what is Japanese mentality of go seefor yourself.
Right?
Yeah.
No.
Even order of what happens.
Right?
You could change order in what comes up in theapp based upon, like, oh, no.
They always start in the bathroom.
I don't know.
What what you know, whatever it is.
(41:51):
It's oh, put that shit first.
Like, I mean, like, that just makes a lot ofsense.
If you're actually there perceiving itfirsthand compared to it it generally works
like this.
It's those are very different results that youget in the in the long run.
Yeah.
That's that's a great point.
We we've organized our inspections to workclockwise around the home, specifically for
(42:13):
that.
So we can look at, you know, it reduces thenumber of steps within the home.
But then rather than having it, I think when wefirst designed it, it was inevitable, we'll
just sort it alphabetically, right?
Or however the checkpoints were created, that'show it shows up in the home.
But then we found our quality assurance andinspection people were having to do a star
pattern through the home, and it was just anexcessive number of steps versus, okay, let's
(42:37):
come in, let's start from the exterior, workclockwise around the home, move inside, and
work clockwise that way.
We're missing less checkpoints.
You're not pencil whipping or just goingthrough because you're going, I think I saw
that.
Yeah.
That looked right.
You're in front of it, and it's it's just amore efficient inspection process.
Well, And
And that if you instills the process of, thisis how French Brothers does it.
(43:00):
Somebody else may do it differently, but thisis how we do it.
We start in the home and then we go external.
We start externally and then go in the home andwe we run it this way every time because then
how do you train the next to do that?
It's all one seamless process that is then hasthat technology back end to support the process
itself.
(43:21):
So just make sure that whenever you expand intoAustralia that you're going counterclockwise
because they're upside down there.
Right?
Yeah.
That's my understanding.
Hey, I always get away the toilet flushes.
Right?
Yeah.
The toilet flushes differently.
That's, that's the whole thing.
Right?
What about, so what do you wish?
So taking some steps, but you did most of thework really yourself.
You Do wish you'd used any consultants, whetherfor setup or any part of the process?
(43:43):
Yes.
And actually, we've just started using aphenomenal consulting firm as well to kind of
help realize that we rushed into things and didnot know what we didn't know.
So having that expert to kind of back us, andwe know we want to do custom reporting, we know
we want to do custom map development, buthaving that subject matter expert in the
(44:07):
background to be able to go, Okay, think aboutthese things prior to getting into it, because
some things take a lot more rework, has startedmaking a tremendous difference as well.
It's allowing us to kind of optimize ourenvironment.
And as I was talking about on our roadmap toAI, it's progressing us on that a lot faster
(44:29):
than we would have been.
So when you say optimize, what does thatactually mean?
To the non technical folks that are out there,what does that actually mean?
For us, that means single source of truth data.
We're not replicating data in multiple places.
We have very efficient updates.
There is no stale data.
We change roles, or if we change a process, wevery rarely have failed automations just
(44:54):
because of those optimizations and being ableto use environment variables rather than
calling out specific users and and that kind ofsetup stuff without getting too technical.
Okay.
Definitely definitely started started going onon the tactical.
Hopefully, one glazed off.
Get the easy button out.
Yep.
Hopefully, no one glazed over like a jellydonut.
(45:16):
Yes.
This this has this has been a a ton oftechnical fun business questions here, but we
have one last question we wanna ask you,Thomas.
And we asked everybody.
So now that you're a giant Building Scale fan,you'll probably know this is coming.
But, Thomas, if you go back twenty years, whatadvice would you give yourself?
Oh, I would give myself a
(45:37):
lot of advice.
Well, let it rip.
Let's hear it all.
Yeah.
Primarily, I would say, you know, stick withtechnology.
I was at a very young age, interested in it.
And, you know, stay innovative.
Continue to push what is currently being done.
(45:57):
Learn how you can use new technologies.
It's one of the few things that I don't think alot of other industries have changed very much,
or a lot of other departments have changed verymuch.
Building stuff, you're still doing the samestuff.
Selling still requires the same connection.
Technology has progressed more than anything,any other industry or any other department, and
(46:18):
staying up on current technology, continuing tolearn new has benefited me recently.
I think there was definitely a period of timewhere I got a little lax with that.
And I'm kicking myself now.
I just feel like if I had stuck with educationand stuck with learning, I'd be who knows where
I'd be now?
(46:38):
Well, it looks like you're in a pretty goodspot even without that.
So kudos to you and all the stuff all the stuffthat you and French brothers have already
achieved.
Thank you.
Appreciate
it.
Yeah.
This has been a ton of fun.
If somebody wanted to get ahold of you, what'sthe best way for them to do that, Thomas?
They can connect with me on on LinkedIn.
My my profile is on there at thomas barringtoninnovates,
(46:59):
linkedin.com/thomasbarringtoninnovates.
For those in the building industry, if you'reattending the International Builders Show this
coming February, I'll be moderating a panelthere as well, and I'd love to connect.
I also have Microsoft Booking link.
Feel free to reach out.
My email is thomasb@frenchbrothers.com, and wecan set up a demo to do a Power BI demo as well
(47:20):
as custom application conversations.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Awesome.
And is there anything else you'd like to tellthe people before you say goodbye?
Stay innovative.
Love it.
This has been a ton of fun listeners, and untilnext time.
Adios.
Adios.
Thanks for listening to Building Scale.
To help us reach even more people, please sharethis episode with a friend, colleague, or on
(47:41):
social media.
Remember, the three pillars of scaling abusiness are people, process, and technology.
And our mission is to help the AEC industryprotect itself by making technology easy.
So if you think your company's technologypillar could use some improvement, book a call
with us to see how we can help maximize your ITcybersecurity strategy.
(48:06):
Just go to buildingscale.net/help.
