How is Your Tech Stacking? - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of live interviews sponsored by Owens Corning. You can read the interviews below or watch the videos!

Episode 1 - Jon Gardner and Dave Banas of Owens Corning

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to Roofer's Coffee Shop, CoffeeCast. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and I am here today to talk to you, everybody out there about something that is so important to the roofing businesses today. And that is your Tech Stack. That's right. Your technology and how it's stacking up for your business to help you be more profitable and work better with obviously your customers. So we've asked the experts from Owens Corning to join us today, Jon Gardner and Dave Banas. Jon, welcome to the show.

Jon Gardner: Thanks, Heidi, always a pleasure. Very good to see you again.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Dave, welcome to the show.

Dave Banas: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's great to have you. This is one of my favorite topics, so I'm really excited to get down to it. So before we really start in on what a Tech Stack is and why it's so important, I would love to have both of you introduce yourselves. So Jon, let's start with you. If you could introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about you, Owens Corning, what you do there.

Jon Gardner: Sure. Yeah. Well, first of all, once again, Heidi, thank you so much for having Dave and I on CoffeeCast today. Always a pleasure. And so I've been in this roofing industry since, dating myself here, Heidi, and I think we talked about this last time I was on, since '93.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Me too.

Jon Gardner: Yes. So it's an industry that once I get into it's like I'm never leaving. It's such a fantastic industry. And today's conversation is really kind of like a testament to why you and I are still in the industry because it's constantly changing and adapting and so many cool things going on. And for me, I've been with Owens Corning for just about 12 years, and I've had a variety of roles. But at the end of the day, whether it's Dave or me, our jobs are all about helping our contractors really scale and solve their problems.

And for the last five years I've been working on that within the contractor team and I head up our learning and development platform. So we have a fantastic platform called Owens Corning University. We have tons of online content and of course we go out into the market and host well over a 100 training events across the United States. And so that's part one of my job. And the other part is the strategic partnerships where we head up our strategic partnerships and that's an opportunity for Owens Corning to deliver amazing resources, technology and insights from some of the best companies that are our strategic partners. And so as we'll learn here today, Dave and I play a lot in that space here. And the Tech Stack is a great conversation about the strategic partnerships that we've stood up here at Owens Corning.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You do so much and it's so exciting; and I love the fact that you started out with we are here to help the contractors because that's how we feel too. So I love it. Dave, please, I would love for you to introduce yourself. Again, tell us about what you do at Owens Corning.

Dave Banas: Sure. My name's Dave Banas. I've only been at Owens Corning for four years. Part of my role here is to help contractors understand technology that's available in their marketplace and evaluate the tech that's out there. Prior to coming to Owens Corning, I have a background in digital marketing, e-commerce and technology implementation. So this is right up my alley.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. Okay, well, let's start. Let's get into it. And 1993, Jon, when you and I first started, contractors didn't even have a computer on their desk.

Jon Gardner: That's right.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I didn't even have a computer on my desk, it felt like. And so what has happened in those 30 years it's been amazing and pretty crazy. It is 30 years. Yes, it is 30 years.

Jon Gardner: Yes. It is.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So when you're thinking about that and what contractors have to understand, implement, just to run their business; but on top of that, to differentiate and stay in front of the competition and also deliver what they need to their homeowners and building owners, it's pretty amazing. So can you talk about that, that evolution of technology and what's it looking like for contractors right now?

Jon Gardner: Yeah. Geez, you think about where I dropped into the industry and where we are today, it doesn't even look the same. And at the end of the day, technology like any other industry, is playing a massive role and how contractors are communicating and how homeowners are looking for contractors to come in and do work in their homes. And Dave, you can talk to this as well, but as far as where did it really start to turn, I think about five years or so ago, technology started to enter into the roofing industry in waves. And so Heidi, as you know, we're on the road a lot and we have the opportunity and the privilege to go to a lot of events. And over the course of five years, we've seen more and more companies that are really awesome in their technology space adapt to technology to get into the roofing side of the world, right?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right.

Jon Gardner: So the roofing industry has become a very, very hot target for these technology companies and why? And so if you think about it, there's all sorts of reasons why a contractor within their own business should and has to adopt technology to stay current and really have the opportunity to scale and solve problems. But at the end of the day, when Dave and I think about technology, Tech Stack and what that means, it's really we're always pointing towards the end customer, which is the homeowner. Because the insights that we receive from the homeowner tell us exactly what the behaviors are, what their expectations are, what the qualifications are to even entertain doing business with a contractor.

So we know from endless hours of research, both with our contractors and homeowners, that technology is not something that you have to think about or may want to think about, but it is a must do. And as Dave and I started the journey along with many others with Owens Corning to develop a solid and working Tech Stack that meets and exceeds some of the requirements that we learned over the course of time by interviewing homeowners, by understanding what the pain points are with contractors, we really settled on solving the problem holistically, from a technology standpoint.

And holistically means from the very first time that that homeowner decides that they have some interest in a roof to the last time that that homeowner may have interaction with a contractor, which is giving an amazing review, there has to be a technology that's in place to solve every part of that contractor's business. Because as I just mentioned, Heidi, homeowners expectations are that you must do that. I'll just give you some insight and some data to help support that is that when you think about homeowners and the experience in the home and I know we're far down the Tech Stack; but dropping into a contractor's world and they're starting to make a presentation with a homeowner, that homeowner within half of one second has already made an opinion on whether or not that contractor is going to be somebody they want to do business with.

And that homeowner's opinion is not based just solely on that very finite experience with the contractor, the homeowner's bringing in all sorts of other opinions. The experience they had with Best Buy, the experience they had at any other place like Home Depot, the experience they had when they bought a car. All of those shape out what homeowners expectations are when they do business with a roofing contractor because it doesn't matter to the homeowner what they're buying. The experience is the most important part that enables them to make a good decision that, look, I feel really comfortable and I trust this person. I trust this company. So much has gone on and that's why Owens Corning invested in our strategic partnerships the way that we do, but not necessarily for the sake of strategic partnerships. It's really all about really connecting with and partnering with the right strategic partners to enable us to be able to deliver first of its kind in the roofing industry that we know our contractors can take advantage of and scale and help them solve problems.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, and you're so true because those homeowners, when you think about it, we're an Amazon society now, right?

Jon Gardner: We are.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We are used to ordering when we want to, how we want to, without the pressure that goes a lot of time in the old way of selling. And so having that technology makes such a huge difference for that experience, but also to make sure that you are hitting the high points, doing it quickly, putting together. But Dave, I would love for you... Because we're just jumping into this and just saying Tech Stack, Tech Stack, Tech Stack, but you know what, let's take one second and can you explain what a Tech Stack is? Because I think there's probably still a lot of people out there who are like, "What the heck are you talking about?"

Dave Banas: Sure. So a Tech Stack is a combination of solutions that a business uses to run their business, their operations, but also give them the ability to measure what's going on in their business to be able to see their KPIs. If you're not recording those things digitally, it makes it very hard to see how you're doing, where there's room for improvement, how you can improve. So it's super important for contractors to use technology in order to be able to do that.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And I know we're going to talk about this more later on, so I don't want to get real deep into it right this second; but I just have to say, when we're talking about a Tech Stack, this is usually hopefully software or technology that is all working together, integrated. And you hear a lot of the contractors who are going to these trade shows, doing this research, they're like, "Oh yeah, I work with everyone," but then all of a sudden it's like, not so much. Not so much. So it's really important that you have a strong evaluation from a trusted source on that technology stack that you're going to incorporate. So let's talk about how the two of you work together to bring the technology elements together to create the Owens Corning Tech Stack for the Owens Corning contractors. So Jon, let's start with you. How did you start bringing it all together?

Jon Gardner: And to that point, as I get into that, Heidi, it's worth noting and I think it's probably totally understood at this point, but it is worth noting with the Tech Stack that we created, is that no matter what the part of the business that the contractor is trying to solve for, the technology that we've implemented in the stack itself is going to solve for that. And so to get back to your question, and where Dave and I really work so well together is that as a team, the first part of understanding the technology and determining what technology partner, what strategic partnership that we want to go into really starts with understanding what the critical pain points are and the opportunities for integration to technology with our contractors.

So we spend a considerable amount of time hearing voice of customer. And our team really goes out into our network of contractors in a real way, kind of boils up some of the most major and critical elements that contractors is trying to solve for that today sometimes can be its huge hurdle in the opportunity to scale and solve problems; and employee churn and all those other things that happen when you just don't have a business that's performing at optimal levels. And so it really starts with getting and understanding and validating what the most critical elements that contractors are trying to solve for.

Part two of that is a significant amount of investigating and learning and testing various technologies for the sake of does that specific technology solve all of our needs? And number two, and this is where Dave really gets into it, is what types of and how deeply can we integrate each of these technologies so that at the end of the day, the technology is not solving for technology's sake; but it's really creating the circle or the wheel that allows from point A all the way to point Z to totally connect. And to Dave's point, the technology that we provide to our contractors who are strategic partnerships really has to solve for a number of elements.

First, the technology itself has to be best in class. It's got to solve for the need, it has to go through a pretty stringent security review with our company. And we also want to take a look at where that technology is going to be going in the future because we know that today's technology is fantastic, but tomorrow is going to be just as important. And so it really starts there and it's at that point where we start to do some really heavy lifting in terms of understanding its behavior, how it works; and how does it solve that initial problem that we came to the table with based on our contractors pain points. And so Dave, maybe you want to talk a little bit about, hey, so once we get the technologies, we know that we have best in class technology solutions.

Like what do we do internally to make sure that what we're saying is actually true and that we can be the trusted source of a technology and technology stack that really solves those problems. So that's where Dave and I start to work together to make sure that, hey, we're providing best-in-class solutions.

Dave Banas: So a lot of what I did is looking at the sales process, not to get into the weeds too much, but just understanding and mapping out those processes that happens during that; from the lead acquisition the whole way through to the selling, the closing and to the end. And it's just understanding that process, the information that needs to be available at each step of that process. And then looking at the different tools from our partners and other things out there to see which one of those fills that need, can transmit that information through integration so that contractors don't have to do double entry. So it's seamless, efficient, very organized and just stepping through and understanding that.

Jon Gardner: And that's a really key point there, because at the end of the day, when we go out and we work with our contractors, in many cases, they're coming to our sales organization, they're coming to me, they're coming to Dave and they're asking for validation. They're saying, "Do you trust this particular technology?" Because it's coming in waves as we talked, Heidi. So for as many ideas or problems that there might be out there, there's somebody that's trying to say, "Hey, I'm the best."

And it's our job to make sure that we solve for that and that we're standing up the best in class technologies. And so we really feel like, hey, at the end of the day, we're providing that. And it's worth noting, Heidi, that Roofing Contractor Magazine just awarded Owens Corning and the work that we did with the Tech Stack as Editor's Choice on the technology.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Jon Gardner: The reason I'm bringing it up is we're not patting ourselves on the back. What I'm trying to get across here is that as much time as we spend to search and identify technology, what we really work hard on is making sure that, yes, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do. We do all of the testing in-house and the comprehensive testing so that the contractor can absolutely trust Owens Corning that we've done some of that hard work that otherwise may be impossible for the contractor to do on their own. And that provides them an opportunity to level up and outpace the competition. And we're all about doing the best we possibly can, driving revenue and solving problems and building margin.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: What you both are saying is so important and what we hear all the time are contractors saying, "Yeah, there's all these solutions out there." Like you said, "We don't know what's the best, we don't know really where they fit." But then the other side of it is they'll get all these apps, all these different systems, and they're like, "They don't work together. We can't transfer data," or, "We can't get our data out." And so that is just so critical right now. So I would love for us to talk about the Owens Corning Tech Stack and how you've put it together, the different elements and how they are talking to each other and how this all is working. So Jon, why don't we start with you and let's just go through-

Jon Gardner: Sure.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... This circle of wonderfulness of technology, I should say, and maybe start in the middle, because I think where it starts in the middle is really how it all integrates and talks to each other. And-

Jon Gardner: You bet.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... That's starting with Job Nimbus.

