How Trimble’s Patrick Allen Sees the Future of Construction Tech: Connected Platforms, AI, and the New Competitive Edge

Rishi Srivastava (00:41)
Today our guest is Patrick Allen from Trimble. Patrick, welcome.

Patrick Allen (00:45)
Thank you, Rishi.

Rishi Srivastava (00:46)
First segment here is on your journey and perspective. Patrick, you’ve been with Trimble since 2007 and have worked with contractors of every size across the US. What initially pulled you into construction technology and what has kept you in industry for almost two decades?

Patrick Allen (01:03)
I love this question. Thanks Rishi and thanks a million for having me. I greatly appreciate this opportunity. Construction is one of the coolest industries out there. And the thought of knowing that you can…

put an idea on a piece of paper or have something on the back of a napkin and then something that’s on a piece of graph paper that turns into a model, that turns into a physical building or road or a mechanical system, to know that you’re taking something from idea or concept and then making it a physical reality. Ever since I was a little kid and granted my dad was in plumbing, plumbing for years. So maybe that rubbed off on me, but I was just fascinated with that aspect that you could physically build something that

was an idea originally. And then I’ve also just been fascinated with heavy equipment. I love excavators, dozers, graders, the big yellow iron, just the study of hydraulics and to see what heavy equipment can do, how you can take a piece of earth and just wildly transform it in a couple days or a couple of weeks. That just fascinates me. So I think I’ve always been appealed to the cool, shiny yellow iron, but also the before and after. And what you can do

Rishi Srivastava (01:52)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Allen (02:10)
Just as a simple that whatever started as a simple thought and how far you can go with it with turning it into a physical reality has always just mesmerized me. So yeah, this is really cool. I have a strong passion for contracting and I even built my own house several years ago. Me and two guys we took eight months off from work and I love that experience. And again, just going from paper to reality was just a pretty wild experience. so combining this with sales and leadership is right up my alley. So yeah, that’s why I’ve been here.

almost two decades and hopefully not gonna want another two or one anyway.

Rishi Srivastava (02:43)
Wow, I didn’t know that you actually took eight months off and you went and built some stuff.

Patrick Allen (02:48)
Yeah, it’s a three, bedroom residential.

probably 3,400 square foot house, but literally from start to finish from the site acquisition, demolition, earthwork, literally to the frame, the specialty trades, putting the roof on the deck, the driveway the septic system did every single aspect of construction. Again, that was just a residential project, a small little residential project, a commercial project, wildly different, but still a lot of similarities. And yeah, once I did that and

Rishi Srivastava (03:11)
Thank

Patrick Allen (03:18)
every single day holding the nail gun and seeing something getting built. I just love that. I was in my element. Absolutely love that.

Rishi Srivastava (03:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. You lead Trimble’s US New Logo AEC sales team today. For listeners who don’t speak software, what does that actually mean day to day for you and your team?

Patrick Allen (03:37)
Yeah, great question. So AEC is Architects, Engineers.

and construction companies. So it’s just an internal acronym, widely known AEC or AECO, the O is for owner. That’s a different sector of Trimble, but my division is responsible for working with construction companies, architects, engineering firms, and helping them with their technology needs. And when you hear a new logo, what that all about is new clients, new customers, new customer acquisitions. So my compadre, peer, Nathan McClendon,

Millen

oversees customer sales, I oversee new logo sales, so new clients, new customers for Trimble that are doing architectural engineering or in the construction verticals. And then we have teams to handle heavy civil, general construction, and then specially sub-trades and MEP.

I paused because I started as a new logo salesperson.

And then I did that for a number of years and I loved it. And then I had an opportunity to join customer sales as a customer sales person and then a customer sales leader. And I got my first taste of leadership. but new logo. I love leading the teams, working with clients who might be in a world of pain and they’re looking for technology for a better way. And to me, it’s just so rewarding to take someone and to see the before and then see the after of what we can do with technology solutions that are tightly connected.

a contractor, whether small, medium or large. it can, it is, it’s hard, right? It’s selling and some people, who’s Trimble? I don’t know you, what’s the difference between you and the other three companies I’m looking at? Other people, know the Trimble name, they’ve seen our hardware, they’re using our scanners or layout. They’re familiar with the brand, so a little bit easier. But yeah, it is hard. You know, it’s sales and it’s new client acquisitions, but we take tremendous pride with getting to know our contractors, our clients, our prospects and really

understanding their needs and their world better than anyone else.

Rishi Srivastava (05:28)
You describe Trimble Construction One as helping contractors run a better business. From your vantage point, what are the biggest before versus after differences you’ve seen when a contractor fully connects their workflows?

Patrick Allen (05:44)
I love this. There’s so many.

There’s so many different advantages and areas for improvement when you have a connected ecosystem like Trimble’s. The biggest honestly is the elimination of all silos of information. So eliminating disconnected systems where it’s spreadsheets for this. It’s another system for project management, another system for ERP. It’s, you know, more spreadsheets or logs by the PMs. All of these things are living on different islands or what we call silos, silos of information. And so there’s no single source of

truth. There’s no one program or one window or dashboard that I can bring up to see how am I doing on my jobs? How am I doing on my labor material equipment subs? How am I doing on my phase codes, my electrical rough end on this big electrical job? And how am I doing as of now, real time information? So the biggest before and after is when clients move to a truly connected platform like Trimble Construction One, they’re really able to have a system that can provide real insights for better decision making.

and truly understanding where they stand on their projects in real time without having to resort to several different spreadsheets or having a big staff meeting. This is what we typically see is, know, controller meets with the operations folks that bring them into a room, a couple of flat screen monitors. Someone brings up maybe their QuickBooks program to show some of the AP AR and GL transactions. And then all the job cost detail, though, the actual job budget or the job estimate, all the change orders, the purchase orders, the subcontracts and so forth are living out in Excel.

