What Buildertrend’s data says about your 2021 with Kayla Schmitt

Show Notes

As builders close out a frenzied construction year, weโ€™re highlighting Buildertrend patterns from the past year and how construction software factored into 2021 home building.

On this episode of โ€œThe Building Code,โ€ Zach and Charley examine the data trends from a historic construction year with Buildertrend data analyst Kayla Schmitt.

Kayla also offers insight into a service Buildertrend is testing to help builders reach their business goals.

What’s a trend that surprised you?

โ€œOne element that we’ve seen a large increase in over the last year, even two years, is that communication piece. So, especially in the age of COVID, you can’t necessarily go out and see people face-to-face anymore. We’ve had an increase of about 40% in our Daily Log consumption. So that’s speaking to what happened on a day-to-day basis throughout the job and messaging that, whether it’s to the subcontractors or the homeowner, making sure everybody’s up to date and they understand what’s going on.โ€

What kinds of data are builders seeking from Buildertrend?

โ€œI think some of the bigger takeaways that we’ve had so far are just identifying holes in their workflows. Maybe some inefficiencies that they’ve had. So, at the end of the day, like we talked about, it’s all about optimizing their revenue. And then I think if you don’t know where to start, it’s really just, you got to ask yourself, what do you want to do with your business? Where do you want your business to go? You communicate that with us. And then we can even help you identify the proper key performance indicators that you need to track.โ€

Related content:

Get insight on how to future-proof your business by checking out our latest blog.

Want to get your finances in shape for the new year? Listen here for accounting pro-tips.

Subscribe to โ€œThe Building Code,โ€ and never miss an episode.

Got podcast topic suggestions? Reach out to us at podcast@buildertrend.com.

The Better Way, a podcast by Buildertrend:

Looking to improve how your team plans projects with the worldโ€™s No. 1 construction management software? Pick up Buildertrend project planning pro tips on the newest season of โ€œThe Better Way, a podcast by Buildertrend.โ€ Subscribe and stream all of these bingeable episodes on your favorite listening app now.

Follow us on social:

Instagram and Facebook

Listen to โ€œThe Building Codeโ€ on YouTube! And be sure to head over to Facebook to join The Building Code Crew fan page for some fun discussions with fellow listeners.

Transcript

Zach Wojtowicz:

Welcome to โ€œThe Building Code,โ€ Zach Wojtowicz as always with?

Charley Burtwistle:

Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hey buddy. How’s it going? It’s good to see you.

Charley Burtwistle:

Good to see you too. I feel like we had a quick turnaround here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I know.

Charley Burtwistle:

We’re in the booth last week.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’ve recently moved to sit closer to Charley, and it’s a bit distracting at work.

Charley Burtwistle:

It is.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Now we good too.

Charley Burtwistle:

I liked our old kind of set up where we have, where I saw you twice a month in this room.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And that was it?

Charley Burtwistle:

Only for an hour and that was it. Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh man.

Charley Burtwistle:

No, no, no. It’s been fantastic. Zach is going to do fantastic things near the data science team.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Speaking of the data science team, we have a special guest today.

Charley Burtwistle:

Very special guest.

Zach Wojtowicz:

More special than you.

Charley Burtwistle:

Right. Yeah, way to refer to your co-host as a guest. But yes, we do have Kayla Schmitt on today, which I’m very excited about. Kayla is actually, has been at Buildertrend longer than anybody else on the data science team. So although she’s fairly new to the team itself, when it comes to Buildertrend lore, you have to mention Kayla Schmitt’s name up there with the OGs.

Zach Wojtowicz:

She’s an institution here at Buildertrend.

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely. Yeah, we had, I remember we were talking about with Marge a few episodes ago, the Mount Rushmore of Buildertrend, when it comes to data science, you have to have Kayla Schmitt over there on the Mount Rushmore.

Zach Wojtowicz:

She’s on the mountain.