And until next time.
Keep building scale.
Yeah.
(00:00):
And it it really becomes it becomes lessemotional and more data driven.
Right?
Because you can really like a trade becausethey're funny and, you know, because they
always come and make you laugh, but they canalso cost you the most money in terms of delays
and rework and everything else.
And separating the emotion from the data hassuch an impact on the business that that having
those reports in in front of you really make abig impact on the bottom line.
(00:23):
Have
you ever wondered how successful architecture,engineering, and construction companies scale
their business?
Or have you ever wanted guidance on how to getmore growth, wealth, and freedom from your AEC
company?
Well, then you're in luck.
Hi.
I'm Will Foratt.
And I'm Justin Nagel, and we're your podcasthosts.
(00:45):
We interview successful AEC business leaders tolearn how they use people, process, and
technology to scale their businesses.
So sit back and get ready to learn from
the industry's best.
This is building scale.
Hey, listeners.
It's Will here.
Our mission is to help the AAC industry protectitself by making technology easy.
(01:09):
If you've ever listened to our show, then youknow that the three pillars of scaling a
business are people, process, and technology.
So if you suspect technology is your weak link,then book a call with us to see where we can
help maximize your company's IT cybersecuritystrategy.
Just go to buildingscale.net/health.
(01:30):
Today's guest is Thomas Barrington.
He is the chief information officer at FrenchBrothers, where he's led technology strategy
and operations since 2022.
Previously serving as the director of IT,Thomas has been a central piece to French
Brothers digital transformation, enhancing bothcustomer experience and operational efficiency.
In addition to his role at French Brothers, heconsults with homebuilders nationwide advising
(01:55):
on technology strategy and developmentprojects.
He holds both his BBA in information systemsand his MBA from New Mexico State University
along with multiple professionalcertifications.
Thomas is an active member of IT and homebuilding industry communities, continually
pushing innovation forward.
French Brothers is based in Southern New Mexicoand West Texas and is a production home builder
(02:18):
focused on first time homebuyers.
The company is a multi time national housingquality award winner known for its commitment
to customer experience and quality.
And with all that said, Thomas, welcome to theshow.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
It was a wonderful introduction.
Yeah.
I'd love to say that it was all me.
It was mostly AI.
But, you know, I I put my own twist on it.
(02:39):
So it's my AI, though, so that therefore, youknow, gives gives a little bit more color.
But I I said all this fun stuff, but you tellus the real story.
What how did you get into the constructionspace and and IT specifically in the
construction space?
And then tell us about French Brothers.
Yeah.
So really, it came from a a transition out ofthe food service industry.
I I went back for my MBA and and really wasinterested in technology more so than than food
(03:05):
service.
As I was in my MBA program, French Brothers waslooking for a data analyst program.
They were early in their journey of adoptingnew technology and modernizing their reporting
systems.
They realized that they needed somebody inhouse with that special skill set to be able to
do that properly.
So they approached the University, New MexicoState University, looking for a candidate.
(03:27):
Luckily, the two of us connected.
And so I joined them as a data analyst atfirst, working to migrate them from Excel
reports into Power BI and some dynamicreporting.
And through that progression, I moved into adirector of IT role and started taking on more
strategic leadership roles.
And as of 2022, took on the chief informationofficer role where I lead our kind of road map
(03:53):
for technology strategy and operations.
Got it.
French Brothers, tell us why maybe before youwere there,
but tell us why that they had such a drive togo into the technology.
How why know, lots of companies, lots ofconstruction firms out there are behind when it
comes to that.
Why were they so driven to really harnesstechnology and innovation?
I think desire.
(04:15):
It was beginning to become popular within theindustry.
Some firms were starting to do it.
But also, we've recently gone through anownership change, and our younger leadership
now has kind of been more focused on the dataside of things.
Kevin Jewell, our President, assumed that rolewhile I've been with the company, has really
been focused on that data driven decisionmaking process more so than our past leadership
(04:38):
where it's kind of been the old school, we haveall of our napkins, we know what we're working
on, we're kind of the hands on business ownersand entrepreneurs, whereas having kind of more
of a business oriented leadership, it's reallybeen let's focus on the data, how do we look at
growth, how do we grow this company from whatwe've inherited really to the next stage.
(05:00):
So, you know, I'm curious, what was how longhave you been doing this for?
Like five years, I think?
How long have you
Yeah, about five years.
So in that five years, what's been sort of thenet effect from when you started and started
actually implementing technology andleadership, obviously backing those changes and
the costs that go along with it?
What has been sort of the net effect for forthe business?
(05:23):
Yeah, absolutely.
So when I joined with the company, we weredoing about 150 closings or so that first year.
And I think our headcount was just north of 70people, probably 75 people ish through and a
lot of those people were in our administrative,in our corporate office, preparing reports.
There was there was more people on ourpurchasing team reviewing information.
(05:46):
All of our builders had assistant builders tobe able to maintain scheduling and everything
else.
And in the couple years since then up untilnow, this year, we'll do roughly 200, just over
200 closings, and we have a headcount just over30.
So we've made tremendous reductions inheadcount, being more efficient, having data
(06:08):
available to our entire team, and having a lotof those processes that were really just moving
data from one system to another, having thoseautomated and allowing alerts and automation
systems to carry a lot of that workload.
So I'm just gonna put that into math terms herefor a second.
33% growth, right?
If I'm doing my math right.
(06:29):
A 33% growth and over the same period of time,reducing really the salary capital overhead, or
human capital overhead by, like, 50%.
Is that about right?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Oh, and so really from a net effect also,profitability had to have increased.
So why did you, were you able to, what was thementality of leadership where they went, yeah,
(06:55):
we should invest, invest more dollars for mostcompanies, especially in the construction
arena, they go, well, if I spend more dollarsin IT, I'm going to essentially take away from
profitability.