And so they’re in a world of piecing information together and sometimes that might that meeting might not happen until say the end of the month So that information that data is three or four weeks old So as an owner of a construction company, I might be thinking I’m really in a good spot with this project And then I find out three four weeks later. boy some of the the scopes of work some of my cost codes were actually Behind where I’m losing money on so the first question is an owner or CFO is boy How’s the rest of the project doing?

And then how are my other projects doing? And owners and CFOs and accounting executives, they shouldn’t have to scramble and piece together and hobble together all that data from different spreadsheets. They should have a system where a click of a button and they can see this in real time and know from a job cost standpoint where they stand on their projects with drill downs. And then overall the financial health of the company, right? From a cashflow statement, how much money I have them bank, who owes me what, how much I owe them. Those are the essentials. All of that should

always be readily available without hours of piecing, you know, reports together from different sources. So, huge before and after advantages when you roll out a connected platform that can really drive real-time insights.

Rishi Srivastava (08:23)
I’m glad that he said the connected platform. We also are in construction business, accounts, payable automation, we very tightly integrated with Trimble solutions like Vista and Spectrum. And integrations are important, right? Even if there is some opportunity for someone to solve a problem, trying to solve them in a silo is just not good for anybody.

Patrick Allen (08:46)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Integrations are absolutely key. We play well with our own products, of course. So if you want to integrate our estimating to our ERP or your project management, HR management, and so forth, we play well, obviously, with our own products. But what’s special about Trimble is we have a team or a department called App Xchange.

Rishi Srivastava (09:03)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Allen (09:03)
And so we also play well with third party products too, with other vendors. So you might have our ERP or our financial management program, but you might have a different project management or a different BIM engineering or design program that you want connectivity. So we can bring that team in to scope that out and connect or build the bridge between those platforms. So again, providing very similar ⁓ capabilities of Trimble Construction One, but with external or third party solutions in the event, you know, the client doesn’t want to rip and replace

that they like it it’s working but they want to tie that to some other source of information. So Trimble is in the lead we’re in a great spot with that team because they’re in-house they can scope that out and build those bridges when the client wants us to.

Rishi Srivastava (09:45)
Yeah, I’m glad you said App Xchange. We use App Xchange to connect to Trimble. Yeah, I’m your customer. The next segment here, Patrick, is on the state of construction technology. You work with small, mid-size, and ENR-level contractors. Where do you see technology adoption accelerating the fastest, and why?

Patrick Allen (09:48)
Nice. Nah, thank you. Talking to a customer. Thank you, Richie.

awesome.

Absolutely, SMB. So small and mid-market businesses SMB or emerging markets has exploded.

And it’s been a trend for the last two and a half, three years now. And when I say S M B, just to clarify, I’m specifically referring to contractors, GCs, heavy civil specialties, MEC concrete, MEP rather concrete structural that are doing five, six, seven, eight million bucks a year or so. And they’re growing. They’re growing. Years ago, those clients would often say, hey, we’re too small for these construction systems. We’re just too small. It would drive me nuts. Because honestly, what I realized is, is you got to

problems and we’ve got the solutions it doesn’t matter how big or smaller whatever size you are but that perception though was no these are these are big tools for bigger companies and we gotta get bigger.

And it always killed me hearing that because when you’re small and you’re growing and so many clients tell me today we’re doubling, we’re doubling in revenue and volume year over year. That’s how fast these companies are growing. That’s the time to really be leaning in and embracing the technology. And honestly, we’ve started to see a trend again in the last couple of years, two and a half years where…

our sales with SMB on estimating fabrication management, project management, design and engineering has they’ve exploded. These companies now are not putting a shy eye to technology. They’re leaning in and embracing and it’s becoming more of a trend now. So yeah, the emerging markets or SMB less than 10 million or so we’re really

drumming up lot of transactions on a monthly basis in that particular market. And then you’ve got your bigger mid-market enterprise accounts, which have been pretty consistent, but SMB is absolutely showing explosive growth.

Rishi Srivastava (11:49)
these contractors, they’re so good. When they can think in their head that they’re going to double next year, they actually double next year,

Patrick Allen (11:57)
Yeah, yeah, they do. And you know, I always say too, with growth comes trouble.

And so a lot of companies, and this is something especially for construction owners that are running a four or five million dollar business, it’s up and coming and maybe they don’t have a background in finance or accounting. They do what they do best and that’s building buildings or putting roads or excavating and so on. The thing that they should be mindful of though is growth doesn’t always necessarily translate into ⁓ healthy growing profit margins. Growth can mean more work, more backlog, more

projects per project manager, more complex projects, more lines of work that maybe are starting to go outside of our bread and butter market. So with that comes a lot of risk. And so that’s where I do believe, know, technology could potentially be one part of the solution to take that risk off the table. Because when we’re growing leaps and bounds, and we’re doubling volume year over year, every year and a half, two years, chances are you may not have the infrastructure that technology stack.

to help keep up with that growth or at least to point out things that you need to be mindful of on your current jobs that might be going or borderline going sideways before it’s too late. And so the growth is it’s a good thing to have no doubt but it’s also a very good thing to have when you have the right controls in place to get ahead of the risk if you will with the added volume.