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely. So yeah, very exciting episode. We’re nearing the end of the year as always, Buildertrend puts out a kind of a end of the year data blog that summarizes some of the accomplishments that our builders and our customers have had throughout the year. Some aggregated numbers like, “Hey, look at this, you guys produced this many million daily logs, this many million dollars in payments processed.” It’s really, really cool to see. Building’s hard, construction’s hard, 2021 was hard, but to celebrate a lot of the successes that we had and really finish out the end of the year strong. So we’ll have Kayla on here to talk about that and also talk about a little bit of a sneak peek into something she’s been working on the side, which is actually producing some customer reports for our customers. So taking their individual data, aggregating it, tailoring and providing insights directly to them, not something that we officially offer yet, but something that we’re looking into. So I’m really, really excited to hear about the progress Kayla’s made on that and where that initiative is heading.

Zach Wojtowicz:

News to me. I’m excited, let’s get her on here. Kayla Schmitt, welcome to The Building Code. It’s good to have you on.

Charley Burtwistle:

Fantastic to have her on. Always appreciate another data nerd in my corner.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, I do, I know it. I never get any of my friends on the podcast.

Charley Burtwistle:

What are you talking about? We get, I think every single builder that we have on here is a former Zach Wojtowicz friend from your CSM days, right?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. I know them all, we’re like super familiar with each other every time.

Charley Burtwistle:

But we do have Kayla Schmitt who is on the data science team here at Buildertrend. So Kayla, thank you for coming on, tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, what kind of work do you do here at Buildertrend?

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. So first I just want to say thank you guys for having me on. I’m most excited to come nerd out about data with like-minded individuals. So this will be fun.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Heck yeah.

Kayla Schmitt:

So a little bit of background of about me here. I am part of our data science team and I am a data analyst, so it’s kind of in the namesake, I analyze our data. I look around essentially at our production data, how are our builders using our platform, what insights can we gain for the construction industry from them and then how can we better serve them to make our product better?

Zach Wojtowicz:

That makes a ton of sense. I’m curious, you were an intern at Buildertrend, correct?

Kayla Schmitt:

I was so, yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

So you’ve been with us for quite a while.

Kayla Schmitt:

Yep.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Did you start out as a data scientist? Cause Charley likes to say like he’s one of the first data scientists and I just really want to put that to bed here that really it was Kayla Schmitt.

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah, I’d say I think we can go back and forth little, but I was actually a data entry intern here about, oh boy, five and a half years ago. So when I first started, it was a lot of taking builder’s data and their information from whatever their prior workflows were and figuring out how to format them best to fit our system. So I got to see a lot from really well-formatted workflows for builders, as well as some messier ones that we had to clean up and get in the system for them.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Pictures of like PDF like, “I wrote this out.”

Kayla Schmitt:

There was one, somebody mailed in, it was like a 12-page Excel file that we had to tape together and it was like this long, long, long thing, we called it the scroll. We had to hand type all of that into BT.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m a little nervous pointing out, don’t do that listeners.

Kayla Schmitt:

Please.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We prefer an Excel file that it’s digital where we can just clean it up and import it. It’s faster for everyone.

Kayla Schmitt:

Our interns will greatly thank you.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Which we only feed like once a day and we’ll do it and let them out of their closet. This is going to get into some… Moving on.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, cut that. On a serious note. I do actually remember, so to Zach’s point, I was the first official data scientist here. And when we were starting the data science team, I remember we had like all these cool ideas and initiatives like dashboards we could build out. And this name, Kayla Schmitt just like kept getting brought up. They’re like, “Oh, Kayla’s already done that. Kayla’s already done that.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Who is this?

Charley Burtwistle:

We were like, who is this Kayla? So it was actually a big, because you just officially joined the team last year.

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. It’s only actually been a year since I’ve been on the data science team, which is weird because I’ve been doing analytics for Buildertrend for the last four. I started out analyzing in our customer success department. So figuring out our trainings and our onboarding, are they actually effective and what can we do better?

