Episode 72: Keeping Your Estimates Accurate With Julian Krishnan Nair

In episode 72 of the Professional Builders Secrets podcast, we’re joined by Julian Krishnan Nair, Senior Partner Manager at Buildxact. Throughout this episode, Julian delves into the analytical side of owning a building company, how Buildxact can help, and how builders can keep their estimates accurate.

 

Inside episode 72 you will discover

• How Buildxact makes a positive impact on builders’ day-to-day business operations
• How builders can stay on top of rate and price increases
• The most common builders’ blind spots
• What builders need to be prepared for in the long term
• What clients are expecting from builders and the building process
• And much, much more.

 

Listen to the full episode to learn the importance of keeping your estimates accurate, and how Buildxact can help.

 

Julian Krishnan Nair - Senior Partner Manager at Buildxact

Julian is an experienced Partnerships Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. He’s skilled in Customer Service, Sales, Business Development, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Strategy, backed by a Bachelors focused in Business Management from the University of Hertfordshire.

Connect with Julian

 

Timeline

1:21 About Buildxact and Julian’s role

4:46 How Buildxact makes a positive impact on builders’ day-to-day business operations

8:46 What causes estimates to be inaccurate?

10:51 Staying on top of rate and price increases and common blind spots for builders

20:21 Tips for builders using Buildxact

25:59 What are clients expecting from builders and the building process?

 

Links, Resources & More

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Julian Krishnan Nair:

A quote generally takes 15 to 25 hours to do. 

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Ultimately, if you're giving a client a quote that's not accurate in terms of the cost you're expecting to pay, you're already shaving off your margin. 

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Do you even know as a builder the way that you work? 

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Really, when you start a project, you want to be saying, “What's my profit margin going to be,” and being able to stick by it.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Having positive cash flow doesn't necessarily mean your business is going to thrive either. 

Julian Krishnan Nair:

If you want to invest that time to grow your business and make millions and millions and millions, go ahead, you can definitely use a system for that.

Bosco Anthony:

We have another exciting episode from the Professional Builders Secrets podcast. Joining us today is Julian Krishnan Nair, Senior Partner Manager for Buildxact. Julian, thanks for being here today.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Thanks for having me, mate. I appreciate it.

Bosco Anthony:

Listen, let's start off by you telling me a little bit about Buildxact and your role with the company. What does it do?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

At Buildxact, we're an estimating and job management software. We're evolving to be more than that, which will come to you a bit later on as we chat. Buildxact, at its core, is an estimating job management system for builders and trades. It's really targeted in that builder space, but we do have a bunch of trades that use it as well.

Bosco Anthony:

How did Buildxact and you get together? And how did you get started?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Buildxact started as an estimating platform about 11 or 12 years ago, I think now, it's working out to be. From my understanding, I wasn't here at the time, but there was heavy involvement from Master Builders of Victoria, because there wasn't really a system that worked very well for builders. There was a lot of software and apps and things like that that worked better for trades. But I always say this: for every 10 plumbers there's one builder, for every 10 sparkies [electricians] there's one builder. The market isn't as big compared to the trade system.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Now we've built Buildxact, it's really taking off. For me, personally, how I started is that I was actually at MYOB in 2018. I was a partner manager there, looking after bookkeepers and accountants. I got tapped on the shoulder to come over to Buildxact. At the time, Buildxact was a start-up business, really small, and I was just really excited by the growth potential of the company.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I remember when I started, compared to MYOB, we had a team, I think I was number 19. When you walk into an office you can imagine the difference in terms of what MYOB would do versus what Buildxact was doing. But I loved that. David, our CEO, was next to me, pretty much, and I could ask any questions.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

That's how I got in there. I was initially brought in to look after our partners, so that's really anyone from bookkeepers, accountants, coaches, consultants and estimators, all the way up to the industry partners, and the industry associations. I've probably got the widest scope, in terms of Buildxact. I speak to all the different types of people that we have, which is great for me because I hear from all different angles about the direction of the business, how we're performing, et cetera.

