Building the right tech stack for your business

By Emma Peterson. 

By picking the right software, you can improve your business operations. 

Technology should work for you, not the other way around. In this Coffee Conversations, Jon Gardner and Dave Banas of Owens Corning along with Phil Pratt of Battalion Brands discuss how to build the right tech stack that will work for your roofing business. 

Jon, who heads up Owens Corning's learning/development platform and their strategic partnerships team, started the conversation by sharing a bit of tech stack basics. He explained, “A tech stack is simply a digital toolkit for roofing businesses. And that toolkit is a combination of software. When you think about software that is embedded into this technology toolkit, we're thinking about CRMs, estimating apps, project management apps, field tools, accounting systems. They're all working together so your business is running more efficiently.” In addition to the increased efficiency of implementing a tech stack, contractors also can get valuable data from these softwares. Jon elaborated, “A tech stack centralizes all your data. So things like client history and job details and field notes are all in one place. You're reducing errors, you're reducing those opportunities to make mistakes and it's improving visibility for the entire organization to be able to control the direction they are working towards (such as scaling the business).”  

Phil, who uses a tech stack in his own work with Battalion Brands (specifically their Veterans Contracting brand), shared some insights, saying, “The key is not overwhelming yourself with data, you don’t want to throw everything out there because that definitely ends up clogging up or bottlenecking workflow. So you want to look for stuff that will reduce complexity and it levels the playing field.” Examples of these types of crucial tech stack items are CRMs (customer relationship management programs) and accounting software.  

But even with those two as a starting place, there are a wide variety of different CRM and accounting programs available on the market. How do you find the right one for your team? Dave, the digital contractor manager at Owens Corning, shared, “Start by looking at your business and the core technologies you need, like your CRM and your accounting software. Then look at your business processes. The CRM that you're evaluating, does it support your processes? Because that's really what technology should do. You're not just using technology for technology's sake, you're using it to support your processes.” 

Read the transcript, Listen to the episode or Watch the recording to learn more about building the right tech stack for your team.