Case Study: Turning the Estimating and Bid Process Digital

A transmission and distribution construction firm upgraded their estimation and bidding process from a constellation of connected spreadsheets to a centralized digital solution.

The nation’s top Transmission and Distribution construction company reached out to Digital Mass at the end of 2020 for our expertise in selecting a CRM technology that would fit their needs as an enterprise.

This company asked for a completely neutral evaluation of CRM platforms in the marketplace and was looking for guidance on how to make a fitness judgment for their technology needs. The Digital Mass team took this unique project on with a commitment to uphold our fiduciary responsibility in making impartial recommendations.

Discovery

The Digital Mass team dug in with a robust series of stakeholder interviews with all levels of the business that would be involved in the roll-out of this tool. This construction company had often grown through acquisition and the region-specific districts were often vertically isolated from one another.

The primary stakeholder team that Digital Mass worked with had the mandate to bring these districts together to foster healthy intra-district competition, get a grip on the multi-decade contract relationships that were critical to the business, and find new opportunities where districts that have differential project expertise could work together on joint efforts.

Our Development Process

1. Conducted 60 stakeholder interviews across levels and departments in the business. The team spent time with:
   • Enterprise Cooperation Group – Primary sponsors
   • Executive Team – Accountability, growth forecasting, and stewardship
   • District Managers – To manage their core relationships and interact in a lower friction way with the Executive Team
   • Estimators and Marketers – Improving this class of actors’ ability to share related previous work and create compelling estimate presentation
   • Internal IT – For long-term tenability and planned integrations with resource tools
2. Built a matrix of 81 high-level technical and functional requirements this organization needed a CRM platform to satisfy.
3. Crafted a market analysis of CRM platform offerings available today. The Digital Mass team interviewed and watched demos from over 20 companies in the following market buckets:
   • Successful niche technology players
   • Up-and-coming mid-market offerings
   • Enterprise-ready established platforms
4. Selected a shortlist of 3 best contenders.
5. Created a narrative-driven use case that incorporated the 81 critical requirements the team had from the perspective of the primary user of the system
6. Coordinated an on-site full-day presentation for each of the three contenders
7. Facilitated final CRM selection based on the requirements scorecard and transitioned to implementation

Outcome

By leveraging the Digital Mass team from initial evaluation all the way through to implementation, the customer benefited from a consistent strategic vision from start to finish. This customer is still engaged with Digital Mass and is looking to launch the 4th phase of Salesforce enhancement for their organization in 2023.

To talk with the Digital Mass team, contact us.