A better, faster way to pay your subs with Emma Dickinson

Show Notes

On this episode of “The Building Code,” Zach and Charley are chatting with returning guest Emma Dickinson, a senior product manager here at Buildertrend. Emma and her team work on improving the financial features we offer in our platform.

Tune in to the full episode to hear more about Buildertrend’s new, simplified process for paying subs and vendors digitally.

What are the biggest differences with the new process for sending payments?

“The big difference is now builders can pay any of their subs and vendors through the system. Subs don’t need to be active in Buildertrend, which is huge. Then the other big difference is it’s a lot easier for the subs to receive their money. Before there was a pretty extensive signup process on the subcontractor side, and now they can decide if they want to print a check. It takes two clicks, and they can have a physical check in front of them. So, a lot easier for both sides of the equation.”

What is the initial feedback from subcontractors using the new process?

“I’ve actually talked to a few subs. Just by luck, some of the early adopters’ subs had questions, and I was like, ‘Oh, let me just talk to them directly.’ They literally were bragging about how easy it was. They were like, ‘I just have to open my email, that’s it. That’s all I have to do. I don’t have to drive somewhere to pick up a check. I don’t have to do anything.’ That’s what we were hoping for. We want to meet you where you’re at and have it be a five-second process to get your payment. And now it is.”

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Transcript

Zach Wojtowicz:

Welcome, everybody, to “The Building Code.” I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

And I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

My boy is back …

Charley Burtwistle:

From Ireland.

Zach Wojtowicz:

… In the United States.                                                    

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I was gone for a couple weeks, and I missed Zach so much, I hurried home a couple days ago.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right.

Charley Burtwistle:

And I’m back in the booth, my favorite spot to be.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We were lost without you, sir.

Charley Burtwistle:

Something like that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It was just me in the studio sitting by myself.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, just listening to old episodes and pretending I was here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Remember the memes? Remember the jokes?

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely. But today is a very special day, a rare day where we have a returning guest, Emma Dickinson, from our Product team. Here to talk about a very, very exciting feature that just went live about a month ago.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right. The get paid your way initiative here at Buildertrend. Emma, as Charley said, you’re a returning guest. You decided to come back to the shark tank where we grill you about what you’re doing with your job. Tell us a little bit about get paid your way.

Emma Dickinson:

Yeah. Yeah, sure. I’m happy to be back. So, yeah, Get paid your way was our new outbound payment solution. So, builders being able to pay their subs and vendors. We partnered with a new third party and launched a new outbound payment feature that I think is a lot better than our old one.

Zach Wojtowicz:

What a sell. Is that what the product’s supposed to do? Get better? Why do you say it’s better?

Emma Dickinson:

Hopefully. If I do my job right, it does.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right. It’s pretty important, right? We’ve had quite a few product people on here, it’s no easy task for sure, of course. So, tell us a little bit, what are you excited about? What updates did the solution come up with? What are the things that our customers should expect?

Emma Dickinson:

So, the big difference is now builders can pay any of their subs and vendors through the system. They don’t need to be active in Buildertrend, which is huge. Then the other big difference is it’s a lot easier for the subs to actually receive their money. Before there was a pretty extensive signup process on the subcontractor side, and now they can decide if they want to print a check and it takes two clicks and then they can have a physical check in front of them. So, a lot easier for both sides of the equation.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, this has been something that has been requested for a long time. And one that, I don’t know, Zach, where it would rank on your excitement radar. Something that I know that you’ve been preaching for a long time that we needed a solution for. So, luckily, we have talented people like Emma to come in here and get it done. The release of this internally was actually pretty cool. I was wondering if you could tell people about the marketing strategy you guys had at Buildertrend’s Town Hall a couple months ago.