Is that, but obviously you're showcasing thatthat's not really true.
So So I think it was really a learningexperience for the business and for myself to
(07:15):
see how we could benefit each other.
And when I came on, I came on in really a parttime role, and it was how do we make this
business better?
I didn't have much experience in home building,so it was new to me.
It took me a little while to understand theindustry really.
But with that, it would have had a goodunderstanding of how systems work and
information systems in general.
(07:35):
So our approach was really, let's look at thereports we're currently spending the most time
on to generate, and that most people arelooking at.
For us, it was scheduling information, whereevery home we were building at was at in the
process.
And at the time, it was very difficult.
It was being stored in an Excel spreadsheetwith no permissions or anything else.
So if somebody went in there and modified it,it broke the whole day's report.
(07:58):
It was something we, the first person in themorning had to run and generate so that
everybody could see that day.
It was a very manual process, and it took asignificant amount of administrative hours to
produce it every day.
That was the first one that we migrated into aPower BI report, and with dynamic refreshing,
we had it refreshing hourly at that point.
So then not only was we freed up all of thatadministrative time to then be spent on
(08:22):
operational tasks, but we also had data thatwas more valid because the velocity of
refreshes was that much higher.
So we had a more accurate reporting systemmoving it into the Power BI.
And just based on licensing cost and the amountthat we saved on that single report, that
really justified the cost of, okay, here's ourcost of the Power BI service.
(08:44):
We've already recouped that cost in this singlereport.
As we start building more and more advancedreports, particularly on our production side of
things and purchasing to look at BPOs, we'venoticed significant increases in those
performances.
Our variance went from multiple percentagepoints a year.
I think now we're just over 0.1% variance frombudget, and that's having those more accurate
(09:09):
reporting systems so that we can see not onlyhomes that have completed, but we can see homes
in the middle of the process and adjust Woah.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Multiple percentage points of variance
at
two point less than 1.1% variance.
That right there is like points ofprofitability.
That right there is literally points ofprofitability that just drops the bottom line.
Holy cow.
Continue.
(09:30):
Sorry.
I just wanted I just wanted listeners to likeunderstand like just how big of an impact it
can have.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And I mean, really what what I I like to saywith our team is all I focus on is the
visibility of that information.
We have a phenomenal team that's been able totake the visibility of that information and
turn it into action.
So from the Power BI perspective, all it reallydoes is give you the visibility of the
(09:55):
information.
And if you build it correctly, you have theright information in front of your fingertips
as quickly as possible, as quickly as it'sgenerated.
You still need a phenomenal team to then takethat information and turn it into
So information, being able to get more accurateinformation way faster, and essentially without
having the hiccups that happen every so oftenfrom the manual processes.
(10:19):
Also for those that don't know, or have beenliving under a rock, Power BI is a reporting
platform through Microsoft.
It can connect to a lot of the different datasets, everything from Excel spreadsheets to
like subject custom, to custom applications andjust allows you to report, right?
That's really what it comes down to.
That's where the power is at.
(10:40):
And then, so faster decision making, when youfirst started all of, when you kind of started
the journey over the company, started thisjourney, were you, were you and the company
ready to just start making these changes towhere you're at today?
Was it all readily available where you couldjust start making these changes, like slap of a
finger?
Absolutely not.
(11:00):
It was certainly a process to get where we'reat.
Building the reports would not take the fiveyears was, as we've always said in our company,
it's really flipping over the rocks and seeingwhat's underneath.
Sometimes you find gold and sometimes you findmaggots, right?
Sometimes it's so much garbage that you justturn that rock back over and you go, You know
what, we'll deal with that later.
We found ourselves particularly productiondata.
(11:23):
We're using that scheduling report as anexample.
We were looking at how long homes were takingto complete based on that data, and it was off.
It was incorrect data.
And we found that it was simply because some ofour builders were not running their schedule.
They were not entering it in midweek.
They may be waiting until the end of the weekand then going, okay, here's all the activities
(11:43):
that completed throughout the week.
Instead of daily.
Yeah.
That's not the way our process was designed.
When I was kind of doing some background on onyour guys' podcast, I love your your slogan,
people process technology.
And when one of those is failing, the wholebusiness fails.
So we found when that process was failing, wewere able to use one of the other key
(12:05):
components or one of the other key pillars torealize that we were able to use technology to
see that our people weren't following theprocess.
Super cool insight.
And because of that, you had to fix thingsreally on the operations side before you could
get good data to report properly, right?
So that's kind of how to work?
Yeah, it's really just about operations, makingsure that we understand what data is driving
(12:31):
those reports, and then that our fieldunderstands where all that information is being
driven from.
So that is they maintain their schedules moreaccurately, we started seeing more accurate
data.
We could identify where issues were in the homemore accurately and put more effort into fixing
those issues.
Whereas before, it was everybody wasmaintaining their own schedules and separate
(12:55):
Excel spreadsheets or on their phone calendarsor sticky notes or whatever else, and it was
very hard to see, well, do we have an issuewith a certain trade or with a certain
milestone within the home?
Having it pulling out of your system and usingyour system accurately, whether it's an ERP
system or whatever technology you're using,using it accurately makes such a big
difference.
Was there, obviously there was some pain.
(13:17):
You described one of the pain points, which isaround, well, data was missing or the data was,
we'll call it dirty.
Were there other, we'll call it hiccups orwork?
Because reports are not as hard.
It's just understanding what's the end goalyou're trying to get to.
What were some of the other missteps orstepping stones that you had to get to before
you could sort of fully fledge and go, okay,now I'm getting really good data.
