Thousands of tenders on a construction SaaS built from idea to Danish market leader

Context

Erbis implemented a complete service for a leading construction management software vendor in Denmark. Below are the details of the process that led to the final result.

Challenge

Much has to be agreed before construction starts. Companies create an architectural drawing and estimate materials, accept bids from contractors and do the accounting, and only then start the project and manage the construction flow. All of this requires collaboration between owners, contractors and project managers across many organizations.

Given how many threads a construction project has, a workflow management application that puts every participant on the same page is the natural solution. The Danish software provider approached us with exactly this task. At first contact, a business idea was all the client had. We were asked to build the product from scratch: create the product strategy, develop the software and publish the finished product to the app marketplace.

Pre-development

Three people carried out the preparatory work: a Business Analyst, a Solution Architect and a UI/UX Designer.

Our analyst researched the Danish construction market: the volume of capital construction and repairs, the number of commissioned residential and non-residential buildings, and the volume of real-estate transactions, plus the building-materials industry and the revenues of the largest retailers. With the market trends understood, the analyst studied the available construction software and identified the main competitors.

Based on that research, the Solution Architect created the product concept, describing the future software from the user’s point of view: the problems it would solve and the features valuable to users.

The last step was the interface. Our designer started with a black-and-white wireframe to show the structure and placement of elements, then applied the corporate colours to produce a mockup, and finally built a clickable prototype to simulate user journeys.

Solution

We began by selecting the server infrastructure. After comparing the leading cloud providers we chose Amazon Web Services.

The project was written in Java, TypeScript and Angular, with MSSQL as the database and JPA/Hibernate for persistence.

A team of seven worked full time under the dedicated team model: project manager, software architect, back-end developer, two web developers, QA engineer and UI/UX designer. Work ran in traditional two-week Scrum iterations, and the client took an active part, communicating with the team regularly via Google Meet.

End product

The construction workflow management solution provides an advanced document management system that keeps track of the versions of documents created and modified by different users. A rights management module lets administrators grant document access to individuals or groups.

The software also provides tender management, reporting and statistics tools, and integration with digital print vendors. It is sold on a premium contract basis, independent of any single organization, so it is fair to every participant in a project.

Architecture and tech stack

A Java and Spring back end with JPA/Hibernate over MSSQL runs on AWS and serves an Angular and TypeScript front end. Integration endpoints connect the platform to digital print vendors.

• Java and Spring
• TypeScript and Angular
• MSSQL
• JPA/Hibernate
• AWS

Results

Erbis built a product that helped the client take a leading position in the construction software market. The application gained a sizeable customer base immediately after the MVP launched, and when the full product was released it became one of the most popular construction software products in Denmark.

Thousands of construction tenders have gone through the system. It has helped many organizations reduce the risks of poorly managed workflows across multiple project stakeholders.

What made it work

Erbis’s takeaways from this engagement:

• Research the market before the product. Sizing Danish construction and mapping competitors is what turned a business idea into a concept worth building.
• Prototype the journey before writing code. Wireframe, mockup and clickable prototype let the client validate the experience before the seven-person team started.
• Ship an MVP to win the first customers. The customer base arrived at MVP; the full product then made the platform a market leader.
• Stay neutral between stakeholders. Selling independently of any single organization is why owners, contractors and project managers all adopted it.