Jon Gardner: That's it. Start with Job Nimbus. Job Nimbus is an amazing CRM. They are a strategic partner with Owens Corning. And on a standalone basis, when you're looking at CRM Technologies and Dave you could speak to this, they provide a fantastic solution that our contractors have been able to really take advantage of. But when you think about the Tech Stack, there's always a starting place and the starting place has to be right in the belly of the business. And the way that Dave and I refer to it is the CRM is your spinal cord. So if a Tech Stack is, if we want to compare it to a human body, there's nothing more important in the human body than the spinal cord because it is making sure that everything is running smoothly and it's connected to... Well, I'm not going to get into a whole medical thing here, Heidi, but we get the point.

And so when we think about the CRM, the CRM is absolutely 100% the most critical element to stand up any technology in the business. And Dave, it's worth sharing why. Why is the CRM the most critical part? And so as we talk through it, we can dig into that, but I just want to go around the wheel here and share where it starts and where it ends. So first and foremost, CRM, technology is critical. That's going to stand up the opportunity to put your Tech Stack together. And so we mentioned that Job Nimbus is that choice.

And so once you have that piece in place, and you always think back to who's my customer? The homeowner is the customer, our contractors are our customers, but everybody knows somebody's buying from our contractors. So the homeowners in that viewpoint, where does the Tech Stack have to start? It has to start when the homeowner says, "I'm interested in purchasing or changing my roof." And that is all about branding, lead gen, marketing, how much market share that you can take based on the visibility. And that's all about developing a solid marketing strategy that can provide you the opportunity to at least be noticed in the technology, right? So if a homeowner is searching for you, you have to stand up a solid marketing and website strategy that has many tentacles, but that's number one. So-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Be found.

Jon Gardner: Yes, be found. Be found. And our technology partner in this critical part of the Tech Stack is Art Unlimited. Art Unlimited. You're very familiar with Art Unlimited, Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes.

Jon Gardner: Anna Anderson and her team-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They're amazing.

Jon Gardner: ... Amazing team. They represent and do business with many, many, many of our preferred and platinum contractors because they do such a fantastic job in standing up that part of the critical part of the business. So as we talk about technology and the integrations and making sure they communicate; so we have Job Nimbus going in, and so there's a back and forth conversation between somebody from Art Unlimited in this case and the technologies they're creating. So making sure that it's connected. Sorry, Heidi, I kind of blew that part.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: No, that's okay. That's perfect. And really the Art Unlimited is bringing those leads in that go into the CRM to start that journey, right?

Jon Gardner: Correct. Yes.

Yes, absolutely. And so moving down the road here on the technology wheel, the second most critical part is going to be with Podium. So when you think about Art Unlimited, they play a critical role in the overall overarching marketing and lead gen strategy. And so the next piece is, well, how can I be found and how can I communicate with the homeowner? How can the homeowner communicate with me the way they want to be communicated to? And that's the third piece of the wheel, which is Podium. And Podium provides our contractors with the opportunity to both communicate with the homeowner the way that the homeowner wants to be communicated with, which is texting. And number two, providing the opportunity as we'll hear with Wheel, how the technology provides homeowners with an opportunity and the contractor to get that amazing review, which is so critically important.

So just a quick piece of data here. Texting, it's used by everybody today, but when it comes to this type of work, service oriented work, 90% of homeowners prefer texting versus any other form of communication.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. It's amazing.

Jon Gardner: And that's changed. Over the last five years, that's completely flip-flopped. And so we have to solve for that part. Number three is once I have connected with a homeowner, once I've had solid communication with a homeowner and I have this exchange and the trust is starting to develop, now I have to actually do some work. And that's with our friends at Hover. And so the measurement technology, the ability to help contractors really scale both their measurement and their integration with product ordering, with your distribution of choice is the next critical part. Fourth is when I'm on the job, I have multiple folks that are responsible for making sure the job is going to go well.

And that's the folks that are installing it, the salesperson, the owner, anybody that has a connection or a touch point with a homeowner has something to do with the success or failure of the job. And so what that means is you need solid communication internally between various folks within the organization as well as the homeowner if they so choose, want to be communicated with. And that's with CompanyCam.

So if you think about CompanyCam, one of the best technologies out there, and they've blossomed over the years to really become, Dave, they're best in class in this technology. And that's the ability to take the pictures that you need to take and have an organized way of communicating internally to make sure that every problem is resolved and the job is complete. And that if there's any issues, those are going to be resolved immediately from an internal basis. And then this is one of the critical parts is making the presentation in the home, and presenting in the home is not what it used to be. You're not at your grandmother's kitchen table anymore. And the expectations of homeowners, they're so different.

I'm just looking at the notes that I took here earlier, and I think it was something like over 47% of folks that are purchasing homes are millennials. And millennials have a very specific way that they want to be communicated with. And so that's called being really dynamic in the home. And Engage is an amazing technology that allows our contractors to really paint the picture with a homeowner at the kitchen table. It allows the homeowner to immerse themselves in the experience of buying a roof. And so it allows the contractor to really explore and exploit... A roofing system is certainly not a commodity product. It is a very important part of the entire home. And Ingage allows the contractor to really express who they are, why that homeowner should be selecting them, what the technology looks like. And at the end of the day, it's the presentation experience that Ingage allows gives homeowner, as I mentioned to you before, the opportunity to really immerse themselves.

Secondly, what is the one thing that owners wish they could do when any salesperson's in the home, it's wish they could hear them and understand what they said, what they did great, what they didn't do great and where there's an opportunity to improve because that's all part of getting better. And the Ingage Suite not only allows for that immersive and really cool technology type of presentation, but it also allows the ownership to look through analytics, how the salesperson did and provides the opportunity for the owner and salesperson to just get better. And very rarely do you have insight as to what's going on in the home and Ingage allows for that. And the technology, obviously the integration within the Tech Stack is there as well. So all of this is being fed into through the CRM, et cetera.

And then from the quoting and delivering the quote to the homeowner, that's where Leap comes in. And Leap is just such a fantastic partner with Owens Corning, we've had a long-standing relationship with them. And Leap is best in class when it comes to, now that I've gone through this whole part, how do I really develop and create an opportunity to solve the entire in-home sales experience? And that is with the presentation itself using Ingage all the way to the opportunity to provide the financing solution to the homeowners in real time, to being able to provide distribution, the ordering materials in real time so that... We think about Leap, and you think about the Sales Pro product within the Leap company, it's called Sales Pro. They really allow that experience with the salesperson to solve for and answer and get that job moving while providing the critical information back to the CRM as to the disposition of that particular call. And then finally, there's obviously the accounting element to it with regard to making sure that the checks and balances are there.

And then circling back to the very top is, listen, once this job is done and I've been able to solve in a very meaningful way and have a super happy customer, there's no better time to get the review, which is so critical in the growth of the company, is going back to the Podium technology. So as I mentioned to you, Podium's texting technology allows for that awesome communication. And so when you think about texting and you think about communication, that's cool, but what does that really mean? It means a customer is saying, they get me, they're connecting with me. I can trust them. I feel really comfortable with them because there's no hidden things that are going on and I just feel like this contractor has me.

So it's at that critical point at the end of the job when you want to just hit it and get that solid review. And so part two, what Podium provides in the technology here is the ability to utilize their technology to ask the homeowner for a review in a very simple way that otherwise sometimes doesn't get done. It can be a little bit cumbersome and without getting into a whole bunch of details, it just strips away some of the complexities and allows the contractor and the homeowner to be able to solve for the review and get it right up there. And then you're right back to the beginning again with next customer going online and looking for you. So that's the circle-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And referrals and everything else. [inaudible 00:30:39].

Jon Gardner: Oh, of course, yes. Referrals.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, because it's been such a great experience and everything has worked together, which I think as you described that and going through that, to me that's the most important part. How is that you don't have double data entry, you don't have confusion. And so talk a little bit about that, Dave. We just went through all of these best in class services and how are they all working together with Job Nimbus to really create that streamlined process that you don't lose data.

Dave Banas: Right. So as Jon mentioned in the beginning, the central part of your Tech Stack is your CRM, right? And in this instance, it's Job Nimbus. So taking a step back a little bit, there are three critical pieces. Your core that we've identified for the Tech Stack, it's your CRM, it's your accounting system. Those two have to be able to work together, as Jon mentioned, you have to be able to do the books, have your checks and balances. The third core piece that we identified is your measurement system. So you have to be able to have measurements, some type, unless you're going to do them by hand, it's just easier to use a service. So those measurements will get stored in your CRM and everything connects to that CRM. So that's your core and the other things join to it. So starting at it, your leads will come in, your leads get housed in your CRM and Job Nimbus.

You're communicating with the homeowner through Podium, so you can do the texting. Texting might happen on the website. There might be some other texts that are fired off to the homeowner when the project goes through different phases. There's different automations that can be set up that will use Podium to send off those messages for them. So that's how that connects. You can do your ordering for Hover right from within Job Nimbus, you can order there and then you get your order back and it's housed there. For the CompanyCam, the CompanyCam integration is really, really cool. So you have your CompanyCam account, somebody goes out, they do the inspection and every photo that you take on your CompanyCam account will sync back and be stored with that contact record in Job Nimbus so that it's there all the time. Somebody in the office can go in, they can pull up that homeowner, they can take a look, they have all their information there, they can see the photos that we're taking at the job during that; but that's not the only time that the photos are used or stored during the inspection.

The photos can also be used on the presentations that happen when you're using the Sales Pro product with the integration for there. So Engage, you're using that where whether you're doing it in the home and you're pulling up on a tablet or you have some type of presentation, maybe you want to show the homeowner that is sent out through an email from Job Nimbus. You can have a link to the Engage platform that you can see it. So you really have all your information there. You can tell your company story, you can have the story of Owens Corning and you're able to see all those analytics and see what was looked at and how much time was spent. When you're using Sales Pro... Excuse me one minute, you're going to have to edit that out, Heidi. Sorry.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: No problem, no problem.

Dave Banas: All right, let me try that again. So when you're using Sales Pro, it's connected to Job Nimbus. When that salesperson runs the appointment, the information of that homeowner, their address, measurements, all that stuff can be put into Sales Pro. So you're in the home, you pull up Sales Pro, you're with the homeowner, you're going through, you're talking about product; you can do your good, better, best. You can decide on product, you can do your financing from there, you can send them the proposal and then any documents that are created within Sales Pro, when that is done gets sent back into Job Nimbus for historical reference. So you can have it in there, you can have the result of it. This is what happened during that appointment, this is the quote that I gave them. All that information can all be resulted, and that goes back in the job Nimbus.

So someone in the office can run through, they can look at their KPIs and see how people are performing. With that information, you can then use to create your material list for ordering. And then ultimately within Job Nimbus, you can use it to schedule the project to go through and run that whole job. And when that's done, you can set up automations if you want to automatically send out a text to the homeowner when the job is completed, asking for a review using the Podium solution again. Or some contractors will be on-site that will go through and do the final walkthrough and everything's okay and pull out their phone or tablet and be like, "Hey, would you be willing to give us a good review?" We brought it up before and you can do it right then in person. So there are multiple ways that the technology can be done, but just as a quick rundown, that is how it all would work together.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And you know what I love is that, like I said, it all works together and your data is safe. And for a contractor, customer satisfaction and data integrity, two of the most important things when you're talking about technology and really using it in the right way. So what we're going to do, I'm really excited about this. As part of this CoffeeCast series, we're now going to talk to each and every partner who we've talked about today. And so the three of us are going to welcome in representatives from every Owens Corning Tech Stack partner, and we're going to start talking about their specialized section, what they do for the contractor, how important it is and then how they integrate with the whole system. Because again, I just can't say it enough times, the integration and the working together and the sharing of data is so important.