Charley Burtwistle:

So it was a big deal when we finally like convinced her current bosses at the time to give her up, and let her join the data science team.

Zach Wojtowicz:

She’s a data scientist, and you can’t stop it.

Charley Burtwistle:

Exactly.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s hilarious.

Charley Burtwistle:

So joining the podcast here, I think we’re going to talk a little bit about year in review. This is going to be premiering later this week I think. So December we have The Data Insights Blog, which I help out with a ton. It captures how are people using the platform? What are we looking like in the industry as a total? So I know you and I spent some time going through the data blogs and what do you think the story in general, when you’re digesting this data and looking at all these different insights that these blogs tell about our builders, especially over the past year.

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. I would say a major theme is just that technology is at the core of efficient businesses. So if you’re still working off pen and paper and just trying to, I guess, communicate with your employees verbally and there’s nothing tracked anymore. You’re going to find some holes. You’re going to lose things. There’s always going to be a human error element to that. So I think using technology or a software like Buildertrend is just essential to having a well-rounded business. And like an example of that is one of our Pro Services online payments, you don’t have to wait for a check to clear or the bank to process anything. We can actually process our payments, whether it’s your payables or your receivables almost real time in the product itself. And so you’re always up to date on what your revenue is and how that forecasting looks.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. There’s a lot of things that we could point out as markers of success from a data standpoint in Buildertrend, we’ll get into that a little later on the podcast. Like if you’re using your account, what’s the data that I can even derive to make those business decisions. It’s a great point with online payments, managing your cash flow. Are there any specific stats that stood out to you, that caught your eye or any that you expected or anything that blew you away that maybe would be interesting to our listeners, but you know me, a small-minded customer success guy.

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. So I think one element that we’ve seen a large increase in over the last year, even two years is that communication piece. So especially in the age of COVID, you can’t necessarily go out and see people face-to-face anymore. We’ve had it increase in about 40% in our daily log consumption.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Really?

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. So that’s speaking to what happened on a day-to-day basis throughout the job and messaging that, whether it’s to the subcontractors or the homeowner, making sure everybody’s up to date and they understand what’s going on. So I thought that was a pretty cool increase over the last year.

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, I feel like that goes really, really nicely with some of the guests we’ve had on the pod where they think that taking on Buildertrend is going to be this big initiative and they have to completely revamp everything about their business. But the 40% daily log year over year stat that Kayla just brought out was like one of the simplest. You were in CS for a long time, that’s like day one type stuff you go in here and you wrote down what you did, that’s a daily log. In the age of COVID, in the age of technology just something that simple can really, really drastically change the productivity and efficiency of a business.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. When we think about building a habit, that’s an easy place. People are so used to driving to job sites and looking around and be like, “Yep, looks good.” And that’s where you can insert the idea of, or you could just take pictures and then upload it here. And it tells you exactly what you need to see with your own two eyes. I was actually talking, funny you bring up daily logs, I was talking to one of the people who sit near me, who was also a CS rep Scott Hale, and he was telling me how customers would fight him on that and be like, “I’m not going to do that. There’s no point.” And he is like, “Do it. One time and just see what happens.” And he did it and like the next week there was an incident and a dispute between the homeowner and the contractor, and he called Scott and he was like, “It happened.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

So he called Scott, Buildertrend shaman because he got him to just try it one time and then like it would happen.

Charley Burtwistle:

Trust me, yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

But it’s just interesting because to us it’s data and it shows people are building these habits to a builder, it’s a real use case. It solves problems and there’s dozens and dozens of examples of just like, “Just try it one time and do it this way and you’ll see there’s benefit to be had as a result of it.” Which is always really cool. But you take a step back and you’re like, “This is a movement, 40% of people, 4% increase.” People are getting it. And that’s the exciting part.

Kayla Schmitt:

I think it’s really interesting from the homeowner perspective as well. You’re going to have just more satisfied customers. I was fortunate enough to purchase a house this last year as well, and they used the Buildertrendโ€™s system so I was able to stay up-to-date on all of the progress on our house and the job and every week I got to see what was going on and so it definitely makes the clients happy.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I almost think it’s kind of becoming an expectation, you obviously worked for Buildertrend, did you ask them or did you know that they used Buildertrend? Like, did you seek out?

