Place Your Content in Front of Contractors

\”Placing Your Content in Front of Contractors\” is the name of a webinar being conducted by Trimble and featuring Panduit.

(If you did not attend the webinar and want to view it, click here.)

Last week I saw an ad from Trimble promoting its Constructible vision and “teasing” how manufacturers can get their product in front of contractors. Further, they mentioned Panduit, which caught my attention.

So, I reached out to some friends at Trimble to get a sneak peak of their vision and input on the webinar.

Bottom line, if you’re a manufacturer and can attend this webinar on Tuesday, August 11^th at 11:00AM EST / 8:00AM PST, either you or someone from your team should attend this webinar.

Why?

The term “digital transformation” is bandied about by many companies as an endeavor to make themselves more digital to improve productivity, efficiency and capitalize upon the digitalization of commerce while, theoretically making information available 24x7x365 and more.

Concurrently, companies are trying to digitally connect among partners and other networks. For some the term becomes the nirvana of a connected ecosystem.

While it isn’t feasible, especially in the short-term, for an entire channel to be connected, it is possible for companies to envision what the future can be as well as to begin implementing either phases and/or connecting with key downstream partners.

And by downstream partners it is now feasible to connect

Manufacturers through reps to distributors and contractors for their procurement and estimators to design staff and electrical engineers (and yes, if this was an industrial facility, all the way down to a machine).

For the construction industry, getting to design and estimating can also represent opportunities for manufacturers, especially in the emergence of digital selling and a need for manufacturers to be visible at the point of decision given the challenges that COVID has placed in the sales process.

While being the “named” on a spec doesn’t guarantee the brand will be procured due to varied influencers throughout the buying process, it does increase the odds.

Getting information digitally down to contractors, estimators, designers, and engineers enables manufacturers to:

• Gain increased brand awareness
• Promote product capabilities

While developers and contractors gain increased confidence in design and estimating accuracy … the right products and the “right (accurate)” budget.

And with increased product knowledge, contractors can have greater confidence for project timelines as well as addressing installation issues.

Yes, it sounds like nirvana.

I asked Trimble to overview and share a preview:

Trimble is hosting a webinar on 08/11 at 11:00AM EST, 8:00 AM PT for manufacturers (Register here). Joining them as a special guest is Theo Gemkow, Business Development Manager from Panduit to share his experience and how they’ve benefited from partnering with Trimble. The webinar is about how manufacturers can gain visibility into the commercial MEP contractor workflows – from estimating, design through procurement and how they can use the insights to increase their product sales. (Note: MEP is mechanical, electrical, and plumbing)

 Who is Trimble?

Trimble is the market leader serving all phases of the construction industry. Trimble MEP, a division of Trimble serves more than 10,000 MEP contracting firms in North America that represent 100,000+ users across the pre-construction workflow. Trimble partners with over 4,700 building product manufacturers specializing in mechanical, electrical, and plumbing products and 1000+ distributors in the construction space to provide digitized content on real-world procurable products to contractors in the digital construction workflow. Trimble has a vast ecosystem across the construction landscape:

Trimble acquired several notable companies in the commercial trade construction space over the years including Accubid Systems, the leading provider of estimating software, Trade Service, the leading provider of product and pricing solutions to the MEP trades, SketchUp, QuickPen International, Tekla, Building Data and others. Trimble’s solutions span the entire construction workflow from estimating, modeling, prefab & field solutions all the way to procurement.

The solutions Trimble provides to manufacturers

Digitization has changed the way contractors estimate, design, and make procurement decisions. Trimble is offering manufacturers the opportunity to get their product content into the estimating and design workflows to influence contractors in the pre-construction space to increase their chance of getting procured on a project. What gets estimated and designed, gets procured.  Targeted touch-points with contractors during estimating and design creates brand awareness and makes it more likely that your products will be procured.

Technology trends are changing the landscape of buildings construction and are impacting how building product manufacturers go to market with their products.  As a result, a digital gap has grown between manufacturer catalogs and their customers’ digital construction workflows. This is leading to a lack of visibility into customer needs, which are also rapidly changing due to digitization.

Leveraging Trimble’s Content platform, manufacturers can get their digitized content into the heart of their customers’ (estimators and designers / detailers) workflows and content choices, starting at the contractor cubicle. As a result, they gain insights into their customers’ pre-construction activities using Trimble Construction Analytics and can strategically calibrate their sales and marketing activities to maximize revenue and customer loyalty.

Joining our webinar, “Placing Your Content in Front of Contractors––from Estimating Through Design and Procurement” on Tuesday, August 11th at 11:00 AM ET. Register here.

The webinar promises to be informative and Panduit’s insights could be enlightening to many. ElectricalTrends’ goal is to share new opportunities and highlight how others are envisioning the construction landscape.

The Trimble vision complements the vision of ETIM North America, another reason why manufacturers need to get involved early in the industry’s product classification initiative as multiple product categories are already “moving down the road.” Reach out to Mary Shaw for more information.

And make sure you / your company doesn’t miss learning from Panduit on “Placing your content in front of contractors.”

(If you did not attend the webinar and want to view it, click here.)