So gentlemen, I'm very excited for this. Jon, maybe you could just mention real quick how we're going to really be able to pull out all this information and why it's so important for the contractors to take this CoffeeCast. And as we add in all the partners when we put this whole series together, how important is it for them to share resources like this with their whole team so that their whole company understands what's going on?

Jon Gardner: Great question. And we talked a lot today about the homeowner. And so somebody would say, "Well, that's all sales-based," because it's homeowner. But the reality of it is, is that every single part of the business is a critical element for a successful job. And a successful job is one that all the waste is stripped out, margins are fantastic. The crew has done a fantastic job in the install, and the homeowner has given you an amazing review. And we all know that that's the perfect state.

And so some folks have more work to do than others with regard to their space. And so to answer your question here, Heidi, is so with regard to what we're talking about, we've actually put together all the critical information and resources for our contractors to be able to learn more about this Tech Stack and technology in general. And so I'm hoping, Heidi, that we'll be able to at least provide the resources so our contractors can explore it a little bit more. And what I mean by that is we have a brochure that talks more about this technology, but within the brochure there's some hot links to take our contractors to the actual Tech Stack presentation that we built out in conjunction with all of our partners. And within this Tech Stack presentation is some of the finer details with regard to all of the partners that we're talking about. The finer details as to where contractors may go wrong, what the cost of doing business in that way might cost the business, what the potential results are for contractors that would embed technology.

And then collectively looking at how that contractor's business could perform at a very high level if they integrated the technology in our Tech Stack. And so we are looking forward to all of our Tech Stack partners getting on here because they provide such an amazing amount of resource and the expertise obviously to build it out. But when I think about this, and I threw out a couple of data points before, it's worth noting again, just how important technology is. And so when you think about contractors that got to get all their things together and have to respond to a lead that if a contractor, a salespersonor whoever's responsible for getting back to that person who's interested, responds in the first five minutes-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow.

Jon Gardner: ... That there's a 391% increase in that contractor actually capturing the job. And so I know I'm pointing towards the sales side, but every part of the business is responsible for making sure that that homeowner is... Phone's picked up and we're talking to that homeowner or we're texting, which they prefer.

So the opportunity that we'll be able to share both with the resources that we created enables our contractors to walk through this journey on their own and really pull out some of the more critical elements that are important to them. At the back half of the resources that are available, our team has put together an appendix that allows our contractors to look through FAQs and some things to consider when building out their own Tech Stack. So another way of saying that every contractor's different, nobody's the same. Everybody's problems are unique. And the reality is you're not going to plug in a Tech Stack like this in day one, way too heavy of a lift. Dave mentioned that there's some critical parts of a Tech Stack that you must have; and that's going to be my measurement, my CRM and my accounting.

So for those that are just starting out in technology, focus on those three, then work your way through the rest of the Tech Stack wheel to get yourself connected with all the technologies. But with regard to the resources, getting back to that, in a real way what we're saying is these are the best in class. This is what great would look like for your business. You along with our sales organization can start to dig into it a little bit more and make the best decisions that are for the company. As I mentioned to you, the appendix and some of the information on the back end really helped to answer some of those questions that almost always come up when somebody's talking or asking about technology. So we've gone ahead and tried to answer all of those to the best of our capabilities and giving our contractors a real holistic viewpoint to really take some action.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it.

Dave Banas: And then one thing I would add to that is in those appendixes at the back, there's a little bit more detailed information on the processes that happen with the different integrations, with the partners, what functions that happen, what information is exchanged. So very valuable resource. And to Jon's point the questions to consider, highly recommend if anything the contractors get that they download it, they save it, they review it, use it to analyze what they have going on now. Look at it again when they're considering new technology in the future, whether it's our partners or our Tech Stack that we highly recommend. Or if there's something else that they come across that these questions are really important to ask and to use to evaluate where they're at.

And like Jon said, one of the things I've learned, no contractor, they don't do things the same. They use different things. There's certain technologies that they've fallen in love with and that they don't want to give up. But it's important to ask the questions as they evaluate new technology and see, does it integrate with what I'm currently using? Integration and having enough flexibility is very key for now and for future growth when new technology comes out of how will this affect what I'm using now or my processes. So I would say to all contractors-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: How do you expand that?

Dave Banas: Right. Go to the Tech Stack project, go download those resources.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I agree so much. Knowing the questions to ask is half of the battle, because sometimes-

Jon Gardner: No doubt.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... We don't even know what to ask. So I think that's great. All these resources can be found, of course, on the Owens Corning directory, on Roofers Coffee Shop. So either get to Owens Corning, get to Roofers Coffee Shop, check out the directory. You can get all this information. And on our next CoffeeCast, we will start interviewing and visiting with every single partner. So be sure to watch this entire series. Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here today and we're going to be this again soon.

Jon Gardner: Looking forward to it.

Dave Banas: Thanks for having us.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you so much. And thank you all for listening. Please watch the entire series so you can build your own Tech Stack for success working with Owens Corning. We are very excited to bring this CoffeeCast to you and the future ones in this series, so stay tuned. Be sure to check out the site for any new episodes that come on. And also be sure to go to our YouTube channel, subscribe and set the notifications, ring the bell so you don't miss a single episode or on your favorite podcast channel. Be sure to subscribe and set notifications and we'll be seeing you on the next CoffeeCast.

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Episode 2 - Jon Gardner and Dave Bana with Owens Corning and Kevin Wall from JobNimbus.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to RoofersCoffeeShop CoffeeCast. This is where you get an in-depth look at what's happening, whether it's technology, new products. Across the board we want to talk about what's happening in the roofing industry that can make a difference for your business. Today, I am so honored to be here with Jon Gardner and Dave Banas to talk about their tech stack with Owens Corning. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and we have our specialist from JobNimbus, Kevin Wall, here to talk about their part of the integration. Gentlemen, welcome.

Kevin Wall: Thank you.

Jon Gardner: Thank you, Heidi.

Dave Banas: Thank you, Heidi.

Jon Gardner: Great to be here as always.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: As always. Well, Jon, let's start with you. Let's do some introductions. If you could introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about what you're doing with OC.

Jon Gardner: For sure. First of all, Heidi, it is fantastic to be here. As always, and I mean this with all intent, is thank you for the years and years that you put into the roofing industry and RoofersCoffeeShop and what you do for-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you.

Jon Gardner: ... everybody that touches the roofing industry. Really great stuff. I'm Jon Gardner and I've been with Owens Corning almost 13 years now. Today I head up our strategic partnerships and our learning and development platform and both of those have quite a bit to do with helping our contractors scale and solve problems. It's all wrapped into the Owens Corning roofing contractor network program that, folks, if you haven't had an opportunity to dive into that a little bit, then please do. Reach out to your ASM or do some research on your own. We'd be glad and happy to connect with you. Anyway, Heidi, that's a little bit of a plug, but I just figured, hey, what an opportunity as I introduce myself.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You had to. What you're doing is revolutionary. This tech stack for the contractors is making such a huge difference. Dave, let's go ahead and have you introduce yourself, please.

Dave Banas: Sure. Dave Banas, digital contractor manager here at Owens Corning. I work closely with Jon to help contractors implement technology to help them get more work and get work done.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Excellent. Excellent. Kevin, please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your company.

Kevin Wall: Yeah. My name's Kevin Wall. I head up partnerships at JobNimbus. We are really honored to be part of the tech stack, kind of the hub that encapsulates all other integrations. I'm really excited to be on this podcast with y'all, Heidi. That's what we are. That's what we do.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. Well, thank you for being here today. I just want to remind everybody that this is a series. We started with it from the very beginning of what Owens Corning tech stack is throughout all of the tech stack partners and we've been having great conversations with each partner on their integration. Jon, I would love it if you would kind of take over and talk a little bit about the importance of the JobNimbus technology in the tech stack and how it's integrating and you and Kevin kind of give us a view of that.

Jon Gardner: Yeah. A great question. In a very real way, first of all the tech stack itself is a combination of integrated technologies that Owens Corning is deeply invested in and partnered with. These are best-in-class companies that make up our business solutions portfolio that in this particular case, a selection of those technologies are purposely integrated to provide, as I just said, the best tech stack that contractors can invest their time, their money and their energy into. When you look at all of the different elements of the technology, one if you had to say is the most critical or leans on the most critical, it is JobNimbus because JobNimbus... Obviously CRM is absolutely critical and vital. We say it here, it's the spinal cord of technology in contractors business. Without JobNimbus... It's specifically with JobNimbus because they were selected based on the technology and all of the elements that we'll get into here in a little bit.

The CRM and JobNimbus are by far one of the most important elements of our tech stack. You asked the question, "How does it fit in?" It has to be there. JobNimbus must be part of the tech stack. We've had a lot of fun bringing this to the market, working with JobNimbus and all of our other business solution partners and technology partners. Man, it's been now... What? We're probably... Well, in early '23 we launched this and the success all across the United States from contractors that are just beginning their journey into roofing and all the way to those that are enterprise level, multi-state level, we've had fantastic conversations and testimonials from contractors that say, "Boy, this tech stack has really helped us to get ourselves to that place, whether we..."

In that place, Heidi and Dave and Kevin, you know this, it's... Technology is served to make sure that businesses can actually... They're performing at the best level. The way that we look at the technology is how do you perform. The technology allows our contractors' businesses to scale and the technology also allows our contractors to identify very specific problems that they otherwise wouldn't know about because the data on the back end of the technology provides unbelievable insight to the business. So as much as it is about scaling, it's about being very effective and efficient at understanding your deficiencies and making those immediate changes. JobNimbus CRM is a fantastic example of just that very dynamic movement that the businesses can make with the introduction of technology, specifically with the CRM.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. I tell you what, knowing your data, knowing your business, that is the key. Kevin, I would love to hear your thoughts on... This has been... You've been a great partner with Owens Corning for so long and this last year really have seen some success. Can you talk about JobNimbus and the importance of that CRM and the integrations within the Owens Corning tech stack?

Kevin Wall: Yeah. Thank you for the question. JobNimbus, yes, we're a CRM, we help businesses, contractors manage their customers, we're a project management tool, we help contractors manage their jobs from lead gen to payments, but what's really unique and special about JobNimbus is we have an open API, which means that we allow a lot of other partners to integrate into our environment, our sandbox. Come play with us. We've got over 500 companies who have plugged in and you can kind of engage in that software within JobNimbus.

We have a peak performance report that we send out every year and the best-in-class roofers are moving between two and three and four pieces of software regularly every day. If you get many, many more... The more pieces of software that you can use efficiently, you're going to be more successful, but it can be annoying to hop from JobNimbus to Hover or to hop from JobNimbus to CompanyCam, from JobNimbus to QuickBooks. To be able to order digital measurement tools through Hover or to manage your accounting, manage your payments, to take care of your pictures with CompanyCam and to do all that within the JobNimbus environment without having to leave the screen, without having to change your tab on your phone makes work and life easier and more efficient. JobNimbus is part of the tech stack. The cool thing about JobNimbus is we bring all the other pieces together.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Really you need that hub to be able to be in a program and to be able to get what you need right then. Dave, as you've worked with... We've talked to a number of the tech stack companies. How do you see the interaction between the tech stack partners and JobNimbus?

