EagleView LIVE From IRE 2024! - TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Rob Soper from Eagleview. You can read the interview below or watch the recording.

Karen Edwards: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Roofers Coffee Shop Sound stage. My name's Karen Edwards. Uh, we are at the International Roofing Expo 2024 in Las Vegas, and I am really delighted to welcome Rob. So we from EagleView. Yep.

Rob Soper: Welcome. Thank you. Wow, this is good to be here.

Karen Edwards: Yeah, this is great. Well attended. Lots of people have, has your booth been really busy? It

Rob Soper: Has been. It's been, it's been packed, you know, all, all morning. I mean, as soon as the doors open, you know, and we're pretty close to the entrance, which helps. I mean, yeah. We get, uh, we get the filtering coming through. Yeah. But it's been, uh, very good and we're well staffed this year, so we're being able to, to talk to everybody who shows up.

Karen Edwards: Good. That's great to hear. Now, I know EagleView, um, as we chatted beforehand, I said I, I, I've seen lots of announcements, there's lots of stuff going on. Um, but I wanted to ask you about one of your newer things, which is the EagleView assess. Right. If you could tell us what that is and how that

Rob Soper: Works. Yeah, absolutely. Um, assess is, uh, is a drone program. So essentially we, uh, we partner with a company called scottio, uh, the manufacturer of the drones, which are fully autonomous. I mean, that's probably one of the, you know, one of the unique features. It requires a part 1 0 7 license to operate it, but you don't actually have to fly it. Um, it, it knows exactly what to do. So when you order and assess for a structure, really, um, the, the drone will map itself out. It'll fly it, fly the flight path, capture all the imagery. We essentially capture anywhere from three to 500 super high resolution photographs. Um, and then we stitch it all together in a, in a tile server. Um, and then we run our machine learning, and here's a special sauce. We run our machine learning, uh, process on it that will identify anything that's an anomaly, what we consider a hail impact. So right now, um, the drone software is programmed, uh, to identify anomalies on asphalt shingles, which are the predominant surface material on, uh, residential roofing. Um, but that report will come back to the contractor with every i, every anomaly identified, circled. Um, and then, uh, it goes through the, the assessed platform. And then the contractor can validate, you know, or, you know, say, Hey, that's not a hail, that's something that didn't look like it. And

Karen Edwards: Does it get smarter?

Rob Soper: Then it gets smarter. Yeah. Right. So, I mean, our success on that is significant. And what we've been seeing anecdotally, we've been hearing this from many contractors, are, um, the contractors in the insurance space will go to a job and insurance carrier will deny it. They'll take the drone out, they'll fly it again with assess, download that report, send it to the insurance carrier with all of the documentation. Um, and the resolution is so good. It's 0.3 millimeter resolution. Wow. Which is better than you can actually see if you're, I mean, certainly I can't see that well standing on the roof myself. Right. You know, uh, getting on your knees and looking down. Right. I mean, you can, you can drill into the granule level Wow. That 0.3 millimeter resolution. So it's really, it's indisputable evidence. Um, yeah. Yeah. And, and we capture that all in a, in machine learning process. So it's, it's revolutionary.

Karen Edwards: So re you know, EagleView has always kind of been that independent third party Right. You know, beginning with the measurements. Um, and it was a contractor said it was this big and a adjuster said it was this big, but let's get an eagle view. And so this is even taking that to the whole new level. Right?

Rob Soper: Absolutely. Wow. Yep. Wow. So, and anyway, it benefits the consumers, the end users, the homeowners, you know? Yeah. It, it really, um, speeds up the process for insurance carriers and, and arms the contractors with, you know, with the ammunition to go out there and advocate for the customer, um, on roof replacement. Um, and really, we, the other thing we hear quite frequently is when you fly a drone, it makes noise. People hear it, the neighbors come out and go, what's that drone doing over Bob's house? Right. And then now they're talking to the neighbor about flying a cess on their house or going through a process and, and you can use it in a non-insurance fashion as well. Sure. So you can, you know, we have the, a view feature in there where you can launch a drone, it'll take high level pictures, you know, around, and it's, you know, kind of unlimited with the process, but there's a lot of people who are using it in a retail application, not just a storm assess, you know, version. It's called assess, because we assess the damage we

Karen Edwards: Assess. Yeah. That's,

Rob Soper: That's where it is. But yeah, there's, um, there's multiple use cases for it.

Karen Edwards: It's, it's a certainly a way to differentiate your company Mm-Hmm. Um, and position your company as, uh, a forward, you know, embracer of technology and using the latest, the latest tools and data. I'm just curious, what's the turnaround time from when the flight is complete Yep. To when the information is delivered?

Rob Soper: Awesome question. It's about 24 hours. Yeah. Um, it, it's not as fast as our regular roof report. Mm-Hmm. Um, but it's because the, the data that's required, you know, to be processed is, is very vague. So, and we use, we do use machine learning, you know, and, and like non-human processing on the back end, but it still takes a while, um, to get the, uh, all the images stitched together and overlapped. Mm-Hmm. You know, so when you look at the post-process imagery, um, you can scan across it and there's no seams. Like, there's no cuts in the pictures. 'cause everything is stitched together. Yeah. And every picture's, you know, overlapped. Um, the, uh, once that report comes back, you know, then it's delivered in, you know, in the platform. It's not a PDF, like sometimes you would see it's you actually engaging in a digital platform with it. But yeah, about 24 hours we can. That's cool. We can turn an entire thing around.