Bosco Anthony:

What are some of those key value propositions for Buildxact? You talked a little bit about the fact that you're known to be in the estimating side of things, but what else are some really key significant value propositions?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

At its core, really, we're trying to help builders live a better life, and that's personal and professional, in their business, and it really comes down to some of the key things that builders struggle with at the moment. We know for a fact builders spend way too long on their quotes. Fifteen to 25 hours is what a quote takes a builder to complete. We help them with 80% faster takeoffs. They can get that done a lot more quickly and appear more professional in terms of how they're quoting. Generally, the quotes aren't great that builders produce.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

When it comes to the job management side, this involves the whole scope of the job management process: communicating with the clients, scheduling your work and cost tracking against it. We've got live supplier integration now as well, which means that you can connect to your preferred supplier and get that live pricing from them. There's a whole heap of things we do, and at its core, Buildxact is an end-to-end estimate and job management system.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I think that's the biggest thing that sets us apart. There are other softwares, but they only do estimating or they only do job management. We're an end-to-end system.

Bosco Anthony:

You alluded to the fact that you help with time management when working with estimates, but how does Buildxact make that positive impact for builders in their day-to-day business operations?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

A quote generally takes 15 to 25 hours to do, and that’s to get it back to the client. I was at an event the other night and there was a guy in the audience who said he did a $2.2 million home and he got the quote out in two hours. There's not one specific thing that we help with that makes that possible, it's a bunch of things.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

That's getting your pricing in, so you don't need to check on your pricing, whether that's in the form of a live integration or it's just a supplier-loaded Excel sheet that you've put into the system. It's getting that access, it's building out templates, so you know how you work. Build a template based on that and what items and pricing that you would normally put in there. Then it's actually using our takeoff platform, which is really the thing that when people see that, that's the real buzz feature.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

When you see a plan on the screen and you dot, dot, dot around and you've just worked out the floor plan square metre, or you've done the interior walls, or the roof, whatever it is, it's being able to do that all on screen and being able to go back and edit it really easily. That takes a lot of time, to do manual takeoffs. A lot of these guys are sitting there at 7pm, 8pm at night trying to do all that after a full day's work and they probably want to be sitting down and relaxing and spending time with their family. We speed up all that process.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Then actually drawing the quote up takes a long time as well because most people use Microsoft Word. If I was putting a quote through on Microsoft Word for $400,000, it's not very easy to do. All of those little things aid; they all shave off a few hours, few hours, few hours. And then, before you know it, you've just done a quote 10 times faster than exactly the same business down the road that's doing it all manually.

Bosco Anthony:

Why is it so important to have accurate estimates? You talked about the time being saved, but let's talk about keeping the estimates a little bit more accurate. Why is that so important for a builder?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

It's you charging for your time and the materials that you're actually getting. It's a weird thing with builders that a lot of them don't take this as seriously as they probably should. I think that's probably changing a little bit now, because people know the pricing increases that we've seen in the industry over the last two years or so. I think some of the prices are stabilising a little bit.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

But ultimately, if you are giving a client a quote that's not accurate in terms of the cost you're expecting to pay, you're already shaving off your margin. Most people don't price their jobs with enough margin in them anyway. Sometimes they'll drop the margin to win the work. Generally, we want to try and avoid ever doing that.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Let's just say your estimate isn't correct. You've got a profit margin of, say, 15 or 20%, maybe it's even less for some people, and you've just shaved 3% off because it's not an accurate estimate. That's down to 17%, or 12, 13%, depending on where you started. Then you've got some cost increases on the job, which can happen, or some mistakes, whatever it is, and you need to redo something. Before you know it, you're down in that 8% or 7% profit margin. And that's really, really dangerous territory when you get there.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

You're potentially running the risk of not being able to complete the build because you haven't priced it correctly, which means when the money's coming in, the cash flow isn't in a positive balance. You've got a whole heap of issues, but ultimately you can start from anything, from having issues paying that job, to potentially closing your business down. Really, when you start a project, you want to be saying, “What's my profit margin going to be?” and being able to stick by it, because otherwise, what's the point? If you're not making any money, what's the point of doing it?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I speak to some of these guys and they do way more hours than I do. I just look at them and think, “If you're not making money, why would you want to do that?”