Kayla Schmitt:

No, I didn’t know until I had picked that home. And then I went into our as system. I was like, “Hey, I wonder if they used it.” And they did and it was great. And then they sent me over the invitation and got to see the job from the actual homeowner perspective. And so it was cool to get that dual side of working at Buildertrend, but also being a user.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That would be intimidating.

Charley Burtwistle:

For the builder?

Zach Wojtowicz:

For the builder, yeah. It’s like, I got a Buildertrend employee and I better use it right. You’re like, “Hey, did you know like I could teach someone how to use it.โ€

Charley Burtwistle:

Well, I feel like they weren’t using, was it, if I remember right they weren’t using selections. Right?

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

They sent you over an email, you had to manually go through and pick them all, you’re like, “I think there’s a project management tool that could do all these for you.”

Kayla Schmitt:

I was like, “I looked up Buildertrend online, and I think you can actually upload your selections in there.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s hilarious.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah an industry plant, we just like put people like Kayla out there across the country to help sell Buildertrend.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, to see the value.

Charley Burtwistle:

Right, absolutely. Are there any other stats that kind of stuck out to you Kayla?

Kayla Schmitt:

I was a little bit surprised just with the COVID climate over the last year and a half that job starts actually went up. So I figured people have had some financial issues, they may not be buying new homes or remodeling their houses as they were a few years ago, but we actually are processing more jobs in Buildertrend now than we ever have before. And I think it’s just a testament to builders getting out there and providing quality products and increasing those.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, we’ve got more accounts than ever too.

Charley Burtwistle:

Right. If there was ever a time to utilize a project management software, it’d be when you’re doing the most jobs. I know some of the consultants that we’ve had on here in the past are like just because your lead list and your number of start’s through the roof, doesn’t necessarily mean that your bottom line and revenue is too. It’s more crucial than ever to make sure that you’re as optimized as possible and really just being as efficient as possible to get through with this crazy demand that we’re seeing maybe for the first time ever, at least at this scale.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I look at people in the construction industry who don’t use some kind of organizational system and that’s the thing, they’re successful, they’re doing well. It just helps relieve some of that pressure and to really have a go-to, but there is some new initiatives that we’re always thinking about trying and Kayla, we brought you on partially to talk about maybe some of these early experiences that you’ve had exploring the future of Buildertrend and what we have to offer. Can you talk a little bit about us, like the things that you’re hearing from builders about what they want from a data standpoint?

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. So historically in my past, we have looked at our production data and used it to guide how we help our builders. But now we’re wanting to step back and do the reverse of that, where we’re going to ask the builders themselves, what do they need?

Zach Wojtowicz:

What data could we provide to you?

Kayla Schmitt:

Exactly. What data can we provide to them? What KPIs do they want to know about to get their business on track and make sure they’re optimizing their business. So we are meeting with a handful of builders now, kind of in a testing period where we are creating custom reporting for them. Yeah, it’s been a pretty big driver so far a lot of people enjoy it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Anything so far, like a report that people are asking for, is there any commonality or themes or is there something that we’re able to provide? You don’t have to get into specifics, but like, is there something that people are like, “I wish I had this information.”

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. We are deep-diving into cash flow reporting right now.

Charley Burtwistle:

Go figure.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Thorough business, they want to know how they’re doing financially.

Kayla Schmitt:

Right. You know it’s all about the money. Yeah, so we’re deep diving into what invoices they have coming in. And that would be like owner invoices coming in with the payables they have going out and forecasting where they’re going to end the year at. And then we can also dive deep into the lead aspect as well and see what else they have in the pipeline. If they have anything they can back up on some of these jobs that maybe are, maybe they don’t have a homeowner that is set to pay them for the next few months, but they do have some materials that they need to purchase today. And can we bring anything else in the pipeline to get some revenue in there?