Dave Banas: Yeah, I think Kevin hit it on the head. The ability for the integration when it's just JobNimbus out of the box has a lot of great capability that a contractor stands up, they can accomplish a lot of things. It's one thing I recommend as core for contractors to set up a CRM, but as contractors grow and they get into other things, there are other tools that could be coming out in the market and that ability to integrate into the CRM they're using to be able to exchange that data and for their business processes and flow without having mistakes or double entry, anything like that, is what I view as critical. That's what's really special about JobNimbus is the openness to be able to connect those other tools together, whether it's through the API or other third-party tools.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Jon, you're shaking your head, so kind of take that one step further because I really think about all these tech stack partners and you're really making it functional for the roofing contractors.

Jon Gardner: Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Dave just shared great stuff, and Kevin hit the nail on the head just as Dave said. The key element here is the ability for all of these technologies to integrate really well with one another. Within our organization, Dave and I are kind of... Well, Dave, are we Batman and Robin? I mean, you've said that before, but... Yeah. In all seriousness, you have to look at technology from multiple lenses. Technology for technology's sake is fantastic to introduce into a business, but what are you trying to solve for? Collectively, Owens Corning, when we look at the technology, the potential addition or building out the tech stack, we look at it from multiple lenses and we really do unpack the technologies both singularly as well as in this particular case the tech stack.

We took all of this inside the business and broke it down and actually worked with it and looked at how it performed. That's how we arrive at knowing that, "Hey, look, all things being equal, Owens Corning feels and we're very confident that this particular tech stack is really best-in-class. When you look at something like JobNimbus, we've been talking about the efficiencies and the ability for integration. Those are real things, but at the end of the day when I look at it from a business lens and not necessarily technology lens, for the business lens it adds a tremendous amount of firepower to help that company scale. It does that because of the efficiencies. The efficiencies mean I can take as many or as much as one person away from doing what they're doing today and putting them into something more productive because those efficiencies in JobNimbus allow for as much as eight hours of time that you were consumed doing things before are now free up.

From a business standpoint, you're always looking at things with regard to what are you trying to solve. JobNimbus solves for many of those pieces. The point that I'm trying to make here is that when you boil it all down, that's eight hours of time that is saved by one individual. We look at that from that way, and we also look at the technology perspective and that's where Dave and I really work well together in terms of looking at this from both of those lens, technology performing at optimal levels both singularly as well as connected and integrated, and from a business standpoint being very clear and specific and focused on, "What are we trying to solve for that our contractors are saying are most important to solve for and how can we put those pieces together?" The combination of that is the end result of the tech stack, obviously including JobNimbus, which is such a vital part of it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right.

Dave Banas: I was going to add and the reward and the proofs is the feedback that we've been getting from contractors, whether they've implemented part of the tech stack or majority of the tech stack, just the differences and the changes that using that technology together in their business has made.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's great. Kevin, I'd love you to kind of talk about that too, the difference you see with contractors, like what Dave and Jon just said, but also when you look at the tech stack companies, Art Unlimited, Podium, Hover, CompanyCam, Engage, Leap, JobNimbus, when you think about... Those are powerful companies in the industry. Everyone knows those names, they are powerful, they provide such solid solutions that help contractors grow their business. The fact that they can all integrate into your system, whether that's through lead generation or communications or photos or measurements, talk to us a little bit about how that whole really system comes together.

Kevin Wall: Yeah, I appreciate it. Before I answer that, I want to build on what Jon and Dave said. I was at a sales summit this last weekend with a partner and they had a keynote speaker, and I can't... I know his name's Mike. I can't think of his last name so I'm not going to quote him directly, but he talked about businesses can grow and businesses can scale. You can grow a business by adding headcount and by doing more work and you scale a business by taking... Growth by taking things away. As Jon talked about, scaling your business, giving eight hours, giving one headcount ability to go and do something else, that's what JobNimbus does. The automations within JobNimbus, the integrations with JobNimbus, the ability to not have to duplicate or triplicate or quadruplicate efforts, typing in all that... You get the ability to scale your business, which is growing your business by taking away those mundane tasks that can get really, really tedious. I became a real big fan of the difference between growing your business and scaling your business and so I love that and JobNimbus does a great job at that.

As for how all these partners work within JobNimbus, I mean, it's really great. Take Hover, for instance. You start with a lead gen and you have the ability to go and estimate a job. At the click of a button, you can get the digital measurements from Hover or from other partners and those get plugged right into JobNimbus. Then at the click of a button, you can take those numbers and you can create an estimate. Then at the click of a button, you can take that estimate and turn it into material order for the supplier that you buy your material from. It's got to be Owens Corning. Then at another click of button...

I mean, and so rather than having to type out a job order, a material order, having to create an estimate, having to take the measurements that you have done and put all that into place, you've now reduced it to just a click of a button and the human error factor is eliminated from it, all the time is eliminated from it and the customers get a world-class experience, which is what they expect to see. Somebody showing up on a job site with a drone or somebody coming to a job site with a proposal in hand based off of a quick measurement tool and are ready to have a conversation with you rather than having to wait three or four days for that is unmatched. Like Jon says, it's best-in-class. What's funny is, again, the idea of scaling. It's best-in-class by having done less work.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes. Yeah.

Dave Banas: Just to add to that real quick, one important thing that Kevin mentioned was that a lot of the efficiencies that we talk about is on the contractor end, but there is an impact on the homeowner end too, being able to be professional, be organized, be able to demonstrate that, build the trust with that homeowner, that it impacts both ways.

Jon Gardner: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. I think those are the kind of things... When you think about also the connection with Owens Corning, distribution, technology, contractors and then the homeowners, it makes an overall, like you just said, best-of-class experience.

Kevin Wall: Well, it's awesome. Yeah. The five-star reviews come in. I mean, they flow in and so the cycle repeats. It really is it really awesome.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That is excellent. One thing I would like to kind of just hit on is why. I know we've been saying it, but I want to say it very succinctly. Jon, I'd like to start with you, but why are these tech stack capabilities so important to roofing companies?

Jon Gardner: Yeah. The business is running at the speed of light, speed of sound. It's not different for the roofing business. The consumer, they have their demands, they have their requests and their requirements and those requirements don't change when they're interested in roofing. We have to, meaning the roofing industry, really has to embrace that and which we have. We've seen the technology enter into the roofing industry over the last five years in a massive scale and so that in itself creates a little bit of a challenge for contractors because with so many options out there, with those commercials popping up, with those ads popping up, with, "No, this one's better, no, this one's better." That creates a sense confusion to begin with.

One of those big messages that I'd love folks to take away is that we have done a massive amount of research on the back side before we even went day one into the market with our tech stack. Part of the element of the tech stack that contractors should walk away with is it's been tested and it's trusted by Owens Corning, so be confident that the decisions that you're making at least get you in a better place. But to get deeper into your question is with regard to the speed of sound, the speed of light, it requires you to have information in front of you right there and then. As much as we've talked about all of the outward-facing elements of the technology stacks that are helping contractors scale and solve problems, the insights, the data, that is actually the result of a, "I've sold a job. Now let's unpack all of that. How did I perform at the sales level? How did I perform at the production level? How did I perform at the ordering level? How did I perform at every level?"

The tech stack allows contractors and businesses alike to really look at that from a dashboard perspective and allow you to make very fluid decisions on an ongoing basis to continue to get the most out of the organization and the most out of people that make up your company. When we look at that perspective, the way that... It just came to mind as we were talking is it's amazing that pilots are up in the sky and there's a massive storm and people can't see anything, but somehow, someway that plane is able to land within five feet of where it's supposed to land and bring everybody home safely. That is basically a pilot looking at all of those key indicators to help support the decisions that he's making when landing the plane. That is a tech stack variation with regard to our roofing business.

We have the same capabilities to be able to look at our business holistically and feel confident that I can be in my office as an owner, as a leader in the business, as a salesperson, as anybody and making sure that my business is running as efficiently as possible. Those efficiencies translate into fantastic customer experience, five-star reviews, more margin on my jobs, business scaling and outpacing my competition at a very aggressive rate. We've seen these numbers all across the United States, unbelievably impressive numbers of the scalability when introducing technology. Although that sounds too good to be true, we're only five years into a massive push of technology in the roofing business, those numbers are real and they should not be passed over.

Going back to our tech stack here is feel confident that Owens Corning's presenting best-in-class companies that you could start your journey with and actually have an opportunity. If you do have any kind of technology in your business, then utilize the resources that we have to measure what you're doing today even if it's just to understand like, "Hey, I picked a different technology. How am I performing?" We are happy to help our contractors out in any way to make sure that they're scaling where they need to be. Anyway.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. No, that is exactly how important it is. Kevin, just to kind of sum us up, the importance of contractors embracing technology and these type of tech stacks.

Kevin Wall: Yeah. You talked about the why. Growing up, in real brief, my father was a contractor, started hammer in his tool belt and he swung that hammer until he just couldn't do it anymore. He tried to pass the business down to me, but I saw what being a business owner and all that did to him and the time that he didn't spend with his family and the time that... He was always grumpy. There are a lot of contractors who live in that kind of world where they're sun up to sun down seven days a week. Business owners never take vacation, never take time off. JobNimbus's why is we want to make contractors heroes. We're looking to help them make more money and save time every week and then they can use that time to spend with their family, to go on vacations, to scale their business, to give back to their community. By doing that, to whatever demographic or people are important to that business owner, they become heroes. That's why I get up in the morning, that's why technology is so important for roofing and the industry and that's what JobNimbus can do for our customer base.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you. Thank you all. This is great. Part of our ongoing series for the tech stack on this CoffeeCast sponsored by Owens Corning. Stay tuned. We have more information and then Dave and Jon and I are going to wrap it all up with a great big bow on how you can make this happen for your company. Jon, Kevin, Dave, thank you so much for being here today.

Kevin Wall: Thanks, Heidi.

Jon Gardner: Heidi, thank you so much. Thanks for all you do.

Kevin Wall: Thanks, Jon.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. You have a-

Jon Gardner: [inaudible 00:25:09]. Thank you very much.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Have a wonderful day. Stay tuned for the next video as part of this CoffeeCast from RoofersCoffeeShop.

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Episode 4 - Johanna Torkelsen from Hover and Jon Gardner from Owens Corning

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello, welcome to CoffeeCast from RoofersCoffeeShop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and I am so excited for this next section of this multi-segment CoffeeCast on the Tech Stack from Owens Corning. Yes, we've been talking technology and we love it. And I'm so excited today to bring Johanna Torkelsen from Hover and Jon Gardner from Owens Corning. Jon coming back to talk more about the Tech Stack and what an important part Hover plays in that Owens Corning Tech Stack. So Jon, let's start with some introductions.

Jon Gardner: For sure.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Can you start us off?

Jon Gardner: Absolutely. Heidi, great to see you. Thanks for all you do for the industry and for our contractors. And Johanna, it's a pleasure to be here with you today and thanks so much for being such a great partner with Owens Corning. For me, I've been in the industry since '93, dating myself just to touch. But with all that being said is I've never looked back, an amazing industry and I've loved to watch and see where it is actually today. It's mind-blowing how advanced and developed it has become. So with all that said, is I've had an opportunity to be in the industry for many years and today with Owens Corning I head up our learning and development platform. And that is all the resources and tools and training available to our contractors in our network and the industry at large, really to help our contractors and industry scale and solve those most difficult problems.

And Owens Corning has been leading into this space for quite a few years now where we look at our product portfolio, we love our product portfolio, we know our contractors and homeowners love it. And at the end of the day, our objective is not only to serve up best of quality products that are designed to last with fantastic warranties, but it's that piece of helping our contractors build their business, scale, whatever that looks like to them. And we bring a host of resources to our contractors through our network program. And one of them is the tech stack that we launched last year in conjunction with a few of our business solution partners. And Johanna and Hover are a fantastic example of how we leverage our partners because every single one of them are best in class and serve our contractors at the highest level when it comes to that specific technology. And when I think about what Hover has been able to do to transform the industry and how they play in our Tech Stack, it's really amazing.