Emma Dickinson:

Oh yeah. We wanted everyone to really understand exactly how easy it was to receive a payment. So, at our last Town Hall, we sent every employee a check through Checkbook. Just $1, so we weren’t breaking the bank there. And then one lucky winner got a $1,000 check as a big bonus. But that meant all of our employees could see exactly the experience that a sub would have when they receive a payment. Which is, you open up your email, you pick how you want to deposit your funds, and then you have that money. So, super, super easy. But we wanted everyone to experience it firsthand versus having these questions of, “Well we think it looks like this. We think it’ll be easy for you.” And have them really experience it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Thanks for making sure one of us won, Emma. You could help “The Building Code” out a little bit. We do this for free.

Emma Dickinson:

Oh yeah, I tried. I was like, “Okay, so I’m going to be the surprise winner, right?” And they’re like, “No, absolutely not.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Now you’re off the list, you’re on the payments FinServe initiative. So, no, not for you. I had my check mailed to me for the record, just for the experience of it, and it was super easy. I mean, you get the email, it says you’ve been paid, you open it, you click how you’d like to receive your payment, and I wanted to drop up. But wait, there’s more. You don’t have to even just do the check if you want. You can still authorize your bank account and also do direct deposits. So, you kind of get the best of both worlds. If you want digital, if you’re willing to provide that information, it’ll happen almost instantly, giving processing times. Or you can continue to go through and mail checks. So, as long as you got an email, it’s up to you on how you want to get your money. It’s pretty sick.

Emma Dickinson:

Obviously, not for us that just got a one-time payment, but if you’re a subcontractor routinely receiving payments, if you do ACH, it’ll actually automatically accept that payment. So, theoretically you don’t even have to open up your email at that point. You would only need to do that if you wanted it not via ACH like one time if for some reason. So, it really is automatic.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I know, it feels like one of those things like too good to be true.

Emma Dickinson:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

How many times do you guys say the product’s like, “No, no, it’s way better than you even think. It does this and this and this.” I mean, I can’t wait for users to continue to adopt it. I think that early adoption group is kind of exploding.

Emma Dickinson:

Yeah, we’ve got a whole team dedicated to selling and supporting this, and it’s been taking off. I couldn’t even imagine, which is really great to see.

Charley Burtwistle:

So, maybe rewinding a little bit, we don’t want to bash the old way that things kind of function. But what problems was this kind of trying to solve and how will this impact the day-to-day for our customers?

Emma Dickinson:

Yeah, so the biggest problem overall was the signup process on whoever was receiving money. So, in this case, the subcontractors, was fairly extensive. It’s known as the “know your customer” process. So, there were quite a few pieces of information you had to fill out before you could even start to receive money, including things like a tax ID, social security number, the owner of your business. So, it meant that not anyone on the subcontractor side could even sign up. If you’ve got an accounts payable person, they might not know all that information and have it readily available. So, not all of our subs could sign up, even if the builder wanted to be paying them online.

Then the other piece of that was on the builder side, they had to remember how each of their subs liked to be paid, so via credit card or ACH. That’s just a lot to keep track of if you’re working with maybe 20 or 30 subs each week. So, we really wanted to focus on making it easier for both the person making the payment and the person receiving the payment. Because what we saw was there was a ton of interest in using online payments, but a lot of difficulty getting all of their subs adopted. Which meant then they were juggling two different systems, which is the worst of both worlds. Because then you have to remember who you’re paying through Buildertrend, who you’re paying maybe via physical check. That just a lot of mental burden on people.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, and this is something that I think the way the world is changing, people anticipate this process to be really easy. They have solutions like Venmo and PayPal on their phone. They’re used to paying people, and it being quick and easy like this. I would go as far as to say, this new solution is even one step better than what they’re used to because it is … it’s in the name, get paid your way and like Zach was talking about. It doesn’t just go into some digital wallet that you then have to transfer somewhere else and go through these multiple steps. If you’re used to getting a check every single Friday for payday, you can get your check that way. If you’re used to it going directly into a bank account, it can go directly in that way. So, the fact that we didn’t have something like this was definitely a little outdated because there are so many solutions. But I think we did a good job of not only catching up, but kind of going above and surpassing a lot of the existing solutions that are out there today.