(13:40):
What were kind of like the major steps formajor milestones that had to change in the
company or otherwise to be able to get there?
So the first thing is really buy in fromleadership, buy in from the top.
As we were making the transition, obviously,from from one reporting system, which was
Excel, into another one, which was Dynamic andPower BI.
There were issues where one of the report wasinherently different than the other one, and
(14:03):
there was inaccuracies.
Having that buy in and working through thoseinaccuracies is really the first step so that
everybody was running off of the sameinformation.
Having those processes redefined, making surethat everybody in the organization understood
where that information was coming from was kindof the next step in that.
And then working to refine as we're identifyingwhat the KPIs are, working to identify how
(14:28):
we're managing those KPIs.
If it's, you know, we've always looked at ifthe data is becoming more negative, ideally,
you want to focus on the problems, That's whenyou're trying to solve problems.
If the data you're looking at is inherentlybecoming more positive, then you want to start
looking at, okay, what are we doing right?
What can we maximize?
What is our force multiplier, if you will?
(14:51):
Yeah.
No.
That makes sense.
Were there as you were, you know, what was someof the gold, if you will, that you uncovered as
you were going through this, whether expectedor unexpected?
Like, really, I think one of the first oneswould have been the the VPO reports.
We didn't realize how quickly having thatvisibility on pending purchase orders and when
(15:12):
people were our builders would go, hey, we'rewe need another bundle of two by fours or
something.
And it's well, in the past, we would have justput that through.
Yeah.
That's building material.
Okay.
Let's go ahead and buy it.
Whereas now, when we can see that's pending,wait a second.
We've just revised the budget.
We made sure we have an accurate material listand that pull ups are accurate.
There should be no reason we need extramaterial.
(15:32):
Let's go back to the trade, let's go back toour framers and make sure that they're not
using full sticks for every single cut, andthat they're maximizing the material, and we
were able to kind of identify, okay, there issome waste that doesn't need to be there.
We don't need to be buying extra material.
We just need to work and educate with ourtrades a little bit better.
So then, all right.
(15:53):
So then let me ask you this, was theleadership, because there was a leadership
change, but when you first went into this wholeprocess, did you guys have the technical
maturity to actually understand from your nontechnical leaders, right?
If you're being a, you being a technical oneand at the time you were not in leadership, but
eventually you did get there.
What about your non technical, they had to havethe buy in to say, Hey, we need to make these
(16:18):
changes.
And what we see a lot of times is that nontechnical leaders, they have a hard time
understanding we'll call the tech, thetechnical aspects or whatnot to get, to where
they want to have that return.
Obviously, you may have had some big wins earlyon, which may have helped that.
But how do you convince non technicalleadership to spend more dollars in technology?
(16:39):
Yeah, really, that was a challenge at thebeginning.
Luckily, myself and our President had a greatconnection, and it was really just kind of
wearing down that stone, where early on it was,well, do we really need this?
And there was some resistance.
And I think I struggled with, we talked aboutit a lot on my communication of being too
technical.
I would talk like I was speaking to other CIOsin terms of dataverse and architecture and
(17:05):
everything else, where what I found I needed todo is bring it down to a level that made sense
to the executives, and really talk in businessprocess and business management terms, being
able to have them understand where if the datais in a single source, and we're able to
utilize a dynamic system, we have a much betterinsight into our data, and we have a much
(17:28):
greater ability to pull information and toquery the information that we need at scale.
So, because I know that there are sometechnology listeners and technology leaders,
specifically in the construction spacelistening, and they have a problem all the time
with communication with their leaders aregoing, man, if they could just spend more
dollars here, the entire business would bebetter.
(17:49):
How did you learn or what was the type ofcommunication when you first started versus
today?
Me, if you can, even some examples of like,where you were having troubles, we'll call it
communicating initially.
And then how would you, how do you have thoseconversations today?
I think a perfect example would be when westarted looking into custom app development.
(18:12):
Speaking to non technical people about appdevelopment is very difficult.
It's hard to, without making it sound likemagic, to explain how the application is going
to work, how we are going to build our owninspection app, let's say.
And well, how does that where does theinformation live?
(18:32):
How do people get to it?
How are we going to make sure that the buildersonly have access to their correct homes?
And a lot of times, it really does sound likemagic to somebody who's nontechnical.
When you start talking about relational dataand having row level security or column level
security and role based access, very quickly,you just get the blank stare
(18:56):
The jelly donut
Yeah.
Where where your eyes glaze over and they say,uh-huh, but they don't really understand.
Yeah.
They're they're just hoping that that at theend of the day, they see the results, and they
can just stop listening.
We used joke that, you know, I needed an easybutton that when I would talk and you'd start
getting that somebody was just, you know,whenever I was in meetings, let's have an easy
button.
So when Tom starts talking, we'll hit the easybutton.
(19:18):
You can bring it down a level so so that we canhave an understanding going back from the joke.
That's amazing.
You know, there
there was I remember one specific meeting whereat the end of it, I I talked probably fifteen
minutes about what we were trying to do onbuilding our own inspection app and our own
design inventory app.
And at the end of it, half room was glazed overlooking at me and one of our owners, Tom
(19:41):
French, he said, I have no idea what the hellyou just said.
It sounds really cool.
I can't wait to see it, but I have no idea whatyou just said.
And I think a lot of times that's really how itends up going, right?
It's really hard.
You have to get the buy, and you have to reallySimon Sinek says it great.
Start with the why, where here's why we'removing to this.
We want to have a greater control on ourprocesses and on our data.
(20:04):
Starting with that, business owners andbusiness leaders understand that mentality.
That's why we're moving to custom appdevelopment.
All of the underneath and the tools and stuffthat you're going to be using, that's really
for me and my team to worry about.
For them, it's, well, why are we doing this?