Bosco Anthony:

What can cause estimates to be inaccurate? Obviously, you talked about the fact that you want it to be as accurate as possible, you're considering people with their time and their hourlies and the amount of energy they're using, but what are some of the common things that cause those estimates to be inaccurate? I'm assuming you have a few examples here.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Accurate pricing is a big one. We are starting to see people being a little bit more cautious with that now because we've had such an increase in prices. People lost a lot of money on those jobs because they signed fixed price contracts, which was unavoidable at the time, but now people are a bit more cautious of it.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

This in regard to how accurate your pricing is from your supplier. Are you someone who goes and chases it up very regularly? Or are you someone who just has an Excel sheet, you've populated it in there and it's six months old? But rather than going and getting it all from your suppliers and editing your Excel sheet and changing it all up, most people just say, “I'm going to do that at some point,” and then they just never do it. That's the first point there. Just how accurate is the pricing that you've got from your suppliers or your subbie [subcontractor] rates?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Then there are a million different ways of how it can be an issue. If you're doing manual estimating, there’s potential for human error straight away. If you're talking about people working late at night doing this, think how many issues there are going to be with manual estimating: you might have not completed a takeoff correctly or maybe you haven't done a measurement properly.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

And then, do you even know as a builder the way that you work? We see a lot of people who will just, say to build that wall or whatever, or for supply and install rates, they'll just put a bulk rate and that'll be it. There's no way of breaking that rate down. Was it the labour that went over? Was it materials that went over? Do you even know that it went over? Are you aware of how you work and where you currently have issues?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

The best way to do that is cost tracking. If you don't cost track, and you're in a situation where you've started a job, you're halfway through it, how do you know how that job is performing? Those findings will determine how accurate your estimates are for future projects.

Bosco Anthony:

You talked a little bit about sometimes if builders don't have time to update their rates or their subbies or their suppliers, things get missed. Is there a way that Buildxact prompts that or allows them to stay on top of that or stay updated? Because it sounds like there's a little bit of updating that's required to keep your prices current.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

If you're doing things manually, it's a lot of time to do. After you know how Buildxact works, I don't know how anyone would do it manually. They would probably need a very expensive and very formula-driven Excel sheet, and maybe you could do it. But why would you put in all that time to do it?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Ultimately, with Buildxact, you've got two options. You can either build your own pricing from suppliers that have sent you that. Let's just say you've got your supplier, they've given you an Excel sheet with the pricing. You load it into Buildxact. You use the wizard to figure out which columns and things like that. From there, you use that pricing. Maybe you just set a reminder for yourself to get one every month, or something like that. You go get the new list. You upload that. Buildxact will figure out, these are the same items. What's the price? Has it changed?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

If it has changed, it updates, and anything that you've used that price on will update. If you've used a timber item, for example. You've got templates for single storey new builds, double storey new builds, renos [renovations], whatever it is, and you've used that timber item, once you've updated that timber item, it'll update in every single area.

Bosco Anthony:

It's almost predictive in many ways too?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Exactly, yeah, it's almost, mate. You just update it once through the upload and it will do it for you. And then, if you've got a live integration that's even easier; you don't even need to do any of the updating itself because the supplier handles all of that.

Bosco Anthony:

Got you. When it's updated on the supplier end, then the software picks it up as well?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Exactly, yeah. All you need to do is use the item that you want, whether that's Bunnings or Mitre 10 or whoever it is, you just use that item that they've given you in the price list in the catalogue, and then when that updates from them, it will update in all your work. The same thing happens, it's just that you take out all that first part.