Emma Dickinson:

Yeah, exactly. Obviously, we would love for you to invite all of your subs to Buildertrend, but this way, now you don’t have to invite them and still be able to make a payment to them through Buildertrend. So, we really want to be flexible and meet kind of builders where they’re at. Maybe if they started setting everything up, they don’t want to invite their subs yet, but they still want to be sending them payments through the system, now they can. So, just making it as flexible as possible.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The other thing … I mean, you said it. Subs, we’ve talked about this a lot on “The Building Code.” I mean, they are the essential part to a GCs ecosystem and so, if the GCs having to do more work to get their subs to use something, a lot of times that psychology of getting people to do things, change management is hard. So, I think that’s the key value prop for our builders to use our slang internally is it’s so easy for the subs. And if you make it easier for the subs, the people we work with directly, our builders, our listeners. It’s a win-win. It’s like, oh, you’re solving this billing problem, where I have to manage multiple systems. But also from the sub, I’m also making their lives easier. They can just get it, and you know they’ve been paid, they know it’s on the way. It eliminates communication back and forth, reconciliation processes.

I mean, I already know what the customer’s feedback is going to be for those that are trying it. But what have you heard? I know because I’m in CS, so I hear people talking about their great experiences. But Emma, what have you been hearing from our CX team and the initial feedback?

Emma Dickinson:

Yeah, I think everyone’s been pretty impressed by it so far.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love that.

Emma Dickinson:

I think the best quote is one of our early adopters told him it was like getting an early Christmas present. Which is basically the highest compliment I could ever receive for anything that I do. So, yeah, it’s been pretty overwhelmingly positive so far. Like you said, it makes it easy for subs that maybe aren’t adopting 21st century payment methods. They can still get paid via check, which is great. But now the builder doesn’t have to order checks, have someone writing the checks. It removes all the opportunities for misinformation or errors that humans are innately born with. Streamlines that process for them. So, yeah, overwhelmingly positive response so far.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Have you talked to any subs? Sorry, Charley.

Emma Dickinson:

I actually have talked to a few subs. Just by luck some of the early adopters’ subs had questions, and I was like, “Oh, let me just talk to them directly.” They literally were bragging about how easy it was. They were like, “I just have to open my email, that’s it. That’s all I have to do. I don’t have to drive somewhere to pick up a check, I don’t have to do anything.” That’s what we were hoping for was to meet you where you’re at and have it be a five second process to get your payment. And now it is.

Charley Burtwistle:

One thing that I think we should constantly kind of preach on is how you guys use customer feedback. So, I know we’re constantly asking customers for feedback, we want to hear from them. We’ve had a few people on the Product team before that kind of goes through the process of here’s how I take the feedback and implement it. Can you talk a little bit about not just leading up to this, how we use the customer feedback? But moving forward, how we’re going to continue to iterate on it?

Emma Dickinson:

So, with this we were, I would say, lucky maybe isn’t quite the right word. But we did have a payment solution for years that people weren’t really adopting. So, we already had a great pool of people to interview that either were still using it or had tried it and then stopped using it. So, we were pretty lucky in terms of being able to get really specific feedback for this type of feature. A common theme in our many, many, many interviews was that builders wanted to be able to pay their subs online, but that their subs were finding it difficult. If their subs weren’t happy, then they weren’t happy, and they weren’t going to use something that their subs didn’t like. So, we took that, and we made sure that when we were building this … sorry, my dog is barking. Do you need a bone?

Charley Burtwistle:

The fourth guest on the pod today. Yeah …

Emma Dickinson:

I tried to give her a …

Charley Burtwistle:

We don’t have enough animal love.

Emma Dickinson:

… Bone to distract her.