What is the benefit to the business?
And it allows us to control those processes, tohave better ownership of our data, and to grow
(20:28):
the business in our own way, versus kind ofbeing stuck in the updates of third party
stuff.
When you're going through this, and this isprobably a good example, are you combating the
idea of a third party app that exists?
And then also, are you combating like, couldn'twe just have a form?
Like, you know, couldn't we just have, like, aPDF form or even, a a Microsoft form?
(20:51):
And you're saying, like, no.
We need an app comparatively.
And they're saying, I don't under I don'tunderstand why.
Is that the fight that you're having?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I think, you know, a lot of times it's whycan't we just do this simply?
Or or they'll come to me, hey.
I have this problem.
I'd really like to do this.
And you start getting into the, you know, let'slet's under identify what this solution needs
(21:12):
to be, And it very quickly becomes, this is toomany questions.
You know what, I'll just do anything, so don'tworry about it.
I can do it myself.
And it's, again, getting to that, having themunderstand the why and having them understand
the reasoning for putting it in an app orputting it in a relational database connects
the information so much more, so that right nowwe're not I wouldn't say we're utilizing AI to
(21:36):
its fullest extent, but we have it in ourroadmap.
And by moving that data into a centralized datalake where AI can be leveraged on, down the
road, we'll be able to answer those questions alot quicker versus having these kind of data
siloed forms that are stored separately fromthe rest of our information.
(21:56):
So it's here's why we need to do it a littlemore complex to begin with, because down the
road, it will provide valuable insight.
And I think for businesses in general, theinformation they're storing and the data they
have is becoming more and more valuable.
That's right.
So I'm not going to speak too much on the AIconversation, but just because I heard it and
we do speak about this stuff, I have to bringit up.
(22:17):
So the parts that a lot of non technicalleaders don't understand is that whatever
habits that they formed and their companyessentially formed in bringing in the data,
right?
Might not be the way that it has to be in orderto produce results that you're talking about.
They have to go through this process ofstructuring their data in a way that we'll say
(22:39):
machines, right?
Can understand it so that eventually humans canunderstand it.
And so, and typically there's somecentralization.
What's your source of truth is usually aquestion that has to pop up because inside of
the business, you may have sort of silos ofinformation that happen or a replication or a
dupe, sort of a replication of data, exceptthat it's not one to one, meaning that human
(23:04):
error is introduced because we're copying datafrom one place to the other, or there's error
because someone fat fingered something orsomething isn't lining up in such a way so that
it just makes sense or the system breaks.
Right?
And so your historical data, right?
So been in business for many years.
(23:24):
Does it make sense?
Did you guys use all your historical data tobuild up what you have today?
Or did you say, you know what, maybe there's alimitation to where we don't, and we start with
a new process?
How did that go?
Yeah, for us, it really was finding thatwhere's our breakpoint?
Obviously, for most businesses, processeschange.
(23:46):
We had gone through numerous processes, whichmade trying to build reports on old data very,
very difficult.
We decided that, and especially as the homeindustry had significantly changed from COVID,
2020 was really our year that it was a yearbefore I got there.
It wasn't too much to go back to correct someof that past data, so we would at least have
(24:09):
some historical data to look at, But then wewould move forward from there and not try and
go not try and look too far back, but at thesame time, spend a little bit of time to spend
a little effort to clean up that data so we'dhave some historical data when we first started
building the system.
But yeah, like you say, ends up, especially forbusinesses that have been in business for a
long period of time, unless you have very cleandocumentation on when all these processes were
(24:34):
in place, which is pretty rare, it's anightmare for your technology or analytics team
to be able to build reports that span theentire history of your company.
So you only really started the process whereyou only took a year's worth of data.
You didn't go back any further.
Right.
That okay.
So that might be easy in home building becausemy assumption, correct me if I'm wrong, my
(24:57):
assumption is your build cycles are really nomore than a year in length.
Very rarely does it go beyond one year.
Would that be
fairly Yeah, really in home building we're atninety to one hundred and twenty days.
Yeah.
So everything's done in the same year.
Was there now that you have more years of data,do you get rid of the old data or do you keep a
(25:19):
length of it?
So we're we're just starting to tackle thatproblem now with some of the data.
And I think homebuilding in general, itprobably doesn't create the same volume of data
that some businesses do, In terms oftransactions, there's not hundreds of thousands
of sales.
There's the sale of the homes, you know,there's 150 to 200 transactions.
(25:43):
It's a lot of date based data, but in general,the volume of data is not all that high.
So we haven't really had to aggregate it verymuch.
Now, some of the purchase order data, thatstuff that I don't think past five years, it
makes sense to go back and look to see if wehad a PO to our concrete trade.
(26:03):
Some knowing how long that home took to buildor the total cost of it, yeah, we'll store all
of that information, but we won't storeindividual POs.
We're beginning to aggregate that informationand just store the total cost of the home.
Whereas for the first three years, while it'sunder warranty, and while we may still need to
reference some of that information, yeah,having that very granular data makes sense.
(26:27):
But as you start getting out of the scale whereyou're never going to be looking at it, it
really does just start tying up storage space,that ends up being kind of a hidden cost that
most businesses don't look at, because they'regoing, well, you can just buy more storage, buy
more storage.
And it's when we can be efficient with it, andwe can kind of have a lean mentality of what
don't we need to store, and we have the mostefficient data storage that we can have because
(26:52):
we've aggregated our data to just what we need.
Okay.
Besides Excel spreadsheets, where all are youpulling data from and putting into Power BI?
So the the main place that we pull data from isour ERP system, which is a specific home
building.
We use ECI's mark systems, which is isphenomenal to pull data out of.
We're also pulling it from our CRM systemHubSpot, as well as a lot of external data.
