The 3 best things we’ve done lately
Our favorite features from TradeTapp 8 & 9
In our experience, the most successful features are those created at the confluence of great customer feedback and thoughtful long term product strategy. We’ve made two major releases and several updates in the past few months as we continue to grow. Here are some of our favorites.
- References & referrals workflow
A prequal submission is like a job interview, and even when someone looks great on paper, you still might want to call references and take notes on their response. We built a workflow for that.
This feature was easy for us to get excited about. It delivers both as a solution for a real problem and, at the same time, sticks to our core philosophy of facilitating collaboration between general contractors and construction managers.
General Contractors often rely on references and project history in order to assess a subcontractor’s capability — this is especially true when the relationship is new. With TradeTapp, an invited subcontractor provides a handful of project references and referral contacts as part of their questionnaire response to the GC. Now, instead of asking for someone to complete yet another form, we allow GC’s to send requests and receive responses through the TradeTapp platform.
Using these references, we can further accomplish our goal of highlighting potential risk — giving our customers the roadmap they need to make expedite and data driven decisions.
2. 3 year trending performance
True scenario: I work for a GC where there’s a shared company folder for all of subcontractor prequal documents. When reviewing one particular contractor, I have six different files pulled up on my computer including a spreadsheet, a tracking log, and several scanned written documents. Submissions from previous years are in a different directory. After 30 minutes of searching and jotting down numbers, I finally arrive at:
“Working capital position has declined in each of the past three years.”
Pretty important to know, right? But if it takes 30 minutes just to track down the history of one contractor, how can you handle 300 coming in at once?
Our Risk Evaluation Engine is getting smarter. We’re now able to automatically identify trends in contractor performance, indicating things like “the frequency of recordable injuries has declined each of the last three years” or “revenue has increased by more than 25% in each of the past three years.”
Why does it matter? Trends are such an important way to be predictive in risk management, especially if the award being considered is another 6 or 8 months down the road. Additionally, we can use trending information to put mitigation controls in place for long term monitoring or follow ups.
3. Risk identification: insurance program benchmarking
“What General Liability limit should I require from my demolition subcontractor?”
Our customers asked us: could we help tell them if the insurance coverage they’re receiving from subcontractors is inline with what other GC’s receive from similar trades? Transparency in the subcontractor insurance marketplace is a traditional gray area for General Contractors — it’s hard to know what is a reasonable expectation for coverage from each trade or what might simply be commercially unavailable.
With TradeTapp, we can provide immediate insight to questions like, “What is the expected pollution liability coverage for a foundations contractor?” or “Should I be receiving professional liability coverage from my elevator subcontractor?”.
Other improvements from TradeTapp 8 & 9:
The enhancements and new features don’t stop there. Here’s some of the other highlights from the past two releases:
- Additional reporting features
- Financial input warnings for quality control
- Enhanced risk mitigation logic
- Status improvements
If you’re interested in learning more about TradeTapp’s pricing, our progress, or just want to say hey please reach out to us at info@tradetapp.com.