And so I'd love to dig into that a little bit more here today as we get through with you and Johanna. So thanks a lot for allowing me to be here once again and look forward to unpacking this a little bit with you, Heidi.
Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is great. Johanna, welcome to this CoffeeCast. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Hover.

Johanna Torkelsen: Yeah, definitely. Well, one, Jon and Heidi, thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate being able to come together this morning and talk a little bit more about what we've been working on. My name is Johanna Torkelson, I'm a senior manager of channel and business development at Hover. I've been with Hover for about, oh goodness, about four and a half years now, which is wild to think about. And my primary role within the company is really the bridging that Hover does with Owens Corning and also to other partners within our industry ecosystem. Hover in its simplest form, we're a web and app-based technology where the foundation of our offering is creating exterior measurements and an interactive customizable 3D model of buildings from either capturing photos within the app or uploading a blueprint to the platform. This way, when a pro is leveraging Hover, they can be more transparent and more collaborative with their experience with the homeowner when they're using that 3D model and the design services that Hover provides.

This can help the customer make more confident decisions while we're supporting the contractor in winning more jobs while saving time and money. And really building in predictability and consistency into the contractor's workflow and really overall business.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. And really when you're looking at this, that's the customer experience is what Hover brings. To be able to see their house, to see those measurements that is so important. With this technology and the Owens Corning Tech Stack, Johanna, you've been a big part of this and putting it all together. How has this come together and how do you see it all stacking, especially Hover working with all the other technology solutions in that Tech Stack?

Johanna Torkelsen: Yeah, definitely. So we're really honored to be partnered with Owens Corning and the adjacent partners of the OC Tech stack. Our contribution within the Tech Stack ecosystem is primarily on the measurement front. We're providing those exterior measurements down to the nearest inch for your roof and your walls, your openings in addition to providing that unique 3D model of the home and the project. We provide additional solutions as well, but when we're talking to the other partners that we're working with within the OC Tech Stack we're really supporting there on the measurement front.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Jon, how do you see Hover and all the other partners kind of fitting together?

Jon Gardner: Yeah. It's a great question and that was our beginning of our journey with the Tech Stack. And it really in backing up before the Tech Stack, one of those special areas that we have within the network, within our program that serves up resources to our contractors is our business solutions' portfolio. And those are our partners that I'm speaking of, and Hover is a great example of that. And as we kind of get a little closer to the Tech Stack to your question, when we evaluate all of our business solutions partners and the goal was to create and actually serve up to our network members in the industry at large. What best in class looks like and how to leverage technologies in the most meaningful ways to drive success for each one of our customers and contractors business. And success looks different for every single one of them depending on where they are in their journey.

So the place to really start with our Tech Stack and the power of it is to look at who we're serving and that's what I call the North star, which is the homeowner. And throughout the entire Tech Stack and the resources and partners that we have built into it, it's always pointed to the consumer, to the homeowner. And so from the very beginning of the Tech Stack, it's all about helping to uncover a potential opportunity with a customer and that's the lead gen part of it. And as you work through the Tech Stack... And folks, if you haven't had an opportunity to listen to some of the other recordings that we've done, Heidi, with our other partners with the Tech Stack, I suggest you do that because it allows you to uncover some more of the details for each one of our partners.

When we get into the area of where Hover plays very big in the Stack, for me it really comes down to four really critical elements that serve up the power of what Hover does with the integrations of the Tech Stack itself. And that is, first of all you've mentioned it, it's the experience. And the experience is such an important piece and we're talking about the 3D rendering that Hover is able to provide, the details and the ability for the consumer to look at what the focus is in terms of what would potentially be done to the house, the job that we're talking about. But the 3D rendering also allows for that more immersive experience of what else the customer might want to have done on the house, how will that roof look on the house, what are the colors associated with the roof and maybe on the outside of the home? When you're buying anything, the ability to really tap into those thought processes and really immerse yourself into the experience that's really important. So that's number one.

Number two is the consistency. Consistency is so important and I kind of parlay that into the others. The third piece, which is the ability to utilize the technology to apply order entry of the materials that you just took the 3D rendering of. So consistency in terms of as a company, I feel really comfortable with the measurements that I'm receiving. I'm able to take that information and convert that into a game plan to solve that need on this particular project. But taking a step further, what is really cool about the integration of Hover into the Tech Stack is seamlessly being able to take that information that you've just shared with a homeowner that drives the trust. And then convert that into a process that's built into the business that allows for one click. And I can then send that order into distribution and allow distributors to take the ball from there and run with it. All that without having to draw down a piece of paper, without having to take time out.

It's a fully integrated process. And that little sliver of the Tech Stack is critical and very important to make sure that it is consistent and that it allows the next element of the Tech Stack to take over and drive what that next piece of the consumer experience is going to look like. At the end of the day, I mentioned this a couple of times, Johanna, this very well, is the integration is a critical element of any stack. And so, one of the biggest challenges our contractors face is, man, there's so many technologies out there. And this is such a different place than we were even five years ago. It is immersed with technologies and everybody says, "I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best." And what we do with regard to building out any of our partnerships and particularly with the stack, is to really evaluate our partners for what they do and make sure they are best in class and make sure that this integration is incredibly deep.

And the integration is the last, the four things that I mentioned, the last one is critical because without a solid integration you're left with a potentially broken stack that is not doing what it's supposed to serve up. So when you think about our Tech Stack and all of those elements, the last piece that is really focused is this solid integration. Those other elements of Harvard are game changing and they add so much power and experience for both the consumer and the backside of the business, which is really focusing on cutting costs, saving time, building efficiencies, building consistencies. You could speak about that to all of our solutions within the stack, but Harvard plays big in this part and that's why they're so critical in the success to our stack and when we unveiled it back in 2023.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it really it's so true. And I love that. And that's where I wanted Joanna to kind of take that and go into this integration with Job Nimbus. And what you offer, when you get exact measurements and you're able to put that into your process. Can you talk to that?

Johanna Torkelsen: Yeah, definitely. So within the Tech Stack we have direct integrations with JobNimbus, with CompanyCam and then also with SalesPro. Speaking specifically to the jobNimbus integration, the simplest form is that the integration allows for Hover measurements to be pushed into JobNimbus where the Pro then can continue the project within the JobNimbus platform. So when I'm thinking about the Tech Stack and the integrations and everything, we're really helping to support everything from the front end, from that lead generation all the way to post install. And it's a pretty cool stack that OC has put together with all these partners.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: As coming from your side and seeing this and now having it launched in 2023, what are you seeing with contractors and how much this Tech Stack is helping them and why it's so important to these Owens Corning contractors?

Johanna Torkelsen: Yeah, so we're in a digital age and I feel like our industry as a whole has been more of a slower role to adopt more digital solutions. But now we're in a time where you have to, you order your groceries off of line, you're doing all your shopping offline. This is now a time to really be bringing in digital into your workflow so that you're able to scale, so that you're able to be more efficient. So the OC Tech Stack really provides this all in one solution, excuse me, and an integrated workflow. And Hover and the Tech Stack resources offer a safer solution for their contractors not having to go up on the roof as much. A contractor and a homeowner can be on the same page with cost, with design, with visualization, with material choices. What color OC shingle do I want to be putting on my roof? Do I want to have a designer shingle? Leveraging Hover to be able to make those decisions and the other partners within the OC Tech Stack, is really powerful when you apply it.

And in addition, you're able to lessen the material waste on site and overall really just providing this more elevated experience to the homeowner, to the North Star. To sum it all up, overall, the OC Tech Stack really supports the Pro to be more efficient within their business. And I said it once already, but really from the beginning stages of lead generation, pulling in more business into your company and then being able to support every step of the way so that you're really able to be extremely efficient, provide the most elevated experience, interactive experience for your homeowner, all the way into installing to make sure that your margins are consistent and are tight. And you're not sending back material and under ordering, over ordering, all of those things. So this Tech Stack really supports those goals and creating a really well-rounded experience for our contractor to be able to scale it and be more efficient.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. Jon, this, the Hover part of the Tech Stack, the overall Tech Stack and the integration, bring us home a little bit because I just love how this all goes together.

Jon Gardner: Yeah. For me, we've had an opportunity to talk at length with each one of our partners within the Stack, Heidi, and this has been an amazing journey. And for those that are listening to this and say, "I'd love to learn a little bit more, then I suggest that you go to owenscorning.com and go into our resources available under the contractor section. And you'll have at your disposal a whole plethora of resources to dive into and dig into the Tech Stack and answer many of the questions you might have in your head. But two is all of our ASMs across the United States are well-prepared and ready to have conversations with you with regard to this Tech Stack and how it might help you in your process of just uncovering opportunities or you're ready to make some decisions on the technology itself.

All that being said is, I talked about this a little bit on the front end here, Heidi and Johanna, which is at the end of the day, the similarities, Johanna, as you're kind of having conversations about this and as I am too, one of the areas that we're both talking about is helping our contractors to drive success for their businesses. And that's what the Stack is all about and many of the resources that we bring to bear. One of the things, Heidi and Johanna, that I was reading up on recently is from the Small Business Association and they had a top-ten list of real reasons why small businesses, in this case roofing contractors, could potentially have reached their demise with regard to not being able to sustain the business. There's some real information out there where it's sharing with us that running a small business and being in the roofing space within the small business fold is not easy. And so many the cards are stacked up against contractors from the day that they decide that they want to get into it.

And this is where we are focusing our efforts with regard to helping our contractors. This is real stuff that I encourage every one of our contractors, folks listening onto this to dive into. Those top 10 that I just referenced, none of them were about product and things, it was all about my cash flow. It was all about not embracing technology. It was all about these critical business elements that can really get the most of us if we don't have the technology in part to help to drive success in the business. And so this is the area that I love us all to kind of focus on with regard to, why do we do this anyway? It's to showcase the fact that there are best in class companies out there and that this is a great resource to learn from. But two is, as I mentioned, our business solutions partners they are the best of the best in the industry. And we have business solutions partners that help to focus on various elements in all aspects of the business, depending on what's most important or critical for our contractors.

This Tech Stack is really taking it to the next level, Heidi and Johanna, as you know, with regard to let's take the best of the best, create a technology solution that's integrated. That allows for the experience so that North star homeowner to be just perfect. And so yeah, I would suggest learn a little bit more, talk to your ASM, talk to Johanna and or jump on owenscorning.com and go into our contractor section. We have videos and we have much more of an exploded explanation of what these services and resources and the integrations really stand for. So love this. We're bringing it home here with Johanna and all the integrations that we have. And Heidi, I can't thank you enough for the opportunity to once again share some of these resources that we bring to bear in a real way to do the best that we can to help our contractors scale and solve those biggest of challenges.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. Thank you, Jon. Thank you, Johanna so much for sharing your wisdom and being a part of this great Tech Stack that is helping so many contractors. I want to say to everyone out there, please watch the entire Owens Corning Tech Stack CoffeeCast. It's a playlist. You can watch all the different segments and we will be bringing a full recap of all of the technologies visiting with Jon and Dave to really wrap up how you can use this Tech Stack in your business. So be sure to watch them all, and we will be seeing you on the next segment of the Owens Corning Tech Stack CoffeeCast. See you then

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Episode 5 - Pam Torrey of Ingage along with Jon Gardner and David Banas of Owens Corning

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello everyone. We're back again with the Owens Corning Tech Stack CoffeeCast. My name is Heidi Ellsworth. This has been such an amazing series, really talking to all of the partners in the Owens Corning Tech Stack and I'm so honored to be a part of this, but we want to get on to our next company that is pretty dang amazing. So let's start with some introductions. Pam, could you introduce yourself and your company?