Rishi Srivastava (13:08)
Yeah.

Great point. From your conversations across the country, what are construction leaders most worried about today? Labor, margins, data silos, cost control. How does technology realistically move the needle?

Patrick Allen (13:32)
All of those, all of those and many more things I’m sure that are on construction owners minds. The biggest theme though, the big one that there’s two that keep recurring for the probably last several years now that I’ve seen that are just consistent constant variables in this equation and that’s the labor shortage and then also staying tight on costs and the labor shortage

It’s fascinating. It’s twofold. It’s not only finding labor to bring, you know, to bring top tier talent into your company, whether it’s laborers or foremen or site supers or project or back office accounting and finance executives, it’s harder and harder. There’s just not as many controllers or assistant controllers or people that you can just throw bodies at.

And that was often up until several years ago, the mentality though of many construction clients were, you know, big deal, we don’t have the technology, I’ll just go hire three or four five more interns or what have you, or I’ll increase my back office accounting staff. The problem is, is there nowhere to be found.

And I don’t know if it’s a changing times, generation Z, there’s a lot of different variables coming into play here. And so I am a firm believer where instead of throwing more bodies, leverage the technology, or if you’ve got the right technology stack, leveraging that can prevent the need from having to hire more people. So that’s why I truly feel like many of our customers are seeing that now too. They’ve given up on trying to hire or increase staff, people that again, they’re going to be on your payroll. They’re going to take vacations.

They’re

going to get sick. They leave, right? Technology eliminates a lot of those variables. So that’s where I see a big play and then cost controls. There are many companies that I have sold to that I work with that I know very well that are so tight because of the technologies they have from Trimble to stay on top of their costs and their billing. So how much I’ve incurred in terms of my costs in comparison to my budget, any change orders. And then what have I billed today? What have I received today? What’s my cash flow on a

project, even a cost code or phase code level. So really tight on the margins and the overall cost on a job, having systems to show that in real time, and then also leveraging overall technologies in order to not have to try to find more labor to substitute. So those would be the two big ones that come to mind that are probably on the top of the list.

Rishi Srivastava (15:44)
Yeah.

Make sense. You know, in the last 30 years, so much GDP growth has been because of technology adoption,

Patrick Allen (15:54)
Yeah, yeah, agreed.

Rishi Srivastava (15:55)
Trimble often talks about the importance of connected construction. For the audience of CFOs and controllers, what does connected actually mean? And what problems does it solve that spreadsheets simply can’t?

Patrick Allen (16:08)
No, I really love this one. It means a lot to a lot of different people and a lot of salespeople blab about connected, right? Everything’s connected. It’s a connected platform. And the truth is the devil’s in the details. But this is such an interesting question because we’ve actually evolved where…

Rishi Srivastava (16:15)
Mm-hmm

Patrick Allen (16:25)
Five or seven years ago, I would have answered the question like this. I would have primarily focused on our ERP offering. And I would have said to you, Rishi, when we talk about connected construction, our ERP, or our financial management. So when we say ERP, it’s the financial management, the accounting system, right?

That is absolutely connected. There are different modules to tie AP, AR, general ledger, your payroll. So all your back office accounting, your payroll people, your HR people, operations. And it’s a very tightly connected system that can eliminate a lot of silos, a lot of spreadsheets. And that is true. But we have morphed into a new era where it’s that. It’s a connected ERP, but it’s also so much more.

Trimble Construction One now is a connected platform that ties in not only the ERP or the financial management aspects, but everything from your design and modeling. So actually building the design or the model, interpreting or converting the model into a constructible, buildable, you know, an actual something that you can fabricate. We have tools for that, turning that into a job or doing an estimate and then bringing that estimate into the ERP to set up the budget.

And so literally, Connected Construction these days, by definition of Trimble, is a platform that truly can connect everything from design, engineering, estimating, pre-construction, operations, through financial management, and all of your back office activities. And so it’s no longer just ERP.

And that’s what makes Trimble so special in the marketplace is we have the ERPs, but we also have all these other point solutions like the estimating programs and modeling programs, fabrication management programs that can be tied together, or you can grow into them. You can start with one piece. I just want project management. I want estimating today. And a year or two, you could call us up and we can turn on the ERP. A year or two later, we can turn on HR management. And so you can really grow. And the big difference though is a truly a platform that will provide a

positive impact and drive efficiencies across all aspects of a construction company, not just for the finance and the back office teams.

Rishi Srivastava (18:34)
The next section here, Patrick, is on ERP, field, and the Trimble Construction One ecosystem. You’ve sold ERP, field tools, and project management platforms for years. What’s the biggest misconception contractors still have about ERPs or construction platforms?

Patrick Allen (18:52)
⁓ Thank you. There’s a, I’ve doodled on this one for a while, but there’s still a notion where I will see either construction owners think they’re still too small.

to embrace the technology like these are systems for bigger companies that may be true depending on the vendor that you’re talking with, right? You know, and depending on your needs and requirements. The beautiful thing about Trimble is we have so many different solutions for small, medium and large businesses. It’s not just a one stop shop. So it’s not like, you know, we’re trying to put a square peg in a round hole and sell you a half a million dollar system when, you know, you could get away with something just for a couple thousand dollars. We have solutions for the smaller size companies.

but that mindset still lingers to a certain degree that you know these are bigger tools or bigger systems for bigger companies they’re not and couple that with the labor shortage now is the time to really lean in and embrace it. The other thing too that I see is from an ownership standpoint oftentimes when we do our software presentations with contractors we’re presenting to maybe a controller a CFO a couple project managers some operations staff

50-50 depending on the client sometimes the owner will be in those presentations the owner of the construction company other times and this is what kills me this is this is if I had my magic wand if there’s one thing I could change sometimes the owner will walk in the room and we’ll look at the screen and say what’s this all about it’s software someone will say it’s software you know yeah I’m out and walks right out

And it kills me. It’s like, no, no, no, stay, stay, stay awhile, you know, because this, it’s not just that stigma, it’s software. Like, that’s, that’s, you know, let Tom look at that. Let Nancy look at that. I’m out of here.