Bosco Anthony:

I'm assuming Buildxact integrates with these different platforms as well, so it's easy to have that API integration to get the pricing updates?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Yeah. We've got a bunch on our platform. If you go into integrations, if you're using us, in supplier integrations, there's heaps there. You've got your big retailers and then you've got the smaller ones that are more locally based.

Bosco Anthony:

Let's talk a little bit about job costings and how it can impact overruns as well and how does that accurate estimate and live supply pricing impact that estimating process as well?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Obviously, more live pricing is going to set you on the right track. But even still, with labour rates and things like that, that's still going to come down to how accurate your predictions are based on the labour. It's very hard to say that something's going to take a certain number of hours, because maybe someone calls in sick or someone isn't available or they just work a bit slower that day or you've got someone more inexperienced. Those things are always going to be a little bit more difficult to predict than material prices if they're coming in live.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

But ultimately, more accuracy will hopefully set you on a positive flow in terms of managing that project. But really, what you want to be doing, as you're starting to receive bills and pay for things, is looking at it and thinking, “We thought we were going to spend $10,000 on this, we actually spent $12,000 on this. What does that show us?”

Julian Krishnan Nair:

It shows you that you've gone over budget by 20%. What does that do? The problem is, most people can't tell you down to a line item. They don't necessarily have to tell you for a line item, but if you could roll up and say, for a particular component of the build, maybe you want to see how your labour tracked on that component, or maybe your material costs. If you're building a brick wall, your most expensive components are going to be your bricks and your labour. If you're building a frame, it's going to be your timber and your labour as well.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

If you can at least cost track those areas and know how you're tracking against it, good or bad, and ideally as it's happening, it's often going to set you in the right direction. What a lot of people do is just get these bills in, they pay the bills, they've got cash coming in, they get a progress payment from a bank or from the client; the money’s coming in. In their mind they’re thinking, “Whoop-de-doo, I’m great, I’ve got cash in the bank constantly.”

Julian Krishnan Nair:

But just because you've got positive cash flow doesn't mean you're actually making money. Because when those payments slow down for whatever reason or you have a break or something, that's when it all catches up. The ability to job cost and job track as you're going is really important because you can manage that as it's happening, the earlier you know it.

Bosco Anthony:

Let's talk about the unspoken dialogue with builders. What should every builder know about the estimating process and what you guys offer? And also, why aren't more builders using this? Is it a hesitance? Is it a fear of automation and technology? Is it just the fact that they're stuck in a rut? Where do you think the challenges are or where the resistance comes from?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Do you know what? I think what's happened was that there's been estimating software in the past and the companies that were around and promoting their products, five, 10 or 15 years ago, I think they made a software that was really difficult to understand.

Bosco Anthony:

Got you.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

What you needed was people to come and implement it, you needed hours and hours and hours of training. It took you ages to get your head around it. And I think that's caused a bit of a fear to go into it, and also a full sense of, “I don't need software unless I'm really big.” I speak to a lot of people who say, “I only build two or three homes a year. I don't need software,” or “I'm not big enough for software.” You're absolutely big enough for software; that's literally our target market. If you build one home a year, you can use us, and you'll be able to figure us out very, very quickly.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I think that's the thing I would probably always touch on. We've gone past that early adopter stage of the product. All those people who are really forward thinking, tech savvy, those people are already using software. We are now in that stage where most people know they need to use software. They just need a bit of a kick to go and use it. Generally, that's done by someone in the business, or someone at home is giving the builder a bit of a push to do it.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

But what I would say is, don't stress too much if you think you’re not good at computer. I spoke to someone yesterday who said the same thing. I spoke to his wife today on the phone, just to talk to her about how to use the system, and I think she said something like, "He doesn't even know where certain keys are on the keyboard," and things like that. You don't need to know and be really tech savvy to use Buildxact, because it's free training, and it's a really simple tool to use.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I didn't have any training when I first started. We didn't have a training program or anything when I started. I just watched the videos and I know how to use it. That's one of the things I would say, “Don't worry about it.”