Pam Torrey: Yes. Hello everyone. Glad to be here. My name is Pam Torrey. I'm the Director of Marketing at Ingage. We are the industry-leading sales enablement presentation platform for home improvement in home services companies. We work with a lot of Owens Corning contractors, a lot of roofers. I've been at Ingage for almost four years now, which is pretty exciting. Taking us through some very rapid growth and built a lot of great relationships in this industry.

Prior to being at Ingage, I did marketing and lead generation for a FinTech company based in Chicago, and then I was at Apple before that. So been around for a little while. Fun fact, I actually have a master's degree in Opera Performance and have no formal training in marketing. Where is it all on the job.

Jon Gardner: Connect the dots.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's all about what who comes into roofing and very cool things you find out. John, can you introduce yourself?

Jon Gardner: Absolutely. First of all, Heidi, great to see you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes.

Jon Gardner: Thank you so much for the opportunity to be once again here with you and this team at Roofers Coffee Shop. You do amazing things for the industry, so I wanted to make sure I say thank you for all the stuff that you do.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you.

Jon Gardner: [inaudible 00:01:49] your team. 100%. So yes, Jon Gardner, and I'm here with Owens Corning. I've been with the company for over 12 years now. And today I head up our training or education platform and I head up our business solutions portfolio and our strategic partnerships. Obviously Ingage is very much a part of. So looking forward to today and having better conversations and more conversations about how Ingage in this case really stands up our tech stack.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Our tech stack. And Dave.

Dave Banas: Hi Heidi. Thanks for having us back. My name's Dave Banas, Digital Contractor Manager here at Owens Corning. I help contractors understand which digital tools are available in the industry to help them get more work and get work done. And I work closely with Jon in helping to bring solutions to our contractor network.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Excellent. And Dave and John, the three of us had an amazing conversation in the first video of this series, of this CoffeeCast series, really talking about the Owens Corning tech stack. So maybe just in very few words, can you summarize what the Owens Corning tech stack is and then we can get right into this very specific technology from Ingage. And Jon?

Jon Gardner: Sure. Yeah. And Dave, please jump in here. But at the end of the day, Heidi, as we talked in our first recording here with regards to the tech stack. The tech stack is, as it indicates, is really all about leveraging technology. And when you look at the industry and where it's come from just a few short years ago, technology plays such a major role in it.

And the idea behind the tech stack and what we've been able to provide our contractors in conjunction with our partners, is the ability to leverage technology to ensure that every part of the process of the sales cycle is completely covered so that our contractors can be more efficient, take more money on every single job, meaning opportunity to sell up on the job and just be extremely connected to their local market and their homeowners or future homeowners when it comes time to sell that next roof.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's so important. Dave, you really have been the architect. You are the mastermind, bringing all these folks together. So tell us just a little bit about why you look to engage to be part of the tech stack.

Dave Banas: Yeah, so building on what Jon said about the tech stack, is really looking at our partners and being able to help contractors understand which technologies work well together and what parts of the selling process that they can leverage from those partners to work well. And Ingage platform is great just for multiple things. For being able to tell the story of the contractor, tell the story of Owens Corning, be able to display our product and then being able to take a look at those results through some analytics and see exactly what that salesperson did within the home and what they showed to the homeowner.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it's exciting. Okay, Pam, tell us about this amazing technology from Ingage.

Pam Torrey: Ingage is the industry-leading sales enablement presentation platform for home improvement. And then I always get asked, what does that actually mean? Because nobody really knows what a sales enablement presentation platform is. So what we do is we help customers to create dynamic, interactive and engaging presentations, pardon my pun, so that they can better connect with homeowners.

Homeowners today are really looking for high education. They're looking for that information. They want to be shown why your product is different from what they can get from the guy down the street. And so if you don't have content that connects with them and that helps them to form an initial good impression of your company, you are not going to win that sale. The competition is fierce. We all know this. You need to differentiate yourself.

On the enablement side of the platform, what we help contractors to do is make sure that everyone has access to the content that they need and then that they can update that content whenever there's a change to the business, a new promotion, new financing offers, new products. When we work with Owens Corning, it's great because every time that they roll out a new product or a new color, they're able to go into the presentation, update it and then save that new part of the presentation. It pushes out to every single contractor who uses the Owens Corning product presentation.

And then as Dave mentioned before, we do have rich analytics on the backend. We actually just launched a brand new analytics platform. We rolled it out yesterday. It was very exciting. And so what contractors can do is go in and see the answers to their most commonly asked questions. How many appointments did you run last week? How long was spent in every section of the presentation across your team?

Let's say that John Smith, your rep is having trouble with his sales. You can actually go in and look at every single appointment that he ran last week and follow along with what he presented in that presentation with visual guides and the duration that he spent on every single section. So it's really rich. It helps you to be able to have those coaching conversations and help to make every single rep at your company your best rep.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Jon, when I think about that, so I don't mean to age us, but do you remember the pitch books?

Jon Gardner: I remember just bringing in the sample board, right?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This is pretty phenomenal technology. And how do you see that fitting into the whole tech stack that you're offering?

Jon Gardner: Well, at its surface, Pam, as you described it, it's just an unbelievably powerful, powerful product and a powerful technology. But think about the purpose of a tech stack. And the purpose of a tech stack is enabling our contractors to be able to, one, provide that immersive experience, but two, it is connected into the technology through integration. So all of what Pam is talking about is now very much part of the entire tech stack. So it's not a standalone product or technology that is useful. It is a very integrated technology, number one. So that's point number one.

Point number two is you just mentioned it, Heidi. Imagine the sales experience and imagine it from the homeowner's experience. Imagine them taking a sample from the sample board. Imagine them taking a brochure. Imagine them even getting into a pretty powerful PowerPoint or imagine them watching a video.

Now imagine that homeowner going into an amazingly immersive experience where they finally have the opportunity to feel like they're in control of learning because of the engaged platform. All the while that salesperson is guiding that homeowner through the experience using the awesome capabilities in the visuals that Ingage provides.

And at the end of the day, that provides our contractors with all of the goodies, which is I want an opportunity to really differentiate myself from the home. I want the homeowner to really understand the value prop that my company brings to this home. I want that homeowner to understand the complexity of a roofing system in that making the decision to buy this roof is not something simple as what's the color and when can you do it, and what's the price?

It is a complex system and Ingage helps our contractors to fully immerse the homeowner. Understand the complexity and how that company can be that right choice because of who they are through the company's story that they can share in the Ingage platform. And then, as Pam you shared, we've taken the time with Ingage to pre-build some really fantastic presentations that are all cloud-based, allowing our contractors to dive right into Ingage.

Start using this content from day one without having to do a single thing except say, yes, I want to provide my salespeople with a much more immersive experience and I want to be able to see what they're doing with the technology on the back end of Ingage. So to me, Ingage is really where the rubber meets the road is right there at the kitchen table. It's such an important part of the tech stack. And we couldn't be happier to have Ingage part of it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It just seems to fit the Owens Corning culture. Go ahead Dave.

Dave Banas: I was going to say, Jon brings up a really good point. When we put the tech stack together, we took into account of what does it do for the contractor. But we also looked at what does that do for the homeowner experience and the homeowner journey? How do those different pieces touch them? What kind of experience are they going to have? Are they going to be happy with the experience and want to work with that contractor?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it works. So Pam, how do you see Ingage really sinking or integrating with the other tech stack companies and specifically JobNimbus, which is really kind the core CRM?

Pam Torrey: Yeah. So we integrate with actually several of the tech stack partners very closely. So first of all, when you're using Ingage in conjunction with the CRM, it is very handy to be able to send out pre-appointment communication to a customer. So let's say that you've got a customer and you want to make sure they sit for that appointment. You want to do your best to make sure you can get both homeowners there. That's a big deal. We want to get both homeowners in the room.

And maybe you want to send out some pre-appointment education. You can actually load a web link of Ingage into your JobNimbus and be able to email that out to the customer. Or if you have a texting integration of some variety, you can text it to the customer. And we offer the capability to put a tag on that presentation so that way in your analytics you can see, okay, Mary Smith opened the presentation and she spent four minutes reading through it. That's a long time. We know she's probably pretty engaged with our company and she may want to buy.

As far as the other partners go that we integrate with, we have a very deep integration with SalesPro. So that is the in-home sales software from Leap. We actually have a deep link integration with them where you can bounce back and forth between our apps seamlessly. So the homeowner actually thinks that you're in one single application during the entire process. So you can start off in SalesPro and you can do your initial needs assessment, get your forms taken care of there.

And then we live under the resources tab. They go and click on whatever presentation they want, it opens an Ingage automatically. They do not have a different switching process. There's no swiping, there's no dock. It goes to the app automatically. And then when you're done presenting, we have a callback button so you can go right back into SalesPro.

And we have a very exciting new integration with CompanyCam that we launched just a couple of months ago, I believe. So we have an idea panel within Ingage for creating content. And we know one of the biggest issues is helping contractors to get their beautiful content, their beautiful after photos into their presentation. And Owens Corning did such a great job of building out a gorgeous local contractor presentation for their contractors to use.

And they actually have the ability to add photos directly from their CompanyCam account in the Ingage Idea panel to their Owens Corning local presentation. So you can take your after photos directly from your CompanyCam, load them straight into your presentation without having to save them elsewhere. It just pulls photos directly. So we're really excited about this because it again provides a deeper integration with these Owens Corning tech stack partners to help Owens Corning contractors at the end of the day tell their story and close more deals.

Jon Gardner: And Pam to that point as we're describing this, I'm thinking to myself that somebody listening could say, "That sounds really complex. That sounds like a lot. How do I start?" And part of the decision making and part of the build of the tech stack was technology really needs to do what it's supposed to do, right? To do what we're talking about here today. But also we're trying to solve for efficiencies. We're trying to solve to make life better for our contractors, a little bit easier.

So as we're describing Ingage, please know that it's all designed too to be super-easy. All the things we're talking about, all the backend stuff that's just like all the power and the meat behind the Ingage platform. But at the end of the day, what our contractors can really enjoy too is I can have all of this and it's such a simple tool to use that all of my salespeople can jump on board in this and really enjoy it.

So that's an important piece too because part of the tech stack is all about the technology in really closing the circle of the sales cycle, but it's also empowering the salespeople to really take advantage of it. And it's also creating the efficiencies so the business owners can see that there's a significant return on the investment when they invest in this technology.

Pam Torrey: I tell people that if you can copy and paste, you can do a deep link. It's not hard. There's literally a button and it says "Deep Link". And you just copy it and then paste it into your SalesPro. You can copy and paste your web link into your JobNimbus. All you have to do for the company cam integration is just log into your company cam account within Ingage. So thank you Jon for pointing that out. We do keep it really easy. I know words like Deep Link or API can be a little scary. The user interface is a huge focus. And yes, you want to make sure that it's user-friendly for your reps and user-friendly for the homeowner.

Jon Gardner: And Dave, you could speak to this, Heidi, if I can just one more comment here is as we're talking through it's like somebody may ask the question of, "Well, how do we know this is really great?" And part of the process that we go through with the build out of the tech stack is, first we have alignment on the technology and alignment on what the best in class technology is to build it out, check that box.

Number two is can we honestly say, and Dave pick it up from here, can we honestly say that this is best in class technology and it's doing all the things that it's supposed to do. And the fact of the matter is 100% because of the work that we did in the background with our partners and specifically with Dave who really dug into the details. Obviously Dave with your team to understand and make sure that we are checking all the boxes. So Dave, maybe you want to talk a little bit more about that.