But again 50-50 some clients the owners they see it and they they attend they want to know what we can do and they know that there is some areas for improvement in their company and they’re curious to see if the technology we’re presenting can solve these needs But I would say you for the for the folks that think like someone else can handle this

really look at that mindset, revisit that mindset because technology, it’s here, it’s here to stay. And I’ll talk about AI in a few minutes. These times are wild right now. You don’t want to be left behind. So take the time to attend that meeting, see what the vendor is presenting, see what your team thinks about it. Chances are at the very least, you’re going to walk out of there with additional ideas. And that might lead into ⁓ bigger discussions around technology. But please that that naive

of like, this is software, this is technology, not my department. Plus, if you do decide, if your company decides to move forward with technology, and I think this might be one of your questions too, and I’ll stop here so I don’t reveal it all, but many clients should understand that in order to have a really successful implementation, whether it’s estimating project management or ERP or any product, it’s so important to have ownership and leadership at all levels bought in.

And really, it starts with the owner, the CEO, when he or she is bought in and they can explain to their people the why, why we’re making a change with our estimating platform or our ERP.

because downstream we know in the implementation there’s always going to be some bumps in the road. And when the owner is there and has explained to his team or her team, here’s why we’re doing this and trying to reach that, that most amount of buy-in that they can get on the front end, that’s going to alleviate a lot of bumps in the road when things are different in the new system compared to how I’m used to doing it today, right? There’s going to be those, those bumps or friction. And so when you have the buy-in though, from the CEO, the ownership down.

man, it makes a world of difference. It really does. So that’s why those are the couple of reasons why I would encourage owners, you know, don’t walk out of that meeting. Don’t write that off as though that’s just a software demo. Take a look, see what we can do for you. And it’s probably going to stimulate thought for other business processes or areas for improvement.

Rishi Srivastava (22:33)
Yeah, you know, our own internal world sometimes can be very different from what the vendor is presenting to us.

Patrick Allen (22:40)
Yeah, agreed. We try our best. We take a lot of pride in doing adequate, detailed, thorough discovery.

I trained the sales team. So Rishi, if you came in as a lead or you requested information, the first things my salesperson is going to do is sit down with you and understand what sparked your interest, what’s working, what’s not, what’s got you up at night. What are some areas for improvement? What are you doing for estimating for project management, for accounting? We’re going to poke and prod and get a sense of, an understanding of where you’re at today and where you want to go. And if we’re not a good fit, we’ll shake hands and part ways. But if we are, we’ll lead into a demonstration that specifically

tailored around what you had mentioned to us in the discovery. So we’re not showing all sorts of bells and whistles, but we’re really saying, Rishi, you you told me last week these are the three big areas you’d love to see improvement on. This is literally what the demonstration will cover these X, Y and Z, these three areas. And then if you want to get into other areas, no problem. But we want to make sure we can help you check the boxes with your immediate concerns or areas that you are curious to see if we could handle that might help you with your growth or efficiencies and so on.

Rishi Srivastava (23:45)
Makes sense. Many contractors feel overwhelmed with choices. Trimble, Procore, Sage, AutoDesk, standalone apps, et cetera. How do you help a contractor cut through the noise and make a confident long-term decision?

Patrick Allen (24:00)
Yeah, and it’s so true. There’s so many choices now. There’s so many choices and when you stay in this industry for a while, it’s very cyclical.

When the times are good, there’s lots and lots of vendors, there’s lots of pop ups and you see their banners and there are trade shows and they’re also the latest and greatest and they’re the number one cloud whatever system fill in the blanks. And then a couple years it’s like they evaporate or they get bought out and so forth. So there’s the big players as trimbles, there’s pro core, there’s auto desk, there’s different ERP companies out there. Now one good way is, you know, if you’re not sure where to start a couple things, you know, if there’s trade shows that you can attend or upcoming events, it’s always a neat telltale sign to see what vendors are at the

different associations or trade shows so that you can start creating a list and then a short list. But I would say, know, as a household name, Trimble, if you’re just curious to see like, can Trimble help me or do I need to go to another company?

Literally, if you just go take two minutes and go on trimble.com and request for information that will come in to trimble sales organization and we’ll have a representative reach out to you. And again, do a discovery. tell me about your company, what lines of work talk to me about your strategy growth plans the next couple of years. is there anything in particular that’s absolutely pressing that you you’re curious about, or would you like us to just provide an overview of what Trimble can do for a smaller growing or midsize or enterprise level company? But again, that’s all that meet and greet and discovery.

And so if you’re just curious to see can Trimble help you can fill out a request for information on the website And then a lot of clients so they’ll do their own research They’ll talk to their peers other construction owners construction accounting executive CFOs who are using for financial management who are using for estimating for project management and They typically come up with you know a few names and then have us in for demonstrations But that’s what I’d recommend because if you just do a Google search on estimating software

project management, you’ll have headaches because there’s so many vendors and some of them are mom and pop shops, some of them are big, know, $100 million plus companies.