Charley Burtwistle:

We’ve had kids, we’ve never had dogs though, or cats. I mean, we need to get more spots on the furry ones on here.

Emma Dickinson:

Yeah. Oh, I’m sure she’ll make an appearance.

Charley Burtwistle:

It’ll drive our YouTube numbers way up. We got a pet section on “The Building Code.”

Emma Dickinson:

Yes, yes. Sorry for that distraction.

But yeah, we wanted to focus on making it, like I said, easy to receive your payment, as well. So, treating subs as a primary user in this situation and so, when we were building this, we kind of had the idea that if the subs aren’t happy, then this isn’t a win, like we haven’t won yet. So, they were really a focus for us and making it as easy as possible on their end, not just focusing on the builder side.

Charley Burtwistle:

Which is fantastic. That’s something that historically at Buildertrend has taken a backseat to our GCs and our primary customers that we work with. But we have actually more subcontractors log into our platform every single day than we have internal users. So, this customer-first approach, a customer here being subcontractor is a breath of fresh air and something that I think we’re going to continue to push for to make the entire experience from homeowner to GC to internal employee to subcontractor, the entire experience journey. This is just the first foray into that.

Emma Dickinson:

Exactly. Yeah. Then to answer your second part of your question, how we’re planning on using customer feedback moving forward. We’ve already gotten some feedback on a few little things for the signup process. So, we’re actually getting ready to release a little bit of improvement. So, shameless plug for that, that’s coming in a few weeks. So, hearing feedback from builders when they were going to sign up saying, “Oh, it would be nice if I could upload a really professional looking signature that’s going to go on those checks rather than using the mouse track pad.” So, just things like that, basically, where every week I’m looking at all the feedback that’s coming in and looking at what we could prioritize and what little wins we could get out quickly just to show people I am reading all the feedback and that we do care and that we’re trying to make little improvements go a long way. So, it’s kind of stopping the death by a thousand paper cuts. Whenever there’s room for improvement, we want to be taking those chances and making it better.

Charley Burtwistle:

So, the next time you get an email from Buildertrend or a pop-up on your screen asking for feedback, do it because Emma is patiently waiting on the other side to implement the feedback that you’re giving there.

Emma Dickinson:

Yes, please, please, please do it. It’s the worst when I’m trying to get feedback and then I suddenly can’t get any. I’m like, “Oh, I know people have thoughts, I just need to know what they are.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s kind of how it goes, isn’t it? When you want it, it’s never there.

Emma Dickinson:

It is funny, since I’ve started working in Data Science and talking to people on our Product team and things like that. When I get surveys from other products that I use, I always fill them out as opposed to before when I just be like, “Oh, that doesn’t matter.” Just instantly delete it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, those poor product managers and CX folks on the other end of Microsoft.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, I’m giving them a lot, for sure.

Zach Wojtowicz:

All right, Emma. Well, thank you for coming on “The Building Code” again. You’re always welcome to come back. We know you’ve got really exciting things that you’re going to be bringing us in the future, so I’m sure we’ll have you back. Charley, as always, what are you most excited about?

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, I’m most excited about … so like I said, I’ve been gone for a couple weeks, so I’m going to go in and get my one …

Zach Wojtowicz:

You’re excited to clear out your inbox.

Charley Burtwistle:

Get my $1 from Town Hall …

Zach Wojtowic

Let’s go.

Charley Burtwistle:

I’ll have them mail me the check as well. We’ll frame it and put it in the background here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, we’ll have it right in the background.

Charley Burtwistle:

But yeah, I mean, anytime Emma comes on, you’re working in a really, really exciting space right now. So, anytime you come on and talk about things, I’m always blown away by how awesome our product is, how awesome our team is and just our commitment to continued iteration. And making the product better and making builder’s workflows better and making the construction industry better. So, appreciate it, Emma. Make sure to like, review, subscribe. As always, I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

We’ll see you next time.

Emma Dickinson

Emma Dickinson | Buildertrend


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