Bosco Anthony:

You talked a little bit about the fact that some people have this attitude, it could be a blind spot, “We are building one to two homes, we don't need software.” What are some of the other blind spots that you encounter with builders and what you hear from the front lines? And what are some of the things that builders need to be aware of, that are actually blind spots?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I think how you interact with your customer is really important, because often in the business a builder is a silo. They don't often let anyone else into the business, in terms of managing things, because everything has to go through them, whether it's phone calls, text messages, invoices or closing, everything runs through them.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Whereas with the software, you can really allow other people or automation to do a lot of the work that you are doing currently. I know a guy in Victoria who has his team doing all his takeoffs for him and he goes in and just checks it really quickly because he's taught them how to do it. It’s much easier to do on a computer than doing it all manually and managing the estimating process.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I often call people and they’re answering the phone when they’re on the roof. The professionalism of how they send emails, quotes and things like that maybe can leave a bit to be desired. We help them with that, using a customer portal where they can load pictures and really just bridge the gap between them and some of those really big builders.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

If I go to a big builder, I know I'm probably going to get this really cool tool and I can go and send pictures and I can get updated and things like that. My possible hesitation with a really small builder is, you might get that personal touch, but also, if that builder becomes really busy or gets sick or something like that, I know the project probably stops. That's one of the hesitations for me, and maybe for other people as well is how's that communication going to be?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

We've all heard horror stories and you always want to hope for the best, but I think client interaction, in terms of how you communicate, is important and I think a lot of people are starting to get on and understand that. We live in a different age now, with Instagram and social media and advertisements and things like that. It's getting harder for smaller builders to keep up with the bigger ones.

Bosco Anthony:

What are some of the best practices when it comes to estimates as well? You talked a little bit about considering the client journey and the interaction and experience. What are some tips that you, or Buildxact, likes to give builders when they are using Buildxact?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Ultimately, what you want to get to is to be as accurate with the items you're using in an estimate. You don't really want to be closing jobs forever and rolling all the numbers up to one and saying, “This is just a supply and install rate that I have for this.” Ideally, you want to be in a situation where you can be as accurate as possible. That doesn't mean going in and adding every screw, nut, bolt because that would just be ridiculous.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

But, maybe for those things you've got a miscellaneous section under each category for your brickwork, your timber, your cabinetry, whatever it is, and then you've got real prices for the bigger items. If you go 15% over on your screws, no one cares. But if you go 15, 20% over on your timber price, then that's a really big issue. Everyone's going to be different on this, but try and get as detailed as you possibly can, that's relevant for you and your business. If you go too detailed it's a bit of diminishing return on that.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I would say, definitely get all the training and support that you can from Buildxact. It's free training. From there, start off simple. What I said not to do, maybe start doing that at the start, just to get your head around how to do it. “Let me figure it all out. Let me get how it works. Now I've got a supply and install rate, $150 a square metre or something. Maybe now I'll break it down into materials and labour and cost track against that and then break my materials further down.”

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Just take yourself on that journey slowly and don't try too hard to put every single, little thing in there. As you learn the software, you'll probably change how you do things anyway. A lot of people think, “How I do it in my Excel sheet is how I'm going to do it in Buildxact,” but that's not necessarily the case.