You can’t go wrong with the brand names, the household names, and then hopefully we can whittle away or we’ll make recommendations of providers that could help. That’s the other thing. When we don’t have a solution, this is a small community for us because we live, eat, sleep, and breathe this industry day in and day out. Owners and CFOs don’t. The vendors are constantly changing. So we can make recommendations to you that might better serve you if we can’t handle it.

Rishi Srivastava (26:16)
Yeah, yeah. What are the top two to three ROI drivers you consistently see when contractors switch to Trimble Construction 1, whether it’s time savings, error reduction, faster billing, or greater job level visibility?

Patrick Allen (26:33)
All of them. Time savings is a big one.

Because again, we’re now able to see something in one system, where the system can produce reports and actually email me the key critical KPI type reports. So time savings at top of the list, no more spreadsheets, no more calling Gary to get the latest out of his purchase order or change order log to piece that together with my job budget info in Excel, and then to piece that together with my receivables and QuickBooks, all that’s eliminated, right? Because now you have a connected system with real time job cost insights and financial insights for the company overall.

So time savings and then also just again I’m a big fan of taking risk off the table. Everyone’s growing. Everyone’s been growing and we’re growing and we’re doubling. I keep hearing that over and over and again I’ll say it again with growth comes trouble and these systems truly

are worth their weight in gold because they can tell you where you might be having trouble or where you might be drifting away from what you had budgeted and where you’re at with the job, right? You had your original budget or revised budget. Now you’ve got your, your costs coming in. We’re 30 % complete, but we might’ve spent 70 % of our budget and we’re only 20 % bill. So these are the kinds of things where as an owner or CFO or controller, I want to know about this in real time. The project manager wants to know about this in real time.

And maybe it’s just the billings, know, the customer’s got to catch up with their billings and they will. That’s great. But if not, or if I’m going sideways on my labor material equipment, or if I’m going sideways on a cost code, I don’t want to know about that two days later or two weeks later. I need to know about it now. And especially if I’m accustomed to juggling maybe four or five, six jobs as a PM, but now I have seven, eight, nine jobs and the company’s taken on more work. I need to know that.

now more than ever before when we were small, and I only had a couple projects going on, it’s pretty easy to manage this, right? A lot of it was just upstairs, I could think through it, know where I’m at with my costs, has he paid me or not. But when you’ve got more and more projects and a growing backlog, you have to have systems to tell you where you’re at from a cost standpoint, in real time. And again, that’s I just see that it’s just so risky with more growth is more work, more people for your company, more project managers, more assistant PMs, more supers.

more lines of work and the risk increases so these technology tools can really reduce the risk there.

Rishi Srivastava (28:49)
Yeah, a lot of times it’s not easy to understand whether you are even making money when you grow too much, you know.

Patrick Allen (28:57)
That’s right. Yeah, there’s a big misconception there. You know, the work is coming in and we’re expanding and expanding. And the real risk is when we start deviating over the owner starts deviating from their core bread and butter market. And again, I’m not saying it’s not a good thing, but we start having people manage these jobs that haven’t managed those types of projects before.

Rishi Srivastava (29:19)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Allen (29:19)
Right.

And so that’s where you can just see it. And then if we’re doing things manually and we’re piecing information together, that’s a month old, you know, so yeah, there’s a lot of variables there that can make growth a bad thing without the right technology stack.

Rishi Srivastava (29:34)
Right. The next section here, is on digital transformation and organizational change. You’ve coached and led high-performing sales organizations, including teams selling into very traditional construction markets. What separates contractors who succeed in tech transformation from those who stall out?

Patrick Allen (29:54)
Excellent question. I would say my knee-jerk reaction to that is ensuring that we have

the people that know what they’re talking about working with you from start to finish the right subject matter experts. Literally like when we have a demonstration and we’re shown saying ⁓ operations or spooling capabilities to a big mechanical, when we have our former project managers in the room from a big mechanical and they’re speaking the same language as the owner and the operations team, night and day difference, night and day. We’re in the same frequency. We’re following the needs to a T. It’s making sense. We’re seeing how we can connect the dots with the client.

and how the client can benefit from the technology. Now that the key is, is also flowing that all the way through. If that client goes ahead and signs up and implements the technology, we also want to make sure we have subject matter experts, folks that absolutely eat, live, sleep, and breathe those products that they’re implementing, because that can make or break a huge… That to me is one of the biggest difference makers, is the people implementing these systems, and not only their applied knowledge of the system,

but also their understanding of your needs and requirements, the client’s needs. And when we have the right people in the room that know ERP, know project management, operations, know human resources, HR, we have tools for HR management, what a difference. And so we’ve made a switch from universal consultants that might see the whole project holistically to very specialized consultants handling the different pieces and then assigning project managers to oversee the whole implementation holistically.

paid

dividends. It’s you’ve got all your subject matter experts, they’re all handling their piece of the puzzle, if you will, with great expertise and knowledge of the product and knowledge of how your different personas or end users on the client side would use the product.

And then you’ve got someone keeping the train on the tracks, like a project manager overseeing the timeframe, the budget, and who’s doing what and how the pieces come into play. That’s a little bit more of a larger scale type implementation, but yeah, having the right people. So if you’re evaluating technology.

Pay close attention to the presenters knowledge of the industry, your company, the product and how it relates to your needs. And then also pay close attention or ask about the implementation team. Who’s going to be implementing? Who’s going to be working with me on these tools or this tool that’s going to get implemented? What are their backgrounds? Where are they from? know, do they just work with mechanicals like myself or GCs? All of that can really make or break an implementation.