(27:15):
We've connected to realtor.com.
They have some some public MLS data that we canpull for prospecting new communities and and
new cities.
Zillow does the same.
We've also begun pulling some information,again, out of the Microsoft cloud for for all
of our business applications so that we'rewe're tracking all of our inspections, homes
that have inventory items in them, all of thatkind of business information.
(27:39):
Wait.
So you said ERP data.
Don't the ERP systems have their own reporting?
Why pull it into Power BI?
So they do.
And the reason we actually evaluated theirreporting systems the reason we use Power BI is
it's so universal.
Most of the time when you have an ERP system oreven our CRM, they have the reporting system
(28:00):
built in as well.
It's just very difficult to then pull theexternal data into those systems.
So you end up having to go from your ERPsystems reports to your CRMs reports to
external reports, and having it pulled into asingle reporting system, which is really all
the executives are looking at.
They're not in the actual functional systems,they're just looking at the reports.
(28:23):
Having that just built in a Power BI system,that then becomes kind of the the single
application that your executive and mid levelmanagers really need.
They don't need the functional programs asoften.
Okay.
So make a valid case for, you know, why maybeeven though the ERP system, so for the re for
(28:43):
anyone that's looking at ERP and looking at thereporting modules, there may be a reason, you
know, that you just need the data and notnecessarily pay for the reporting modules.
You might have more, when you said I think youused the term more global more global
reporting.
Is that
what you said?
What does that mean?
It it allows us to to really pull informationfrom from any data source.
(29:06):
It allows us to publish it from within thePower BI service, which we find very powerful.
Our reports load to iPads.
Our president travels solely with an iPad, andhe feels he has full visibility on the company
through Power BI.
He can look at any home in the company, whereit's at in schedule, what our financials are up
(29:28):
to the date.
He feels very comfortable traveling, whereas inthe years past, it's just that visibility of
information.
We just haven't had that same visibility towhere traveling it it really felt like, okay,
I'm I'm leaving the company to go do thisversus now where it's I I have the ability to
travel with the company still at my fingertips.
So alright.
So you're taking it from these differentsystems.
(29:49):
Just scheduling was a major problem that youhad you used essentially from, to sort of solve
use Power BI to solve.
You said you also use HubSpot.
Is there a combination of data between HubSpotand ERP data that somehow gets used, whether
it's in metrics or something like that?
Or is it just separate silos?
It's just a single place to go for go for allyour reports?
(30:12):
No.
We have begun combining I said begun.
We've we've combined a lot of informationbetween HubSpot from our sales information to
our ERP system to actually look at what we'rebuilding, just things like how many
communications the customer had as a customer,looking at how that translates into the number
(30:32):
of warranty requests or how much outreach thereis post close.
So we can kind of establish a deeper customerprofile by combining that information together.
So and from there, you can actually then createmetrics that would be, we'll say harder to
create or be able to start making decisions on,let's say a better, who would be a better
(30:58):
client because of that data or improvescommunication.
Is that how that would be used then?
Yeah, absolutely.
It creates that feedback loop.
It allows our sales team to identify and toadjust their processes and identify maybe the
clients they're pursuing.
Are we finding that our customers, first timebuyers, have more warranty issues, and maybe
(31:18):
that's an opportunity for education?
Are we finding that our move up buyers havemore warranty customers, and that's because
they're familiar with homeownership and theyknow what to look for?
It provides that insight into where are weseeing how we can improve that that customer
experience as as a as
a a So how
do you how do you go to decide when it'sappropriate to use the third party, a HubSpot
(31:42):
or your ERP compared to developing a systemyourself?
I'm really looking at the complexity ofdevelopment.
I think software development, the speed ofsoftware development has really accelerated in
the last few years.
So spinning up a solution is significantlyfaster than it has been in the past.
But there are still some that have tremendouscomplexity, ERP systems, CRMs that have a lot
(32:08):
of data scraping and APIs built into them, thedevelopment hours that would go into developing
a system like that and maintaining a systemlike that for the cost of subscriptions and
licensing with the third party solutions,there's really not a benefit to trying to
replicate that.
They've done it so well, they're hyperscaled atthis point to where it just makes sense from a
(32:32):
cost perspective to use those large solutions.
It's a lot of times, it's kind of the one offsolutions from third party solutions that do a
single solitary task that's pretty easy toreplicate within a custom app solution that you
can kind of reduce those licensing costs prettyeasily.
And then what about so obviously, the Power BI,looking at the executives being able to have
(32:55):
that one pane of glass, be able to seeeverything.
It makes a lot of sense.
What about the rest of the team?
How are they adapting to using new and newtechnology if it's developed by you or if
you're going to market to get
Yeah, so that's actually another driving factorof why we've moved to apps and moved away from
Excel spreadsheets.
(33:16):
It's understanding kind of the currentworkforce, right?
We're not hiring the boomer generation that istechnologically illiterate anymore.
We're hiring Gen Z and Gen Alpha that havegrown up on cell phones and smartphones and
apps and TikTok and everything else.
So having processes built around custom apps,it helps our hiring, it helps our recruitment,
(33:41):
it serves as a recruitment tool, because peoplelook at us, we're not a builder where you're
coming to work with a hard hat and a hammer.
You're coming with a smartphone and some appsand technology, and you're really able to
utilize that technology to complete the job,update the trades and update the rest of the
office, so they feel comfortable in using thattechnology more so than some of the old
(34:06):
technology, you know, where it was text basedand calling in to update, hey, Trey completed
this, you know, move on to the next task.
Now we have apps that automate all of thatstuff, we've found that it allows us to recruit
a significantly younger and more capableworkforce.
Okay, I mean that makes a ton of sense for theoffice, in office people.