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s exciting.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. And what we’ve seen super early on and Kayla correct me if I’m wrong, is just that like, every builder does it slightly different. So we do have the reports tab in Buildertrend, which is obviously great, but that’s meant to be, kind of a across the board umbrella, catches everything, real basic stuff that you want to track. But the builders that Kayla’s working with, some of them may use custom field, some of them may use the proposals instead of estimates and you can do a lot of the same workflows, a lot of different ways. So Kayla, I’m wondering if you’ve seen anything like customized or some things that you’ve seen builders doing to capture data that we don’t have in our standard product at Buildertrend.

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. So you touched on custom fields. One that we focused on is this specialized lead stage reporting. So we can tell how optimal their sales pipeline is working. Are they progressing through the proper stages from when a lead enters in, getting qualified and pushed out to a job and we can help them identify where there’s holes in their conversion funnel. So then we can go back to them and say like, “This is the process that you need to focus on right now, if you want to increase your jobs.”

Charley Burtwistle:

Kayla’s been showing me this obviously, she’s been keeping me in the loop in this initiative that she’s working on. I just owe always go back to that you and I talk about all the time is like construction may seem like a really, really nuanced industry but at the end of the day is a business, and a lot of the stuff that we face at Buildertrend as a tech company, every single day, same thing builders are facing. So like when we have a lead in our pipeline, we don’t just consider them open or lost. We have a whole funnel to progress them through of like this is our first outreach, here’s where we had the demo. This is where we’re waiting for a payment.

Charley Burtwistle:

And so we have builders that are creating really, really nuanced custom fields in these lead stages to let them know, “Okay, I’ve already talked to these people. It’s in the design phase. I now have a proposal out to them. I’m waiting to hear back for them. I’m going back and forth.” And Kayla’s produced these awesome reports that start at the very top up the funnel and have breakdown of exactly how many people progress through that. So to exactly, to her point you can see where they start to drop off.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Wow and it gives so much weight to why you should use those fields. That’s always something that, changing what you’re doing has to have a pretty good reason other than just to change. And so this type of insight that we can provide our customers, I’m super excited about because it’ll give you an even more of a… Like, you’re not just disorganized or you don’t have very specific like, you just want everybody to get information all in the same place. Like, no, we can actually help you gain more insight and improve what you’re doing. If you go through the motions of actually filling out the data we need and using this system, there’s more that we can tell you because you’re using it, which is incredible.

Kayla Schmitt:

Right. And I think it’s pretty cool too, that we just want to help. It’s not on our listeners, it’s not on you guys to understand how data works. You just have to use the program as you use it, we might help you out with some workflows, but you can rely on us as a data science team to understand-

Zach Wojtowicz:

I just imagine like teaching a builder, how to use Tableau, like, “We’re just here to build this flow baby.” We should do that, that’d be great. I’m sure there’d be people who want to learn the data of this programs.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. We can set up a track for her at next BTU.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Just serving it up here.

Kayla Schmitt:

New course on the Buildertrend Learning Academy, maybe.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Charley Burtwistle:

Ooh, there we go. Zach that’s kind of your world, you can make that happen.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. We’ll have to figure something out, but yeah, what’s been the reaction?

Kayla Schmitt:

Oh they love it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love it.

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. We’ve piloted this with a handful of customers so far and they absolutely love it, they eat it up. They email it back into us almost daily, just asking for more because they can’t get enough.

Charley Burtwistle:

What are like maybe some of the biggest takeaways they’ve had or maybe just, if someone’s like looking to get started, and they’re listening to this podcast, they’re interested in data science. They want to know what data they have, where would you recommend they begin this journey down this reporting lifespan.