Rishi Srivastava (32:30)
Just speaking the same language, the vendor and the contractor, if they are, just makes things so much easier for the contractors.

Patrick Allen (32:25)
the matter expertise, the experience factor, you will, of the people involved in the project.

Yeah.

Yeah, we’ve we’ve learned over the last several years when we had it takes a village and that’s the beauty of Trimble is we have teams now that are very specialized to work just with general contractors, just with concrete, just with steel, just with heavy civil, just with MEP because there’s nuances. There’s big time nuances with those verticals and with our products. And we have so many different products. What I might sell you for an estimating system for a general, I have a different estimating

package if you were mechanical or electrical. And so it’s really with all these choices, one of your questions earlier, it’s so important that you partner up with a company who can help you navigate all of that and get you the right set of tools backed by the right people to make the implementation a success.

Rishi Srivastava (33:24)
Yep. You’ve worked with some of the most disciplined AEC organizations. From a financial lens, where do they begin? Job casting accuracy, forecasting, labor tracking, WIP or something else?

Patrick Allen (33:38)
I like it a lot. This question reminds me of a company, I won’t use their name, but they’re a big electrical up here in the Northeast. And I know they’re head of IT and technology very well. And they use our ERP and they use some other systems as well. And the reason why this particular company comes to mind, you struck a chord there.

they are so tight on job costs. So that’s their go to is constantly looking at their projects and at they actually look at job costs at the overall cost category. So the labor, material, equipment and subs. They have a variety of phase codes that they look at, but they’re not too, too granular with the phase codes. Because when you start to get so granular at that level, phase codes, cost codes,

What happens is, from a field perspective, people see a big laundry list of these different buckets of money or phase codes they can put costs towards or hours towards and it starts to get muffled up. So they keep their cost code list very limited.

and they track their costs and again a labor material equipment subs but they know their costs day in and day out on the different activities on the project. So they know where they stand on the electrical rough in for first floor for building number two. They know this daily. They look at those reports religiously and they couple that with our workforce management partner so they can see their current backlog.

And do they have enough work around the corner, say starting in January, to keep their crews busy? Or are they going to call pre-construction or estimating and pick up the bidding activities? And so they’re constantly looking at…

real-time job costs, they’re looking at staff on hand, active projects, what the backlog looks like, and then they tie all that into their forecasting and their work in progress reports. So they know, because their goal, their overarching goal is to never have to lay off an employee. So they want to make sure they have the bandwidth, they’ve got the projects coming down the pipe to support their crews, and so the growth is there, but more importantly, the current

project portfolio, how are we looking from a cost standpoint on these jobs? So they’re doing it so smart by not getting too carried away by growing, growing, growing, but costs are getting out of control. And they’re also looking to make sure that they’ve got enough pipeline.

Rishi Srivastava (35:45)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Allen (35:51)
to support their current crews and project executives and supers and foreman and so forth. So the three different areas there that they touch upon cost controls and real time workforce management, if you will, scheduling and looking out for manpower. And then also that’s all tying into forecasting and the WIP so they can have a really good look ahead of two, three months and to know what Q1 of 26 is going to look like for that company. And if they have to throttle up with estimating or

if there’s anything that they need to pay attention to with adjusting for the business.

Rishi Srivastava (36:24)
For a CFO or owner listening who feels behind on technology. What’s the most important first step they can take this quarter that actually builds momentum?

Patrick Allen (36:36)
I love that question. So I’m going to do a little selfless selfish plug. Go on Trimble.com.

Requests for information just fill out a request for information Embrace the technology. It’s not going away and whether you choose Trimble for your technology or another company Heck, we’d love you to choose tremble right? I’m an employee of Trimble So I’m gonna plug my own company, but don’t delay it lean into even if this is something where You consider yourself not a tech expert. Heck. Nobody’s a tech expert But as the owner or a CFO of a construction company the time has come where you want to lean into it

and really understand what these technology companies like Trimble can provide, especially with AI, and I’ll talk about that in a minute or two.

everything that’s going on with our AI efforts and AI in general, how the competitive landscape is going to change in construction over the next year or two, it’s going to be wild because the technology is changing. So now is the time more than ever to lean into it. And it literally just starts, bring up the trimble.com website and start taking a look at some of our capabilities and then request for information. We’re not going to give a hard sales pitch. We’re going have a salesperson ask questions about your business and learning your needs and where you’re going over the next couple of years.

and seeing if we can help in a different area. With 84 different business applications, there’s a lot that we can potentially look at. And of course, you don’t have to start off with many different products. You just start off with the piece that’s maybe the most concerning or bothering you the most, and then you can grow into it. But yeah, lean into it. Technology, and now I understand why these big.

companies like the Amazons of the world and FedEx is and such why with the rise of AI, why they’re making reductions to their workforce to a certain extent, contractors need to be in the know with this. So if you’re an owner, absolutely a CFO to and these tools now can provide information with CFO to really help them make insightful strategic decisions for a construction company. And it’s really that’s the big premise of a CFO. It’s not just

they’re the chief financial, you know, they only deal with the numbers. It’s so that they can really understand the insights of the business and make key strategy key recommendations to ownership into the C team with the systems that they have to really guide the business to future growth with as little risk as possible.

Rishi Srivastava (38:53)
Yeah, things are changing so fast.

Patrick Allen (38:55)
yeah.