Dave Banas: A lot of it was connecting them all together, running through the jobs, testing it out, proving that it does what companies say it's going to do. But then in addition to that is just talking to the contractors that use it. The one going to them and talking to them, getting their perspective. How's it working for you? What can you do now that you haven't done before? Are you saving time? What do you like about it? What could be improved? Those kinds of things. So it's just going around and vetting it internally with testing and also with our contractors.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Dave, keep going on that, because really one of the things that we really want to ask everybody is why is this tech stack important to a roofing company? Why is it important that they do this?

Dave Banas: So it's important for multiple reasons. I think it efficiency is going to be one, right? A great homeowner experience. They'll be able to look at the analytics from their tech stack with the different pieces. But probably what they would be most concerned about. It's really going to set themselves up for growth. All these efficiencies and all that is going to set themselves up for growth. Being able to have those systems in place and they're going to be able to grow from there. When we look at a tech stack, there's certain core pieces that we outline. A CRM, accounting tools, and a measurement service, those are core. And being able to add the pieces and build on from there is really going to be impactful.

Jon Gardner: And I think this group would agree that there's not one specific part of the entire sales cycle that's most important, although we could say that kitchen tables are really, really important because that's where the rubber meets the road. But Dave, to your point, is the production side of it is super-important. The lead generation side of it is super-important. The sales side of it is super-important. The application or installation side is super-important.

So as we think through the tech stack and staying with the engage piece of the tech stack is if we had it built out but we didn't have this really critical part on the sales cycle part of it, then it would be a broken system. And so what we're trying to solve for is, although it's all wrapped around the sales cycle from lead to close to review, at the end of the day, it's solving for all those critical parts of the business.

And I mentioned them, which is the sales, the marketing, the lead gen, the production, the installation and all. And you go all around again. And so the power of technology and the power of this particular tech stack in conjunction with our partners enables our contractors to really stand up all the parts of the business that are critical for success.

And that, Dave, to your point, is all about the efficiencies, which at the end of the day is making more money, building on an existing structure, even goes to the ability to really retain those awesome employees who are now more immersed and just love the opportunity to sell more, and just be more creative when they're in the home. So we're solving for all of them and go right back to the sales part, which is this is the one part of the tech stack that really touches the homeowner at very important level. And Ingage really does a nice job of bringing that homeowner into it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Love it. Pam, I'm inspired. I'm hoping everybody listening there is as inspired as I am. But just to kind of bring us home, talk about the importance of this partnership with Ingage and Owens Corning.

Pam Torrey: I don't know that I can speak to just the value that Owens Corning provides to our customers in a way that I can't really demonstrate it verbally. They bring so much value to our customers through this relationship. As we know Owens Corning is incredibly influential. They have so many contractors out there. Before we started working together formally, we had dozens of contractors on our platform who were selling the Owens Corning products. Who were Premier Owens Corning contractors shop tier.

And they have just been loving the content that the Owens Corning crew put together. They are able to communicate much more effectively with their customers. They are able to really show the value of the Owens Corning roofing system. And that is because of the content that this team has provided to our customers. So it's really been invaluable to them. And we really value the relationship because the faith that John, Dave, Megan, Julie, the whole crew at Owens Corning have shown in us, has really helped us to grow.

And it's boosted our reputation in the industry. I joke that I'm like other people might be growing faster and doing things, but we have such deep relationships within this industry. And I think a lot of that is really due to this relationship with Owens Corning. We feel like they bring a lot of gravitas to us, the scrappy startup. And are really able to bring a lot of value to our mutual customers. Like I said, they're just so happy to have content directly from the source, from the people they trust and delivered on our platform.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. John, Dave, this is great. This is great. Such an important part of the overall tech stack.

Jon Gardner: Yes, absolutely. And one thing to think about too is when we think about, we're talking about the whole piece Heidi. And the reality of it is businesses aren't prepared to make wholesale changes in one day. So when we think about the tech stack, this is best in class. And when we're talking to our contractors, we are suggesting very specifically that this technology and this particular company should be highly considered.

But at the end of the day, our contractors are burdened with everyday business and when is the right time to implement the technology? And that's where our partners and we can help our contractors work through that and decide where we want to target and attack the tech stack at the particular time in their business and their journey. And so as we think through the tech stack, think about it in that lens. It's like how do you eat an elephant? Like one bite at a time?

Let's start with the right technology. And it very well may be with Ingage. But the bottom line is, hey, it's a journey. Let us help you go through that journey. We'd be more than happy to do that. And our partners, they're just filled with amazing amounts of data and information and best practices that our contractors really should lean into them just even if it's just to learn about it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And you know-

Jon Gardner: I just want to jump in Heidi. But what's really great about what John and Dave have done with their relationship with us for their contractors is they've provided a tiered system of access to Ingage. So every single Owens Corning contractor can get free access to the product presentation just by signing up. There's a form you fill out and we'll go ahead, verify that you're an Owens Corning contractor and get you set up with free access to the product presentation.

So if you're that emerging preferred contractor who's got one or two sales reps, you basically just sell Owens Corning, you can go get started today for free with a product presentation. If you're a little bit bigger and maybe you've got five, seven reps, you still mostly sell Owens Corning. That's what you do. You can get started with a customized local presentation. And then if you're the big kahuna, if you're the guy who sells does whole home exteriors, maybe you also do bathrooms. You want to do everything.

You sign up for full Ingage. Owens Corning contractors have a discount on our platform, and they're able to get access to our full platform plus that great Owens Corning content. So as Jon said, you may not be ready for everything, but they've done such a great job of helping you to get access to what you need to meet you where you are in your business growth.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You can start small. That's what works. And you know what, this is what I love about this CoffeeCast series too. You can go and you can check out every technology within the tech stack. You can listen to these videos. And when you're ready, now you have the information at your fingertips in this playlist. So we now need to get on to the next technology. So I want to say thank you very much, Pam, for being on today, and Jon and Dave, we're going to see you in just a little bit.

Jon Gardner: You bet, Heidi. Thank you.

Dave Banas: Thank you.

Pam Torrey: Thank you, Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you all.

Jon Gardner: [inaudible 00:25:17] Coffee Shop.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Please continue, yeah, thank you. And thank you. Please continue watching this CoffeeCast. Check out every segment. And like we talked about today, save it, share it with your company. This is the information you need to build your own tech stack with Owens Corning. We'll be seeing you on the next one.

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Episode 6 - Jon Gardner and Dave Banas of Owens Corning and Anna Anderson from Art Unlimited

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to another CoffeeCast from RoofersCoffeeShop. This is a special CoffeeCast all about the Owens Corning tech stack, and we're here talking to the tech stack partners who really make it come to life. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and I am so excited to be here with Jon Gardner, Dave Banas, and Anna Anderson. Hello, everyone.

Jon Gardner: Hello, Heidi.

Anna Anderson: Hello, hello.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So we are going to start out with some introductions. So first of all, Jon, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do with Owens Corning?

Jon Gardner: For sure. Heidi, pleasure to see you and hear you here on the podcast. My name is Jon Gardner. I'm with Owens Corning. I've been with this fantastic company for almost 13 years, and today I head up our learning and development platform, all of the content designed to help our contractors scale and solve those big challenges. And I also head up our strategic partnerships, and that when you boil all that down, those are fantastic third-party companies like Art Unlimited that we're talking with today with Anna, where we just bring some of the best resources to our contractors. So I'm all about, and Dave is all about helping our contractors just scale, solve those challenges, and we have a pretty robust program to help all of our contractors out. So with all that being said, it's a pleasure to be here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. Dave, please introduce yourself.

Dave Banas: Hi, pleasure to be here too. My name's Dave Banas, digital contracting manager here at Owens Corning. My role here is to help our contractors understand and implement technology. They help them get more work and get work done, and I work closely with Jon and all of our business solution partners to help our contractors grow.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Excellent. And Anna.

Anna Anderson: Well, it's great to be here with all of you amazing gurus in the roofing industry. I'm the owner of Art Unlimited. We're a marketing agency that provides service to the roofing industry as a whole, and we are thrilled to be part of the tech stack that brings technology solutions to the Owens Corning Roofing Contractors.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. And for everyone out there watching as part of this CoffeeCast, this is one of several videos that talk about the tech stack, and we, like I said, are really diving into each of the technologies to talk about it. But Jon, before we dive into Art Unlimited, maybe talk just for a little bit about the tech stack overall and how important it is.

Jon Gardner: Yeah, it's a great question. And Heidi, before I begin as having conversations with you, just reminds me of just the amazing work that you've done for and with the industry. You and I started around the same time, and I just can't help but say thank you so much to RoofersCoffeeShop and you for all the great stuff that you do, really helping thousands of contractors out. So with that said, this conversation is about technology, and the team here at Owens Corning, geez, about 18 months or so, maybe a little bit longer than that, we took a look at, and as we always do within the context of our program, resourcing and providing resources to our contractors that helped them, as I said before, scale and solve problems. I mean, that's the way for success.

And so when we look at the industry and just life in general, the introduction of technology has changed the game for everybody, and we see it in our own daily lives. And as part of the value that we bring our contractors, technology has to be in the portfolio of which we're helping our contractors scale and solve problems. And that is all about the resourcing with internal resources that we have, as well as our strategic partnerships with our business solutions providers.

And so getting a little bit more granular here on the tech stack is with regard to technology, I think Anna, you could speak to this, probably five years or so ago, it started boiling up and bubbling up at a pretty feverish pace with regards to contractors saying, "Hey, I'm looking at some of this fantastic technology. Can you share a little bit more with me?" And at the end of the day, we look at fast-forward five years from ago is the technology space within roofing has become that much more... it's at a feverish pace. There's so many technologies that contractors can look at.

In the tech stack in the work that we've done in conjunction with our partners is really designed to help our contractors do a few things. One is to first understand why technology is such an important part of the business, and two, selecting the right technologies. And the right technologies at the end of the day, really should integrate with one another. And they should be solving for the most critical need, which is the North Star for us is always the homeowner, and technology should be able to answer every single question when it comes to partnerships and having that opportunity to create a customer.

And the tech stack, as the name indicates, is designed specifically to help our contractors, one, source out best-in-class technologies. Two, that integrate with one another to ensure that the experience and the return on the investment is at the highest level for our contractors. And three is to solve that journey with the homeowner. If the homeowner is the North Star, then every piece of technology should be working towards solving that and making that customer your best customer. But that technology should integrate so that the efficiencies within the business are there so that the technologies are able to maximize what they're supposed to be doing within the tech stack. And to ensure that both the external experience the sales folks are having in the home are just as powerful as the experiences that ownership has with the ability to understand the data and to mine that data and to look at the insights to be able to adjust and weave with the technology, to continue your business focusing on the North Star to be the best it possibly can be.

So the tech stack within Owens Corning is just all about that. It's another piece that's a solution that we're providing our contractors to be the best they can be when it comes to technology and scaling that business.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. Anna, I have to tell you, having Art Unlimited as part of the tech stack is just brilliant. And congratulations, Jon and Dave, you really start out the entire process by working with contractors to bring in the leads. Can you tell us about your technology and how it's part of the Owens Corning tech stack?

Anna Anderson: Well, we are honored to be part of the tech stack and helping to break down for contractors what does that tech stack look like. And you're right, as Jon explained, the customer, the homeowner is that North star, that component that everybody's looking to connect with. And so the digital experience is one of the first touch points that the consumer begins their journey with the contractor through. And so that's where Art Unlimited really comes into play. It's being able to help the contractor have a sound, stable digital experience, but then it's the pathway for data to begin its journey through the entire tech stack.