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. Two parts there, I think some of the bigger takeaways that we’ve had so far is just identifying holes in their workflows. Maybe some inefficiencies that they’ve had. So at the end of the day, like we talked about, it’s all about optimizing their revenue. And then I think if you don’t know where to start, it’s really just, you got to ask yourself, what do you want to do with your business? Where do you want your business to go? You communicate that with us. And then we can even help you identify the proper KPIs that you need to track. And then that goes down a little bit further and I’ll give a shout out here to Jake Braun. He’s a new data analyst that we have who actually came from the customer success department. He can work with you on how you should better use the product so we can answer those questions that you want to know.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. There was a cool one the other day of one of our spec home builders that wanted to track how many, just like lots they had available to build on and understanding if they had the capacity to take on projects and that side of things that not a lot of our other customers have to do. And you showed them how to utilize job groups in the job model to like, “Hey, you can actually put these in a land development or like lot job group, still track all of them. How much you spend on them, the current stages on them, how many are available, open, closed, things like that. And then when you’re ready to start building on them, you can just change them from the lot job group to a production home job group and track all of that straight through Buildertrend. So you don’t have to have a separate Excel sheet over on the side to manage all that stuff.” I don’t know Zach, if that’s something that you saw a lot in your consulting days.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. The job grouping is basically an equivalent of a filtering tool to get aggregate data. So that same job grouping principle can be applied in a lot of places. Like people, when you’re running a profit or a job costing report, right? A lot of times you’re using the same items and materials on your estimate across seven, eight, 15, 20 jobs but you might want to know from a development standpoint or a type of revenue stream that you use, you can run that job group or do multiple and have multiple variables. Then look at your budgets across all of those projects and see like, โ€˜Wow, I get killed on lumber, but I do great on plumbing,โ€™ and get a high level view. And that one little filter takes literally 30 seconds to set up. Understand how to use it and now you can use it in a multitude of different ways.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You can look at all your POs. When I’m talking to bookkeepers, you want to see what’s upcoming for payment, all listed jobs, PO payments. You can see everything and give you a perspective of a rudimentary version of cash flow to say like, here’s, what’s going out then go to your invoices, here’s what’s coming in. But we’re going to merge those things together with this project initiative, which is really exciting to hear. Another place I always point people to was the jobs list. Worked almost on every consulting trip, companies have like a hopper, like a transition. So like they sell it, and they need to figure out how to hand it off to production because the sales team primarily is kind of like done. Now it’s on the project manager or the office manager, whoever sets it up. And then you’ve got all these criteria, like who is the lender, they’re working with that type of work, who’s the developer, like what neighborhood’s it in and like stuff that isn’t built in natively to the sales side, you can have it move over to the Job Info tab.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And then you can go up to the House icon at the top of the screen, go to Jobs List and play with the grid settings on the custom filters and be able to see whatever your Excel file basically to point out your columns and whatnot. So it’s a little bit abstract, but you can basically recreate most people’s operational reports. The one thing is they got to remember to fill out those fields. Right? That goes back to why you should do these things, because it’s like, well, now we can pull things and do stuff with it. It’s worth the time investment, right?

Charley Burtwistle:

In a lot of the reports you have Kayla, you actually have a way for them to see like what data is missing, correct?

Kayla Schmitt:

Yep.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Ooh, interesting.

Kayla Schmitt:

We apply, I call it a data integrity, so back to what you were speaking to, maybe some of those job groups they aren’t filling out and we can highlight those and maybe show you whether it’s not a job group that’s getting filled out, a custom field that you may have required and show you where that’s missing in the system. And identify, let’s say even for like a franchise account, maybe if some franchises that are doing everything the right way, how you want them to work through the proper process. And then you have a few that aren’t doing that, you can highlight those and get an overall view of the company itself.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Incredible that’s, man, game-changing stuff over there in data and research – Charley I had no idea.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. That’s what we do in our dark little corner that no one pays attention to.

Zach Wojtowicz:

When I walked by your desk, and I’m just like, I don’t know, you look like you’re working on something important, but I had no idea.

Charley Burtwistle:

To be fair, don’t loop me in with Kayla. I’m not working on anything important at all. Kayla is the one running this awesome initiative, yeah. As much as I’d love to take credit for it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You know, great leaders delegate, Charley.