Rishi Srivastava (38:55)
The last section here, Patrick, is on leadership, growth, and personal philosophy. You’ve coached sellers through Follow Me to the Top and emphasized mindset heavily in your profile. Is there a mindset you wish more construction executives had when evaluating technology?

Patrick Allen (39:13)
I said it earlier in the podcast, so I’m not gonna harp on it. If I could nudge a few owners, just have that open mindset, attend that meeting. Don’t write it off as that’s software, that’s technology. Let the others handle it, let my staff handle it. Be curious, be inquisitive, and especially ⁓ now more than ever, just to see how AI is coming into play in the technology market for construction.

I mean, how cool is it to be in the know and if something really strikes a chord with you or if you see something or you know your business can gain from it, you could really have a competitive advantage over the guy or gal that you’re competing with or your arch nemesis who’s ignoring technology.

There are a lot of stories of contractors in very specific markets where we have helped with technology transformations and it has given them a big key competitive advantage in their market compared to the other guy who is relying on boatloads of Excel spreadsheets and clipboards and metal file cabinets and manual methods. And especially again, when you when you take the growth factor and you compound that these systems are like they’re

They’re key, they’re instrumental, they’re the linchpin in an organization to tie an organization together. So yeah, lean in, have an open mindset, join that meeting and be curious, be inquisitive.

Rishi Srivastava (40:33)
Love it. You spent nearly 20 years helping contractors adopt new systems. What’s one story, good or bad, that changed how you think about supporting customers through big transitions?

Patrick Allen (40:47)
There’s a couple key takeaways. I mentioned earlier having buy-in from the ownership.

of the construction company downstream to the staff so they understand the why behind implementing software that’s so important. So if you’re a CEO, CFO, C level person, ownership, owner of the construction company, it’s so important to explain to your staff so they understand why we purchase this and the timeframe and the project and who’s going to be involved. And that’s why it’s so important from a demonstration standpoint for the owner to attend. shows to their staff that they’re taking this seriously. They’re behind

it they’re seeing okay this might be a lot of work or there’s some pros there’s cons there’s gonna be some change with this because the change management piece is so critical with these things so buy in from top level down is key the other thing that I would also say is take the time to implement don’t rush it

don’t rush it and we can give you a real fair shake at Trimble for your first year. Everything’s a SaaS agreement. we build annually and includes the cloud, the product support and so forth. And we can give you a fair shake for your first year while you implement. have a way of doing that. And we take a lot of pride with that because the client, when they sign a contract with us,

naturally, they want to go, go, go, go, you know, sign a contract today, who’s showing up next week, when are going to get the project started. And in reality, it’s usually it doesn’t quite work out that you sent that way you sign a contract today, might wait two or three weeks to deploy the software and then now it’s spun up in the cloud and now we can begin the implementation. But oftentimes, a client, especially in the financial management side, if they’re buying a new ERP or accounting, they’ll have a go live date in mind.

Rishi Srivastava (42:06)
I’m

Patrick Allen (42:25)
And I think that’s wonderful that you have a go live date in mind. You always want to have those milestones of when we’re to start, know, where’s the end date ideally. But our consultants can bring to the table a lot of recommendations around go live dates and just know you should be flexible with your go live date with your time frame.

take the time to implement. if you said to me, know, hey, Patrick, I’m going to sign up today with the new ERP system. I want to be live by April 1st. I would tell you, you know, that’s a great target. Let’s shoot for April 1st, right? But is it the end of the world if we miss April 1st and move it out a month or two?

And the chances are probably not. just want to make sure the cutover is clean. We have tools to make a cut over clean on any given month of the year. All right. That’s a fact. So there’s no risk with that. But when clients take the time to implement, they don’t rush. Couple things happen. The pressure, the window has opened up so that the pressure goes down on their teams, their staff.

And that’s a big game, right? Is we’re not just rush, rush, rush, because these are full-time employees you have on the payroll that are doing 40, 50, 60 plus hours a week. And now they get to go implement a new estimating system or a new ERP or new project management. So this is additional work, right? So you’re taking risk again off the table when we expand the timeframe so that you’re not getting into a mutiny on your hands where somebody has just had a bad day and they realize they have to do it differently in the new system. And they throw their hands up and they say, I just can’t deal with this. Make it stop, make it go away. I don’t want this.

So little things like that can make a big difference. Plus, you bought a system today, you might already have a system, and I think everyone can appreciate this story where they saw the demo, they saw all the bells and whistles, and they wanted it all, and they bought it, and they’re utilizing probably 10 % of the product’s capabilities today.

Rishi Srivastava (44:02)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Allen (44:02)
This is why because there’s only so much time in the day push comes to shove your staff can only do so much and you went live and it is what it is and maybe some people quit or left or retired and there you go. We don’t want to repeat that process. We want to take the time and get you way more value out of what you bought and not just a replica of you know maybe an older legacy system and we survived the implementation. So we want to change that up. So just know that there’s a perfect balance. We don’t want to go too fast.

because it’s a high pressure situation with implementing. We don’t want to go too, too slow because people lose sight. Where are we going with this project? You know, we keep kicking the can down the road. So there’s a balance. There’s a fine point there, but our consultants can work with clients on that very topic and get a plan that’s going to dial, dial it in just right where you’re to get the value out of, you know, the product that you purchased and not just another fancy, you know, system that you’re only utilizing a fraction of its capabilities.

