Below is a recent interview by Tech CompanyNews with Kevin Priddy, CEO at PlanHub.
Read the full article here.
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to PlanHub?
A: PlanHub is a cloud-based bid management application that facilitates the bidding process during pre-construction phase of construction projects. It’s a free way for general contractors to share project files, communicate with multiple subcontractors at once, and receive bids to get their proposal together. Subcontractors will view these projects, posted by General Contractors, according to their trade and region and choose to place bids on those projects within the application. In just a few short years, PlanHub has grown its general contractor and subcontractor user base to 250,000 active users.
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Q: You’ve recently welcomed new talent to internal departments; could you tell us something more?
A: In addition to hiring in Support, Market Research, and Sales departments, we also added on additional team members to the senior leadership team. We just hired on our new Director of Marketing, Evonne Powers, as well as our new CTO (Chief Technology Officer), David Shugars. Both Powers and Shugars have experience in the construction software industry.
Powers has 10+ years experience in sales, education and marketing. She has worked in various marketing roles, and will work with our internal sales, support, and product development teams to reach our overall marketing objectives.
Shugars has 20+ years experience with roles in software engineering, database management, and product management, and will be leading our product development and technology strategy.
We are also hiring for a new VP of Sales this year (2019) who will be in charge of coaching and hiring on new team members, and implementing sales automation software. We are aiming to add on around 20-30 new sales reps in the next three years.
Company culture is also important to our business, so we launched a Think Tank. This Think Tank is a monthly 1-hour meeting we host internally once a month, where employees can voluntarily collaborate their business ideas that will most benefit our product, services, and customers. This gives our employees a voice, and it shows that we value their opinions.
Q: Can you give us insights into your features?
A: PlanHub is construction plan room and bidding platform that is web-based, so you can access your projects from anywhere.
General Contractor features: Free to register, send invites to subcontractor in your network, post unlimited projects, add unlimited team members, activity tracking on who’s bidding or not bidding, bid organization, instant messaging to subcontractors, view subcontractor profiles, unlimited file space.
Subcontractor features: Register for free access to PlanHub, view bid construction projects that you have been invited to bid on, customize your project relevancy by region and trade, instant messaging to General Contractors, and view other projects available to bid on with PlanHub Premier.
Q: How exactly does your product work?
A: There are currently two views to our product – one for general contractors, and one for subcontractors.
General Contractors: PlanHub acts as a construction bidding platform and online plan room for General Contractors. It is always free for General Contractors to post their projects on PlanHub. The benefit to posting on PlanHub is also having access to the thousands of subcontractors on our platform. With this many subcontractors, General Contractors can increase their amounts of bids for free, instead of paying to post projects on competitor websites.
Subcontractors: PlanHub gives subcontractors access to view and download construction project files from General Contractors, message General Contractors about the projects, and choose to bid on projects. Subcontractors initially are invited into PlanHub from a General Contractor, or they sign up for a free account on our website. It is always free for subcontractors to view and bid on projects they are invited to. However, with an upgraded Premier mileage account, subcontractors will have full access to view and bid on projects according to their trade and region. They also can submit their bids to multiple GCs on a project, so they have a higher chance of winning a bid.
Q: Can you provide some tips for choosing the right construction management software provider?
A: We have a blog we wrote on this:
1.Determine Your Budget
2.Identify Specific Business Needs
3.Evaluate Features
4.Ensure Safety and Security
5.Check Scalability
6.Determine Ease of Deployment and Integration
7.Read Reviews
8.Get a Free Trial
Q: What are the company’s plans and goals for the future?
A: We are rapidly growing our team. We have 26 employees now. 15 are in-office and the rest work remotely across the United States. We are planning to add on 20-30 new sales reps, new developers, market research and marketing team members – so around 50 more people in the next three years. We also plan on growing our market research team into Canada.
Aside from adding new internal team members, we plan on launching new services, such as a Premium General Contractor service, enterprise sales for Suppliers, in addition to the subcontractor Premier plans and add-ons.
PlanHub will be mobile-responsive in early 2020. There will be more analytical tools, project stats, integration with on-screen technology software, and a built in OCR keyword reader to identify projects to trade.
We are also launching a brand new redesigned website soon, which will have additional features such as a video training library.
PlanHub will become the go-to central marketplace where all pre-construction bidding occurs.
