Our Evolving Business Model

How developing a consulting offering has expanded our market

Embrace the unknown. Roll with the changes. Stay fluid.

As cliche as it may be, I’ve really only held to this one mandate (whichever version of the above you prefer) in the year since quitting my day job to start TradeTapp. The idea is that our best path to success is in our ability to listen closely to users and be willing to do what it takes in order to provide what they’re really asking for. Easy right? I thought so too, but the truth I’ve come to learn is that the inverse of this concept — staying the course — is actually much easier to execute. Being fluid in product development requires much more discipline and tolerance for taking risk than I ever imagined.

Let’s be clear: I’m not talking about agile development, the idea of developing software through a process of releasing a handful of features, getting feedback, iterating, releasing again, and so on. I’m talking about answers to simple questions like: What are you? A product? A service? A consultant?

A year ago I would have told you that TradeTapp is a SaaS product: a plug and play tool that could be added into any Contractor’s purchasing workflow to enhance their risk management approach and protect project earnings. Bottom line was: we’re software, and the less you need hear from us (the TradeTapp team) the better. The early vision of our product was simply a web-based platform to address and modernize an issue that is increasingly plaguing construction companies. As it turns out, we’re evolving into something more. With careful attention to what our clients are really asking for, we’re growing in a way we never anticipated.

• What do contractors really need in prequalification?

From the beginning, each time we would sit with contractors either to get feedback or introduce our product we would hear the same things: “We need to enhance the prequalification process, but we’ve never done financial vetting before, can you help us learn?” or, “We’ve used third party vendors in the past but their analysis is conservative — they don’t understand the realities of the construction purchasing workflow, so we’re forced to ignore or override their suggestions.” Unsurprisingly, these types of comments were most common among smaller or mid-tier Contractors, new insurance buyers, or those who had recently struggled with a challenging Subcontractor default. Time and time again we were told that simply building a product or providing a service in these cases wouldn’t be enough — that as much as software can initiate change, the real impact would in our ability to install knowledge and expertise where it was lacking. We could’ve said this wasn’t our vision and stuck to what we started with, but instead we grew our offering.

• TradeTapp’s Consulting Program

Since this summer, we started piloting a four to six month consulting offering that compliments the use of our web-based platform. I leverage my own expertise and ‘big contractor’ experience as the basis of our offering. The goal of this program is to spend time, primarily in person once per week, to educate companies on the fundamentals of subcontractor analysis. This includes without limitation: reading and understanding financial statements, identifying key risk drivers, and, ultimately, formulating tailored risk controls that can be put in place before a subcontract award is made.

Why just four to six months? First, because we believe that’s simply enough time to appropriately train an internal resource (one or several) on this topic. Second, and more importantly, because we envision an internally driven workflow as the only long-term sustainable solution to enhanced risk management.

• Don’t call it a pivot

In October we released TradeTapp version 2, the second major deployment of features and enhancements for our platform. Our plan for the product remains largely on track from our original vision but the compliant of our consulting program has certainly expanded our market and created a number of exciting new opportunities for TradeTapp. I personally see this program existing as a permanent arm of the company and a key differentiator for us in the prequalification space. With our third major release slated to be pushed the coming few days, we continue to make important progress towards an exciting future.

If you’re interested in learning more about TradeTapp’s pricing, our progress, or just want to say hey please feel free to reach out to us at info@tradetapp.com.