Charley Burtwistle:

Oh, thanks Zach, geez. It’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me. Kayla, is there anything else that you want to highlight in the realm of data, the data blogs, we’ve looked at, this custom data reporting thing, anything else that you want to take the time to talk about?

Kayla Schmitt:

I would just say again that it might seem small to input your data and use the system to its fullest, but it really will pay dividends in the end. Hopping in here with the customer reporting, we can help you guys identify so many different pitfalls in the workflows that you may not have seen before. May never have been highlighted. Maybe it’s some slippage in your guys’ jobs. We can tell you exactly where that’s happening and how to track it is, how to fix it. Really at the end of the day, we’re just here to help you. We want to help you guys build better.

Charley Burtwistle:

Change the way the world builds, right? That’s the goal. The better way. โ€œThe Better Wayโ€ podcast. Kayla, thank you so much for coming out today. This has been fantastic.

Kayla Schmitt:

This is great, thanks guys.

Charley Burtwistle:

I always appreciate the chance to gang up on Zach when it comes to data.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You guys were pretty nice. I appreciate that.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah, we’re actually coming back in after you leave to record a few more things without you in the room. So watch out for that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Typical, classic.

Kayla Schmitt:

See it in the show notes.

Zach Wojtowicz:

If you ever had the pleasure of being on the show, you can really see how the operation works.

Charley Burtwistle:

Absolutely. Kayla, thank you so much.

Kayla Schmitt:

Yeah. Thanks guys.

Zach Wojtowicz:

All right, Mr. Burtwistle, we just had your esteemed colleague Kayla, on โ€œThe Building Code.โ€

Charley Burtwistle:

She’s fantastic.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m a little bit blown away.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah that’s great.

Zach Wojtowicz:

From the initiatives we’re working on. It’s really exciting.

Charley Burtwistle:

Yeah. I think she did a really good job of presenting data in the least boring way possible. Always a challenge that we have in our jobs, but yeah. The stuff that she’s working on and what’s coming down the pike in 2022 is really exciting stuff.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Always more to come here at Buildertrend, we’re always working on something. It is going to be our last episode of 2021 so we just want to say Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, all the good stuff. We will have another episode coming in January so look for that. Any last messages that I’m missing?

Charley Burtwistle:

I would just say if you’re really itching for some podcasts from Buildertrend in the downtime, from The Building Code, check out Zach’s podcast, โ€œThe Better Way,โ€ you guys are on season five now.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. We shot season five recently, and it just released in November.

Charley Burtwistle:

There you go.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Covers a lot of the details of some of our things that you can do with Buildertrend and planning projects more efficiently. So had a lot of different great guests. Brett Jones was with me through the entire way, we got into a lot of topics. So go check it out, it’s really exciting stuff with that out of the way. I think that’s it.

Charley Burtwistle:

There you go. I’m Charley Burtwistle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m Zach Wojtowicz.

Charley Burtwistle:

And this is โ€œThe Building Code.โ€ Thank you.

Kayla Schmitt

Kayla Schmitt | Buildertrend


Places You Can find us

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Available on Podbean
Listen on spotify

Get updates for The Building Code

Be the first to know when new episodes are released.

We think you’d also like this

Two people looking at a tablet

press release

Jun 15, 2021

Buildertrend data report proves remote access to project management software is critical for business success

Buildertrendโ€™s data report shows with interviews, proprietary data analysis & industry findings why the construction industry is undergoing a digital transformation.

Read more
Feb Data insights

blog | 4 min read

Mar 3, 2021

Mining the data field: How tech creates a better client experience

Tech makes it possible to deliver an exceptional customer experience in the construction industry. Our data proves it.

Read the blog

podcast

Nov 5, 2020

Gaining business insights using data with Charley Burtwistle

Hear about how the Data and Research team finds data for internal use and for Buildertrend customers to find value in their own data.

Listen to the podcast