Karen Edwards: Good. Now you've had some big news come out just before the show. We have. Tell us about that.

Rob Soper: Absolutely. Our, our big partnership, we've been working on this for a number of years, but we, we've finalized it and EagleView has officially partnered with Renoworks, um, who's a, a digital, uh, a digital, um, visualizer. Visualizer.

Karen Edwards: Thank you. You wanna blank there for

Rob Soper: A second? What's a digital visualizer and reworks, um, leading, you know, leading partner in the visualization space? Yeah, and really I think, um, you know, we deliver our product, our, our data into, into Rent Works. And it can visualize not just the roof, but our full house product, our walls when it's indoors. So it'll, it can capture the entire exterior of the, uh, of the structure and visualize it, um, in three dimensions. Uh, and that if you have an EagleView already existing in your, uh, in your EagleView account, in your Rent Works Pro customer, so they're, they're offering a, a package called Rent Works Pro. Mm-Hmm. So it's a, it's a subscription. Um, it's $249 per month per four users, uh, unlimited visualization. So anything they have had in their history in EagleView, you can just reach back into your account, pull that, that, that project up and visualize it.

And the other really cool thing I think about, uh, render works is they do a 2D visualizer as well. So not just a 3D you know, uh, um, you know, rendering of it. But they'll, if you have a street view, if you take a photograph of the front of the house, the front elevation, it'll go through, uh, render works, machine learning and mask the house, uh, virtually instantly. And then you can apply, um, different material catalogs to whatever sat, you know, whatever surface is on the front of the house. And it's their house, it's their trees, it's their car in the driveway, you know, so, I mean, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a digital rendering. It's actually a photograph of their house with materials applied to it. Um, and really finally they have, uh, the largest manufacturer's catalog in the industry. I mean, if there's a manufacturer that makes a building material that goes in the outside of your house, they have it, they have it in their catalog.

Karen Edwards: So for the benefit really for contractors is being able to show the customer, right, what, what's this color gonna look like? Or what's this style gonna look like? And that, that's a powerful sales tool.

Rob Soper: The, uh, I think the number one, don't quote me on this one, but I think the, the number one, or, or very, uh, a very high instance is, uh, from not closing the sale. The first time you're in there is homeowners can't choose a collar. You know, they'll say, I'm gonna go with you.

Karen Edwards: Yep.

Rob Soper: But I, but I don't know exactly what color I want. Yeah. Wanna do. And, and this allows the contractors to have an in-home visualization tool.

Karen Edwards: So they can show that like on an iPad or, yep, absolutely.

Rob Soper: Oh, okay. And they also, I mean, the other kind of practice that we see people do is they'll order the EagleView ahead of the appointment. The data will come in, you can, you can set up the house with the existing products that are on a home, uh, and then send the homeowner a link so they can then open the link and visualize on their own before you even get to the Wow. And even before you even get to the sales appointment. And that way it kind of, it softens the decision making Right. And makes it go a little bit quicker. And the contractors can, can, um, set in filters. So if, you know, for instance, you're a, you know, an Owens Corning or a GAF contractor, a master lead or you know, platinum for a contractor, you can only those products and those colors that you sell to be visible for the homeowner. Okay. So they don't have to go through all of the catalogs that are

Karen Edwards: Available. 'cause that's overwhelming, it's totally overwhelming.

Rob Soper: Could be, you know, so you can filter down whatever products you sell and that's all the homeowner can choose from. Yeah. Um, and it make that process super simple. Wow. We're super excited about the,

Karen Edwards: Yeah. And now Renoworks is here in your booth, right? They are. They are.

Rob Soper: Yep. Booth 63 13 EagleView 6 3 1 3 6 3 1 3. Um, come visit us. We've got a couple monitors up and they're, uh, they're demonstrating the visualizer kind of showing everybody how it works. Uh, and you are getting a lot of

Karen Edwards: Excitement. Very cool. Very cool. This is

Rob Soper: Something that Vivo have been asking EagleView for a long time, and, you know, we've been working the technology behind this to really, uh, make it come to fruition. And, and here we have it.

Karen Edwards: Nice. Yeah. Wow. Rob, thank you for being here today. Absolutely. Absolutely. My pleasure. And for sharing all this information. You heard it? 63 63.

Rob Soper: 13.

Karen Edwards: 13. Yeah. 63 13. Um, swing by, if you're gonna come to the show, if you're not able to make it to the show though, EagleView has a directory on First Coffee Shop on Metal Coffee Shop. You can see all that information out there and check them out there. But if you are coming out, please swing by and see it in action. 'cause it's nothing better than seeing it. Yep,

Rob Soper: Absolutely. And, and talking to the people who know best. Great. So, I mean, we're, we're here to help.

Karen Edwards: Good point. So, well thanks everybody for watching. Thank you. Um, stay tuned 'cause we're gonna be coming to you live for the rest of the day. Um, and thanks for being here, Rob. You're

Rob Soper: Welcome. Thank you. See you next.