Bosco Anthony:

When it comes to the actual building industry, how do you feel it's evolving? Because it sounds like there's a lot more technology now, there's a lot more embracing the future of automation. Do you think that the building industry is behind or do you feel there are things that are progressing it?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

It's progressing. Efficiency will always drive what actions happen. Some industries are a bit slower to adopt that. A lot of the time the efficiencies are there, people just are slow to adopt it. That's the issue with trades and construction in general. It's been an industry where people have been slower to adopt technology.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

We're in that stage now where, I think, people are understanding, “If this is going to save me five, 10 or 20, 30 hours a week, a subscription cost is peanuts compared to that.” We are seeing people more open to having that. What we're seeing is not just the individual business owners, we're seeing other people outside of that, like suppliers, wanting to come in.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

We're going to start seeing more automation, more efficiency creation, by dealing with a bunch of people through the platform. That's where, eventually, we are going to get to. I think, if you say to me, “In 20 years’ time, where are we going to be?” we're probably going to have brands, manufacturers, tons of suppliers, all using Buildxact. We're probably going to have trades and subbies and others all using Buildxact through the builder, and the customers as well.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

That's where we're going to get to. We're just going to have more people communicating and working together through a platform like ours. It's really exciting to see it happening. All the efficiencies are there, you’ve just got to get up and go for it.

Bosco Anthony:

What should builders be ready for, in the long term? It sounds like we're at the precipice of change, but what do you think that builders really need to be prepared for coming up?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I think competition is going to be harder. I think the last couple of years have maybe warped people's perception a bit, that work's always going to be there. I touched on this before, about the cash flow issue. Generally, the idea is that if you've got bad cash flow, your business is going to close. Whilst that's true, having positive cash flow doesn't necessarily mean your business is going to thrive either.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

What we've often had is, “I've just paid these bills, cool, no problem. I've got a progress payment coming in. In my bank I've always got $50,000 or $60,000 sitting there; everything looks all hunky-dory and rosy.” But that's because you've got so many jobs on at the same time. If you have a few months off or it becomes a little bit harder for you to get work, you haven't necessarily cared about the cost tracking and how accurate your estimates are. 

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I don't really believe this argument that work's just going to completely crash; I don't believe that for a second. But if it does slow down, and that might mean a 10% decrease in the number of projects you have, it might only take as much as that to really put some businesses into strife. I would just say, make sure your numbers are accurate. Be ready for that to potentially happen. That might be having a bit more cash in the bank, ready to go.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I had a chat with someone recently who just said, "Try and get as much money as you can ready, if you've got slow payments on bills, just to make sure your business is safeguarded." That'd be my recommendation.

Bosco Anthony:

You talked a lot about paying attention to that prospect or that client experience. What do you think clients today are expecting from builders and the building process as well?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

I think a lot of builders, especially the ones who really run off word of mouth, and especially those who are dealing with maybe older people, the mentality that those people have is different to what younger people have now. Obviously, it's quite hard for young people to build and own homes anyway, but that's going to change. We're in that generation now where we've got 25, 26, even 30-year-olds, who’ve had most of their childhood on social media.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

It seems like most of us think social media is just something that we adjusted to when we were young adults. But now there are people who all they know is social media; all they know is that way of interacting. They need communication instantly, and that's what they expect. If I'm going to email you and you get back to me in four days, that's not an expectation that most people are happy with now. I expect a 24 hour turnaround.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

How you communicate with your clients, and that's your brand presence, websites, social media, all those kinds of things really matter now to people. As people in the generation below me, in the next 10 years, those guys are going to be in the position where they're buying homes, potentially from the builders who are maybe building on the cheaper end, they're not building the high-end homes.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

You need to have a really good process in terms of how you're reaching these people. I think that's why some of the big builders do well in that market because of their social media advertisements, all that kind of stuff. How you communicate with clients when you end up speaking to them, how you attract them, all those kinds of things are going to be way more important in the next few years.

Bosco Anthony:

How are builders who are on board with Buildxact embracing automation? Do they have certain people who handle it? For the ones who have trouble using the keyboard, do they delegate to other people? Who are the people who generally end up working with Buildxact in the building company space?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Really, at its core, because we look after smaller builders, on average, they are one-man bands, husband and wife teams or small groups of people in the business. We’d probably get up to about 10. That's where we stop servicing as well. In some businesses that's admin people, people managing the project, it's maybe bookkeepers doing the invoicing and the cost tracking against the purchase orders and bills that come in. It’s those people, 100%.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

We see a lot of partners really heavily involved in the business. Often, like I said earlier on, it's the partners who are generally giving the builder a bit of a kick to make use of efficiency. And often that's the wife who’s home who wants to spend more time with her partner and is basically saying, “You're spending way too long doing things manually.”