(34:28):
What about the trades that you work with?
Is that obviously the data, you are as, youknow, your systems are as good as the data you
get, right?
As you mentioned earlier.
And when you have, if it's a trade that'ssomething subbed out to or if it's trades that
you have underneath you, like how how are theyinteracting?
Because then generally, historically, not themost technologically advanced workforce by any
(34:50):
means.
So how are you gaining that data from thefield?
Yeah, so that's And I think it's trade based ingeneral within the industry is typically not
very technologically advanced.
Most of the times they're still using flipphones and it's all phone based communication.
We've found by having the technology in front,at least for our trades or for our builders, it
(35:13):
allows us to have the conversations with tradesand be able to pull up information on them and
have honest conversations as needed and asquickly as possible.
So if we have trades that are taking longerthan they should, we can immediately pull up
and show them the effect that has on theoverall build cycle by missing their completion
(35:34):
date by a single day or by having any rework ona home that can require three or four
additional days and push a closing.
So it allows us to provide that information alot quicker.
Obviously, having a lot of our documents and adocument managed system in the cloud, It allows
us to have iPad based documents and plan setsthat we can refer to.
(35:56):
So our our builders and really our trades arenever at a job site without without the
availability of documentation to see whatthey're working on.
Man, rework.
One of the most hated words in the industryfrom a client experience perspective.
From preventing rework, better data canultimately affect client experience by reducing
(36:18):
or removing rework.
Let's say not 100% of the time, but it canreduce it.
Right?
But if the trades that are outside of, let'ssay your control, are you training them on your
systems to be able to sort of be able to getthat data?
Or is it more this is sort of proving what wehave been saying all along?
(36:39):
Like how are you using it to specifically withyour trades?
With our trades currently right now, we onlyhouse it internally.
We haven't exposed the reporting systemexternally yet, and that's simply due to
licensing costs.
But we do have that plan to where we would havevendor available information where they'd be
able to review that.
But currently, we just have it as quarterlyreviews for our trade partners, or as they're
(37:04):
coming to us looking for either more work orprice adjustments.
We're able to review variance information,scheduling exceptions.
We have really a vendor report card that we canpull up very quickly and show the number of
jobs that they've worked on, how that'sperformed to budget, number of warranty
submissions related to that home, and reallyquickly be able to provide them a great insight
(37:29):
into how they've performed as a trades.
Very powerful to data at your fingertips likethat.
Yeah, it really becomes less emotional and moredata driven, right?
Because you can really like a trade, becausethey're funny and you know, because they always
come in and make you laugh, but they can alsocost you the most money in terms of delays and
rework and everything else.
(37:50):
And separating the emotion from the data hassuch an impact on the business that having
those reports in front of you really make a bigimpact on the bottom line.
That I totally agree with that.
What do you wish you had, you know, from thiswhole process, what steps do you wish you would
have taken if you had to do it all over again?
(38:10):
What steps do you wish you had taken sort ofimprove, if you will, the process or improve
getting to the end result?
I think looking at the architecture a littlebit more at the beginning, kind of the
structure of the data would have had a greaterimpact, especially on our custom applications.
I find now we've, you know, our data is justnot set up as efficiently as it could be at
(38:34):
times.
Some of the other stuff, obviously, would belooking at really structuring naming
conventions as you're building out your datawithin, whether it's an ERP system or a CRM,
thinking about the logical naming conventionsand how that data relates has such an impact to
whether you can use built in features orwhether you're customizing a standalone
(38:56):
solution.
And what we found is if we were using astandard solution and had a significant number
of customizations in it, then we probably needto be looking at, well, do we just need to do
this custom?
Because if we have to go through asignificantly more labored process to enter the
custom fields, it doesn't make sense to do itin this interface.
(39:17):
It makes sense to do it in our own custominterface.
So spending the time on that at the beginningand having a better understanding of where
we're trying to go on the roadmap with it,whether it's growth mentality, whether it's
looking to maintain and become as efficient aspossible.
I think both of those have different strategicmindsets in terms of how the architecture of
(39:38):
the data will go.
Anything else?
I think having more education to our to therest of our team about solutions being built
and building from the ground up tends to have agreater impact and tends to have better buy in
than I think we've struggled with in the pastof at the top going, I don't think we have a
great solution on this.
Let's let's build a solution.
(40:00):
And then pushing it kind of waterfall down andpushing it out versus working with our builders
and with our production personnel andsalespeople going, okay.
Show me where the pain points are currently sothat as we're developing this, we're developing
it for you.
I think a perfect example of that would be whenwe were developing our inspection app.
(40:22):
Me, I was going, okay, I've heard that ourfield personnel have iPads, so I developed our
inspection app to be based on an iPad.
And as we were demoing it, every single personthat went to use it pulled out their phone and
said, well, when we do an inspection, we don'twalk around with iPads.
We just have our phone out to take pictures.
So then we had to go and completely change thelayout of the app to be it still had the iPad
(40:44):
as a backup if they were doing that that way,but the majority of people were phone based.
So it was we were on the completely wrongmindset from the get go.
We should have worked with them at thebeginning.
Okay.
How are you planning to use this process?
Now let's build our solution around, you know,the actual use case.
So when you say reviewing processes, youliterally mean, like, okay.
(41:08):
Take me through this and show me rather than anoverview of whatever the documentation or
whatever you kind of know.
You're saying trust, but verify what's actuallyhappening out there.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, don't show me a lucid chart of atimeline of how this goes.
I can make those notes myself.
You will inevitably make a better solution, youknow, really doing a gimbal walk.
(41:30):
Right?
When you put your put yourself in their shoes,walk the actual process and see what's going on
in the field.
You know, what is Japanese mentality of go seefor yourself.
Right?
Yeah.
No.
