3 MIN. READ
Although every bid is unique for contractors, retrofit bids all contain parts, materials and equipment. Using Raiven, you can quickly search across different suppliers to find the lowest total cost on items. You also streamline the process of locating and ordering parts and materials.
Why estimating can be time-consuming and difficult
Maverick spend madness
Procurement departments create lists of preferred vendors for a reason. They have contracted rates with them, receive guaranteed service levels, trust the quality and get solid on-time delivery performance. When creating a bid, most estimators are reluctant to factor in increased costs from maverick spend because it's not supposed to occur in the first place.
Ideally, maverick spend would be a rare occurrence. When maverick spend runs rampant, it leads to poor decisions and reactionary buys that break the budgets that estimators work so hard to calculate. Reducing maverick spend increases spend visibility, enforces more efficient consumption and boosts supplier accountability.
Using Raiven's Best Value Finder helps to eliminate this maverick spending by surfacing similar or exact matches from your preferred suppliers while employees search for products on non-preferred websites.
Too many suppliers, not enough time to get quotes
When estimators must contact multiple suppliers to get quotes on parts and materials, they often run into time issues that result in long bidding processes, which lead to estimates in the pipeline backing up. When fighting for every bid, this problem can become costly. Raiven algorithms search the supplier network for the best value, making estimating faster and more accurate.
Rush order disorder
Heavy volumes of rush orders increase spend substantially. To avoid having margins cut by rush order costs, maintaining a low ratio of rush orders, usually 1:8 to 1:10, is vital. Utilizing Raiven's tools provides the ability to cut rush orders down to size and prevent them from causing underbidding.
How Raiven's system makes estimating fast and accurate
Raiven Marketplace makes estimating both more efficient and profitable. For many years, group buying programs have existed in some industries, including hospitality and health care. However, no one has considered doing it for contractors. Since Raiven's founders were contractors, they saw a great opportunity to aggregate the spend of contractors and building engineers to negotiate deep discounts on parts, materials and equipment with suppliers.
Firstly, Raiven Marketplace provides automatic access to a vast network of the industry's leading suppliers, including brand names such as Carrier, Ford, Grainger, Graybar, Ferguson, HD Supply and Sunbelt Rentals, who have agreed to pre-negotiated discounts based on Raiven's aggregated buying power.
Secondly, members can add their own individual suppliers to their networks, creating electronic access to all these suppliers. When creating bids, estimators use the artificial intelligence of the Best Value Finder to immediately find the best value for the parts and materials you require, including shipping and additional services.
In addition to improving ordering efficiency, the system also allows you to ensure preferred supplier compliance by suggesting preferred supplier products whenever they shop on unapproved supplier websites. This, thereby, eliminates maverick spend while ensuring quality and delivery goals. As a result, the need for budget-destroying rush orders is eliminated.
Accurate estimates land more jobs
On average, parts, materials and equipment make up 15-30% of a bid. A significant deviation in the expected and actual cost of supplies can slice heavily into margins, possibly making jobs unprofitable. This often leads to a need to pad the bid to make up for any unexpected expenses. However, by making the bid less competitive, it is more likely to fail.
By using Raiven, estimators can eliminate the need to leave this margin for error. Instead, they can receive accurate estimates that allow them to create bids with confidence and focus on winning the business.
Bidding has always been a risky affair. It's never possible to account for every contingency. However, technology is taking some of the mystery out of the process. Artificial intelligence allows for estimating to be calculated more accurately and quickly, leading to bids that get accepted. In addition, Raiven creates efficiencies that save labor, guarantee quality and cut overall costs.
To start saving time and money on your bids, contact Raiven today.