Rishi Srivastava (44:58)
I’ve talked to many CFOs, ERP changes are tough

Patrick Allen (45:01)
Yes. Yes. They are. Yeah, I’ll speak to it if you want if you got a minute or two they are and I have the team my sales team I’ve trained them to acknowledge that there are going to be bumps in the road. None of these implementations just go completely swimmingly well into plan right there’s times where they they’re hard. And that’s why that window of you know, giving yourself a little more breathing room during the implementation.

Rishi Srivastava (45:05)
Yeah, go for it.

Patrick Allen (45:26)
having internal resources that are bought in, having maybe an internal project manager that can help grease the skids and keep people on the track. That makes a world of difference. Having the right people on the vendor side, the right subject matter experts, the right personalities. Those are make or break type variables, right? And that’s why I say take the time to not only check out what the software can do, but spend the time understanding the implementation plan and who’s involved and talk to your staff about

Are we ready for this? Is the time now? Can we do this? And here’s my expectations if we do. And that can alleviate a lot of risk. But yeah, there’s a lot of moving pieces with ERP.

The good news is as you start with Trimble, you don’t have to buy everything all at once. You can piecemeal it. So we can go live with a product, take a breather, come back for phase two or phase three, optimize, great, let the dust settle, and then we can add another piece and another piece. So we’re not overwhelming and we’re seeing results as we go.

Rishi Srivastava (46:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. The last question here, is if you had one final message for owners, CFOs, controllers, and PMs listening today about the future of construction technology, what would it be?

Patrick Allen (46:38)
So I talked a little bit about AI earlier. And so I guess my recommendation to construction owners, CFOs, financial executives, again, lean in to the technology offerings now more than ever. Because with AI, everything is changing big time right now. And the way that you interact, the user interface, and the way that you interact with our particular products, our solutions,

Is it a wildly change over the next year, year and a half? And there are some things that I could show you with what we’ve done with building bots or agents in our systems. And I’ll pick on ERP. just talking about it where no longer does the human being have to run these processes. AI will run the processes. Our bots will run the process. And we’re talking about things like bank reconciliation, accounts payable, scanning of vendor invoices.

talking about reports reporting. can literally go into one of our ERPs now and hit on a button that’s like a Siri button and say, hey, bring up bring up anything that’s over 90 days, my aging over 90 days, or bring up any jobs that have, you know, $100,000.

and costs that are over budget on these phase codes and it not only brings the report up on the screen it creates a report and then it will prompt you do you want to see this in a graph format and what type of graph would you like a bar chart a pie graph a line graph it’s insane so what used to take a SQL report or a crystal report or a dashboard now it’s Siri and it’s on demand

And in nanoseconds, you see this unbelievable report and graph being built on your screen. And then, I want that just emailed to me every single day. I don’t even want to have to hit the Siri button anymore. These are the kinds of things where, again, if you’re the owner of a construction company, whether you’re a tech fan or not, when you see like, we just went from, I don’t know, steady progress over the last few decades to just light speed. I mean,

within the next year or two, everything’s gonna be so wildly different. And the reason I’m saying lean in and I’m encouraging these folks to look at this and pay real close attention is you can gain a huge competitive advantage. Know this stuff before your other big electrical that you compete with or your other big concrete company finds out. Because maybe you don’t need to hire those people that you were planning on. Or maybe your staff who’s running these reports or doing these manual

know, day to day entries, they now can have time allocated towards more important initiatives or strategic initiatives for the company and let the AI do the mundane, you know, daily processing of tasks and routines. So this is just such an exciting time. It’s just too exciting to keep a blind eye and I don’t want anyone, you know, being out of the loop.

and now you’re behind the times and you get serious about this stuff two years from now or three years from now and everyone’s already got it or your competitors already got it. Everyone’s looking for a competitive advantage right now. And I’m telling you, technology next to your labor, next to your people is absolutely there. Jump in, have some fun, stay curious, stay inquisitive, look at the demos, ask, talk to the vendors, look at the vendors more as partners to see what they can really do for your business and how they can help you win more work or stay

Rishi Srivastava (49:31)
Mm-hmm.

Patrick Allen (49:49)
tighter on the jobs or give you tools that you’ve got people doing you know manual methods that you’re paying an arm and a leg for.

Rishi Srivastava (49:55)
Yeah, actually, I love the way you said that the progress is happening so fast. So the research has been going on for like 50 years and suddenly like in last two, three years, you know, it has come to a point where it’s just very good.

Patrick Allen (50:10)
Yeah,

yeah, absolutely. I can’t give you the specific percentages. Trimble is a publicly traded company, but I can tell you a few years ago, our budget for AI was a very, very small amount across all of our AEC, architectural engineering construction products. Today, in the last couple of years, let’s just say that line item for R &D for AI has gone up

umpteen times fold. It is like we’re doing it smart, methodically, where it makes sense product by product.

but it’s happening and it’s just like, it hit exponential focus and growth, if you will. Whereas before, I think everyone kind of thought like, let’s just throw some money at it, see where this whole thing’s going and see some use cases. Now that we figured out the use cases and where we can deploy this so efficiently in our products to save an end user so much time. Now it’s just, there’s like breadcrumb trails. Now it’s just leading to so many different processes.

And that’s why it’s like, man, you get in on this now and you can have some tools in your company that just do things for you you never thought were possible and give you a big advantage.

Rishi Srivastava (51:16)
Patrick, thank you so much for your time. I enjoyed this conversation.

Patrick Allen (51:20)
My pleasure. Likewise, anytime, Rishi, thanks a million for having me. I appreciate it. And thank you to all the listeners. I appreciate it.

Rishi Srivastava (51:23)
course. Thank you.