Concora
Maximizing Sales via Better Digital Experiences

When a construction company wants to build, a hotel for instance, it gives the contract to an architect. The architect then designs the building, specifying the products required for constructing the project, and hands the designs over to an engineer. Once the designs are received, the contractor purchases the products from a manufacturer and then starts the constructing the building. This is the most basic skeletal outline of how an operation at such scale would be carried out, and constitutes a buyer’s journey. The trickiest part of such a buyer journey however is product selection and procurement. For example, if a product available with the manufacturer is not of the right design, or if it is unavailable altogether on their website, it can result in significant delays and losses. Here, Concora—a SaaS-based software solution—helps manufacturers deliver the right products to their customers, through an intuitive and easy-to-use platform that helps them design and select the products they need for construction. Concora’s digital experience platform makes it easy for architects, engineers, and contractors to specify and buy building products, with the help of their software of the same name.

In an interview with CIO Applications, Kip Rapp, CEO of Concora, tells us how his company helps manufacturers gain more traction and provide better service to their customers via their unique platform.

What according to you, are the major pain points in the construction market today? Has the pandemic brought out any new challenges?

With COVID, you can’t talk to people in person and say hi, which has created a big problem for manufacturers and construction companies alike. Earlier, a manufacturer could visit an AEC at their premises and talk to them about the business directly to sell their products.

Now, everything is virtual. If one tries to market to an AEC, it has to be digital. That is why websites have gained high importance in the pandemic. People don’t read many magazines and can’t have in-person interactions with each other. So manufacturers can only sell their products through digital channels, which is difficult for them as the construction and manufacturing industry is slow to adopt new technologies.

Concurrently, think of a manufacturer’s website as a digital storefront where AECs select and use the manufacturer’s product. For example, if an architect is designing, say a hotel, they will go to a manufacturer’s website to specify each component, such as the bathroom. If you can’t find the required bathroom product, the 2D, 3D models, sustainability data or the datasheets, you won’t select that manufacturer’s product and look for alternatives.

One reason for this failure is that many manufacturers are accustomed to the traditional way of selling products via on-premise meetings or conferences, which can’t be done today.

Also, most manufacturers use WordPress to develop their websites— which can be used for website designing, but is unfortunately too simplistic and limited in showing the manufacturer’s true capabilities. As a result, many companies hire a digital marketing agency unfamiliar with an architect’s buyer journey, which ends up costing a lot of money to build a website that no one likes.

Can you give our readers a brief description of Concora?

We are a SaaS-based software company. We sell our platform to building material manufacturers. Our customers are primarily people that make lighting, furniture, carpets, walls, etc.

Nowadays, when an architect designs a building, they go to a manufacturer’s website to look for their required products. The product information can include their 2D-3D models, sustainability information, datasheets, etc. We at Concora enable the manufacturer to streamline this process. We offer a solution that goes onto the manufacturer’s website and labels their product to make it easy for the architect/engineer/ contractor (AEC) that visits the site to select them based on their unique specifications.

The platforms offers a three pronged advantage to AECs in their selection process. The first is providing an easy-to-use web experience that takes less than 2-3 clicks to get the specified product. The second is providing comprehensive information on the manufacturer’s product via 2D-3D models, sustainability information, datasheets, etc. The third is that we provide tools like submittals and project showcase where users can select the products, aggregate their data, and put together a proposal using the manufacturer that can be viewed in a document called a submittal. This method enables the manufacturers to get more leads and generate more business.

It would be great if you can tell our readers about how you set up your solution for clients and describe the immediate benefits it provides

We can get our solution up and running on the client’s website in 30 days. Concora is bolted onto the manufacturer’s website. So it’s very seamless to the architect. They don’t even know that they are using our solution as we use the client’s web URL. As we enable the buyer journey of an architect and contractor with their required product—because we have all the manufacturer’s product information—it helps SEOs to drive more traffic to their website. Along with enabling the buyer journeys, we also capture the contact information of anyone who visits the client’s site to give the lead to the client if the AEC has another project with similar requirements.

Is there a case study that you can share with our readers about Concora’s effectiveness?

One client, Superior Concrete Products, creates concrete fences that look like wood that last 50 years. They were trying to sell their fences for use in commercial applications like multi-family establishments, prisons and other security objectives. Their website wasn’t as ideal as expected in attracting AEC visitors on their website.

When they partnered with Concora, they understood that we could effectively provide great buyer journey experiences for their website. To that end, we also partnered with a digital marketing agency, boosting the client’s commercial sales by 15 percent. The client was thus engaging with the buyer journeys and their customers were staying longer and increasing traffic on their site three fold.

What are the future plans that you envisioned for your organization?

We are doing a lot of work around visualizing the manufacturer’s product in a 3D environment. Besides presenting a static project or a case study to the viewers, we also have animated video renderings of a manufacturer’s product in a photorealistic environment.

Simultaneously, we are making sure to involve ourselves much more in the manufacturer’s ecosystem. So we quickly integrating into important backend systems like CRM, CMS, ERP, etc.