Even order of what happens.
Right?
You could change order in what comes up in theapp based upon, like, oh, no.
They always start in the bathroom.
I don't know.
What what you know, whatever it is.
(41:51):
It's oh, put that shit first.
Like, I mean, like, that just makes a lot ofsense.
If you're actually there perceiving itfirsthand compared to it it generally works
like this.
It's those are very different results that youget in the in the long run.
Yeah.
That's that's a great point.
We we've organized our inspections to workclockwise around the home, specifically for
(42:13):
that.
So we can look at, you know, it reduces thenumber of steps within the home.
But then rather than having it, I think when wefirst designed it, it was inevitable, we'll
just sort it alphabetically, right?
Or however the checkpoints were created, that'show it shows up in the home.
But then we found our quality assurance andinspection people were having to do a star
pattern through the home, and it was just anexcessive number of steps versus, okay, let's
(42:37):
come in, let's start from the exterior, workclockwise around the home, move inside, and
work clockwise that way.
We're missing less checkpoints.
You're not pencil whipping or just goingthrough because you're going, I think I saw
that.
Yeah.
That looked right.
You're in front of it, and it's it's just amore efficient inspection process.
Well, And
And that if you instills the process of, thisis how French Brothers does it.
(43:00):
Somebody else may do it differently, but thisis how we do it.
We start in the home and then we go external.
We start externally and then go in the home andwe we run it this way every time because then
how do you train the next to do that?
It's all one seamless process that is then hasthat technology back end to support the process
itself.
(43:21):
So just make sure that whenever you expand intoAustralia that you're going counterclockwise
because they're upside down there.
Right?
Yeah.
That's my understanding.
Hey, I always get away the toilet flushes.
Right?
Yeah.
The toilet flushes differently.
That's, that's the whole thing.
Right?
What about, so what do you wish?
So taking some steps, but you did most of thework really yourself.
You Do wish you'd used any consultants, whetherfor setup or any part of the process?
(43:43):
Yes.
And actually, we've just started using aphenomenal consulting firm as well to kind of
help realize that we rushed into things and didnot know what we didn't know.
So having that expert to kind of back us, andwe know we want to do custom reporting, we know
we want to do custom map development, buthaving that subject matter expert in the
(44:07):
background to be able to go, Okay, think aboutthese things prior to getting into it, because
some things take a lot more rework, has startedmaking a tremendous difference as well.
It's allowing us to kind of optimize ourenvironment.
And as I was talking about on our roadmap toAI, it's progressing us on that a lot faster
(44:29):
than we would have been.
So when you say optimize, what does thatactually mean?
To the non technical folks that are out there,what does that actually mean?
For us, that means single source of truth data.
We're not replicating data in multiple places.
We have very efficient updates.
There is no stale data.
We change roles, or if we change a process, wevery rarely have failed automations just
(44:54):
because of those optimizations and being ableto use environment variables rather than
calling out specific users and and that kind ofsetup stuff without getting too technical.
Okay.
Definitely definitely started started going onon the tactical.
Hopefully, one glazed off.
Get the easy button out.
Yep.
Hopefully, no one glazed over like a jellydonut.
(45:16):
Yes.
This this has this has been a a ton oftechnical fun business questions here, but we
have one last question we wanna ask you,Thomas.
And we asked everybody.
So now that you're a giant Building Scale fan,you'll probably know this is coming.
But, Thomas, if you go back twenty years, whatadvice would you give yourself?
Oh, I would give myself a
(45:37):
lot of advice.
Well, let it rip.
Let's hear it all.
Yeah.
Primarily, I would say, you know, stick withtechnology.
I was at a very young age, interested in it.
And, you know, stay innovative.
Continue to push what is currently being done.
(45:57):
Learn how you can use new technologies.
It's one of the few things that I don't think alot of other industries have changed very much,
or a lot of other departments have changed verymuch.
Building stuff, you're still doing the samestuff.
Selling still requires the same connection.
Technology has progressed more than anything,any other industry or any other department, and
(46:18):
staying up on current technology, continuing tolearn new has benefited me recently.
I think there was definitely a period of timewhere I got a little lax with that.
And I'm kicking myself now.
I just feel like if I had stuck with educationand stuck with learning, I'd be who knows where
I'd be now?
(46:38):
Well, it looks like you're in a pretty goodspot even without that.
So kudos to you and all the stuff all the stuffthat you and French brothers have already
achieved.
Thank you.
Appreciate
it.
Yeah.
This has been a ton of fun.
If somebody wanted to get ahold of you, what'sthe best way for them to do that, Thomas?
They can connect with me on on LinkedIn.
My my profile is on there at thomas barringtoninnovates,
(46:59):
linkedin.com/thomasbarringtoninnovates.
For those in the building industry, if you'reattending the International Builders Show this
coming February, I'll be moderating a panelthere as well, and I'd love to connect.
I also have Microsoft Booking link.
Feel free to reach out.
My email is thomasb@frenchbrothers.com, and wecan set up a demo to do a Power BI demo as well
(47:20):
as custom application conversations.
Awesome.
Awesome.
Awesome.
And is there anything else you'd like to tellthe people before you say goodbye?
Stay innovative.
Love it.
This has been a ton of fun listeners, and untilnext time.
Adios.
Adios.
Thanks for listening to Building Scale.
To help us reach even more people, please sharethis episode with a friend, colleague, or on
(47:41):
social media.
Remember, the three pillars of scaling abusiness are people, process, and technology.
And our mission is to help the AEC industryprotect itself by making technology easy.
So if you think your company's technologypillar could use some improvement, book a call
with us to see how we can help maximize your ITcybersecurity strategy.
(48:06):
Just go to buildingscale.net/help.
And until next time.
Keep building scale.
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