Julian Krishnan Nair:

The people who are embracing automation are chilling out with their families, maybe working in their businesses more, maybe doing the things that they want to do, sports, whatever it is, less stress. If someone said to me, “I can do a quote in two hours versus 25 hours,” for most of us, those 25 hours are the best part of three days of work. That's a lot of time, and that's you not even potentially winning the work. That's just you putting that in front of a customer who may have been just price matching you against someone else, so you may be not even the first person they're going to go to. They just want to say, “I just want to make sure this other builder isn't trying to get an extra $10,000 out of me.”

Julian Krishnan Nair:

The people who are embracing automation are running better businesses. We see that businesses do grow when they use Buildxact from when they start to where they finish a couple of years later. It really becomes what the individual builder wants to get out of it. If they just want to say, “I don't want to grow my business, I'm happy doing two or three homes a year.” Cool. Use us, get the efficiency, get your life back. If you want to invest that time to grow your business and make millions and millions and millions, go ahead, you can definitely use a system for that.

Bosco Anthony:

What are some of those exciting features? What can our builders expect to get from Buildxact in the future? What are some of those things that they should be aware of?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

If you ever worked with anyone in product roles, they don't tend to like to tell people who are in more sales focus roles what's coming. Because when they do that, people like me go out and promise it to the world and it has to happen. What you will start to see with Buildxact is us working with more and more different types of people and businesses.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

Again, this isn't me saying it, but at some point, you can imagine we are going to have a whole ecosystem of people who we work with. There will be more suppliers, 100%, that's definitely happening anyway currently. At some point, I would say, you're probably going to see trades using it in some shape or form. We already have that, to some degree, with requests for quoting process. You'll probably see things like selections in Buildxact. You'll see more detailed reporting.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

All those kinds of things are things that we're pretty open on, that eventually will be in the software at some point. It'll just depend on when some of that'll happen. There's a heap of things coming. Again, it's one of those things that I don't necessarily want to give too much away because I get into trouble if we decide we're not doing it. Because it's an online platform, we're constantly updating and making bug fixes and changes and little things like that. There'll be tons of little features that will come and then there'll be bigger features that happen as they happen.

Bosco Anthony:

For our listeners out there, can they try the product? Is there a trial at all for them to review?

Julian Krishnan Nair:

It's a two-week, free trial. My recommendation is to get the demo as soon as you possibly can, maybe even before you do the trial. The demo, for me, is the best way to learn the system through someone else. That's half an hour, 40 minutes, 45 minutes, depending on how many questions you might have. That'll give you a really good understanding of how Buildxact will work for your business.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

From there, I would say, go and play around with the software. The benefit of Buildxact is a month-to-month subscription. If you start it, and for whatever reason you don't like it, you can always cancel. We know fairly well that once people actually start using it and put a bit of time in, they very rarely cancel, so there's no risk to our side, generally. Once we get you up and running, it really is a game changer for people.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

When you trial it, just make sure when you click through, say, ‘Association of Professional Builders,’ because you'll get 10% discount on the plan as well that you use.

Bosco Anthony:

Awesome. It's been a pleasure speaking to you, and thank you for taking me into the world of the estimates out there. I'm sure we'll speak to you in the future as well, Julian.

Julian Krishnan Nair:

No problem. Thanks, Bosco. I appreciate you having me on.

Bosco Anthony:

Thanks so much.

Bosco Anthony:

Thank you for listening. Remember to subscribe to Professional Builders Secrets on your favourite podcast platform, and leave a review. To learn more about how the systems at the Association of Professional Builders can help you grow your building company, visit associationofprofessionalbuilders.com. See you next time.