And so for us, it is truly embracing and creating a website and digital experience that properly collects the data and then in turn is a clear pathway to allow the customer's contact information to go into its next journey. So in some portions it's an interactive chat experience through another business service provider that the customer is able to interact with. Their data is dynamically collected, and in turn, passed to the next partner. Or it may be a form submission where that form submission dynamically goes into the CRM.

All of these components I think are, in our minds, easily able to be implemented. Buy yet when we get down to the nuts and bolts of it, it actually takes a little bit more work to ensure that there is a frictionless experience for the consumer to be able to go to that next tech stack solution.

So that's really where Art Unlimited comes into play, not only from a lead generation perspective, but also what is the experience that the consumer has with the brand, and then from the brand to the next tech solution is where we can win or lose the battle of that prospective lead. And really all the way to the final journey is how are we going to continue to embrace the digital experience on behalf of the contractor, make them win, and have that great experience for that customer.

So again, it's an evolving journey, but I think it's a great opportunity for the contractor to see that this is their first touch point, their brand, their customer's frictionless experience starts here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I just love that. That is so holistic when you really think about that customer experience all the way through. And Dave, I saw you nodding. This is really part of that, of the Owens Corning's bigger picture of the tech stack. Can you talk about a little bit of that customer experience and starting it with Art Unlimited?

Dave Banas: Yeah, sure. See, Anna mentioned a very key point that I always look at whenever we're analyzing our software partners or possible solutions is what effect will it have on the homeowner. Not just the contractor and how they do their business, but what effect will it have on the homeowner as far as their experience, as far as communication. So that when you capture that lead information and you set that appointment and you show up at the home, you do your inspection, you do your presentation, you give them the quote, the whole time that you're giving value to that homeowner, that they're enjoying the experience, that they're ultimately going to say, "Yes, I want to work with this contractor. I want them to replace my roof. I want them to do this project." And that at the end of it, when the project is complete, them to be so happy that they give a great review for that contractor.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it's so good. So Anna, how do you see Art Unlimited not only fitting into the tech stack, but also interacting with other tech stack partners, especially someone like JobNimbus that is kind of that CRM in the middle of it all?

Anna Anderson: Yeah, so Art Unlimited has the sense that we are a vehicle or a conduit again for that customer's journey to begin. And the CRM is the middle of that wheel, right? We're just a spoke that helps to ensure the information is clearly communicated to the associated partners. So working with the CRM to identify what are the key data points that are able to be collected at the front portion of the customer's journey and then inserted dynamically into the customer record within the CRM is really the stance that we took with JobNimbus and CRMs as a whole.

That is a great opportunity to say, "Hey, how can you minimize your overhead from a staff perspective increase of not only efficiencies, but accuracy of data," is really where that journey begins. And Art Unlimited, through our data collection from the consumer facing components such as the form, the web chat, et cetera, we're able to do that and help to minimize the increased data collection that usually happens from a contractor's point of view when they have disconnected tech stack solutions. And so that's an exciting component of the tech stack is from the beginning, Art Unlimited has said, we're going to integrate with as many partners as possible that are on the first touch point of the customer's journey.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That, brilliant, brilliant. Jon, I saw you kind of going, "Yes, this is so exciting." Can you talk a little bit about that importance of the integration? And I love not duplicating data because that's where mistakes... You need that accuracy.

Jon Gardner: So Anna, as you were describing that, one of the things that, as I was just shaking my head there, Heidi, is when we look at the tech stack, every single component is super important, but there is no... I'd say probably your CRM is super important, right, because that's the heartbeat, that's your spinal cord that's running the show. But outside of that, the purpose of, in this case, Art Unlimited right at the top of the tech stack is one of the most critical parts of technology, and that is introducing the company to a potential customer. But also the responsibility of the website is, "Hey, let's make sure that that customer stays on the website. Let's make sure that that customer actually reads the information. Let's make sure that customer actually makes a decision to follow up with the contractor."

And the pressure and the competitive landscape with regard to websites, and just that whole space is vast. Anna can speak to that all day long. And one of the areas where our contractors typically will trip up and it's no fault of their own, is selecting a company, an agency that they felt was, "Hey, that's a fantastic agency. They hit all the bells and whistles, and then it turned out to be a bad experience." And the bad experience means that it just the technology wasn't working correctly, that the leads weren't coming in, and all the things that we were talking about here today just weren't working.

And so I wanted to share that, Heidi and team, because it kind of goes back to the decisions, the factors that are made when we actually introduce business solutions, and where we are with regard to our partners like Art Unlimited, it is such a critical part of just our journey, selecting the right business solutions partners.

And folks, if you haven't had an opportunity to learn more about Art Unlimited and the scale of which Art Unlimited has really... You've built a fantastic business inside the roofing industry, and Art Unlimited is one of the leaders in this space. As a matter of fact, Anna, you're involved in the industry at some of the highest levels. And what I'm trying to say here, team, is that selecting the right agency is really important right at the front end because all the things that Anna was speaking to are really going to be from the agency.

So I'll give a quick example is you look at the pressure that we're up against, that our contractors are up against when it comes to website performance, is that for every minute that that homeowner is on that website and doesn't make a decision, the drop-off rate is significant. As a matter of fact, after one minute, the drop-off rate of that homeowner becoming a customer drops by 80%. And so the objective of that website is to make sure that homeowner is sticky and stays there and makes those decisions.

And so when you're looking at agencies, when you're looking at technology, website, and all those integrations, select them very carefully because this is your first and only opportunity for that technology to actually make a connection with a homeowner. It will be broken if you made a bad decision [inaudible 00:17:05] in the very front end there. And that speaks volumes to the great work that Art Unlimited does with the hundreds of contractors within our network that they cater to and work with.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I always say, work with people who know roofing, and Art Unlimited knows roofing. That is what's so critical.

So, okay, to wrap us up, Anna, I just have one more question. I think it's so important, but why is the tech stack capabilities and integration important to the roofing companies, to the roofing contractors? Why should they be focused on their tech stacks?

Anna Anderson: Well, again, the customer's journey is essential. We've covered that. The next piece is in today's environment, it is an incredibly competitive landscape. You are up against a large enterprise level businesses all the way down to the kitchen table business. You as a business owner need to make sure that you are just as competitive. And that's what the tech stack brings. Websites that are designed today through our tech stack integration have anywhere between three to five or more different platforms that we can dynamically integrate. That's exciting to us today because in the past, it wasn't possible. Today it is. You don't have to be an enterprise business in order to bring that great customer experience to the table through your website to drive leads and build the brand. So I think that's one of the unique differentiators and why I'm so excited about the tech stack.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Anna, so well said. Thank you so much. Thank you for being on this CoffeeCast and launching us off as we talk to all of the tech stack partners. Anna, thank you so much. Jon and Dave, we're going to be back with another partner here in just on the next video. So thank you both. Everyone, this has been a great CoffeeCast. And for everyone out there, stay tuned, a lot more coming your way.

Anna Anderson: Thanks so much, Heidi.

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Episode 7 - Jon Gardner and Dave Banas of Owens Corning and Keith Massey with Podium

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello, and welcome to another segment of this CoffeeCast from Owens Corning on tech stack. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and I am here with the experts in tech stack today to talk about another technology that's part of this amazing Owens Corning program. But first, I'd like to introduce all of these gentlemen who are here today, starting out with Jon Gardner of Owens Corning and Dave Banas of Owens Corning and Keith Massey with Podium. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Jon Gardner: Hey-

Dave Banas: [inaudible 00:00:45] Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So let's start out with some introductions so everybody knows who everyone is. So Jon, if I can start with you, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about what we're doing.

Jon Gardner: Sure thing Heidi. Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to take a second to say thank you Heidi for the invitation and number one and number two, for all the great work that you and your team do through Rufus Coffee Shop. Just amazing stuff over the decades, I should add.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you.

Jon Gardner: So great stuff. Yes. My name is Jon Gardner and I work here at Owens Corning. I head up our strategic partnerships here as well as our learning and development platforms. I work very closely with Dave Banas, who is on here with us, of course. And looking forward to unpacking a little bit more about our tech stack today, Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I am too. I'm so excited. Dave, can you introduce yourself?

Dave Banas: Sure. Hi, I'm Dave Banas, Digital Contractor Manager here at Owens Corning. And like Jon said, I work closely with him. My role is to understand the digital tools that contractors use to run their business, get more work and get work done, understand how they work in their own tech stack if they work together and help recommend solutions to contractors.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Excellent. Thank you. And Keith, welcome. We are so excited to talk about Podium today. If you can introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Podium.

Keith Massey: Yeah, so my name's Keith Massey. I'm a strategic partner manager here at Podium and I've worked with Jon and Dave for a few years now and love working with Roofers, tied to Owens Corning. But Podium is a texting and a communications platform. And what most contractors know us for is we're the best in the world at helping small businesses get a ton of reviews on Google to help them get found and chosen by more customers in their local markets.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So important and such an important part of this tech stack. So before we jump into that, Jon, just you had the vision to bring all us together. So let's just talk a little bit about the overall tech stack and then dive into this component with Podium.

Jon Gardner: Yeah, thanks for the question and to unpack that, it's really from our perspective, Heidi, we come at it from a simple perspective, which is understanding and solving all of our contractors' issues, problems and most importantly, teeing up opportunities to help them scale and then eliminate some of those problems that are preventing them from getting there. And the tech stack itself is a platform that we've built utilizing our business solutions partners to, in a real way, help contractors to connect the technology dots so that they have a fully integrated resource to help them scale their business and utilize the best-in-class technologies to really eliminate, as I said, those problems and get their business in a new place, in a place where they really envision it and where they want it to go.

And technology is the way of the future in roofing and in all other businesses. And we're really proud of the work that we've done, Dave and I and the team and working with our business solutions partners to create a real working tech stack that allows our contractors to tap into it at any time. Because we've done a lot of the hard work in the back end and Dave mentioned all the work that he does with regard to just unpacking the technology itself and really pressure testing it in the back end.

And so we are just so excited and today, having conversations with Podium here with regard to the tech stack, Keith had just mentioned it's about communications and it's about reviews, but the way that we look at it is it's pulling back all the areas that are preventing contractors from making those important connections with homeowners, the way that homeowners want to be connected. And then number two is when it comes to communicating, there's nothing more important in a job, like a roof or like a kitchen or any other part that's going around the house, to connect with the homeowner to keep them up to date on what's going on with a job and utilizing, everybody wants to text. And so if I'm a homeowner and I'm feeling like my contractor's totally connected with me, that's part of what Podium does.

And so when you think about that in terms of the tech stack, it's right there in the very part, in the beginning of that technology circle where one of the most important places is giving homeowners a way to connect with contractors, whether it's seven o'clock in the morning, seven o'clock at night, at midnight, at any point during the time the homeowners are like, "I want a new roof," that Podium is really integrated into the tech stack to allow our contractors to take in that information and respond to it just as fast as it came in.

And one of the things that I want to mention here is that we talked about communication reviews, but it's also about speed. Speed to lead and speed to communication is really, it's a must have in today's business world. It's a must have in the consumer's mind. And if we don't get past that, then we lost that opportunity with a significant percentages as the minutes go on. So when we think about Podium, think about it in terms of the ability to communicate very easily, the ability to utilize this communication platform to drive as many reviews, five-star reviews because the homeowner is so satisfied and feel so connected with the contractor. And at the end of the day, Podium play such an important role in making sure that that homeowner has a complete and really solid experience in the whole sphere of technology so that when a job is done that homeowner says, "I am so happy with this contractor, I can't wait to tell about him or her to my friends, to my neighbors and of course to social media."

So we absolutely love our relationship with Podium. We love what Podium has done with the hundreds and hundreds of contractors in terms of their ratings online. And then that turns into more legion, more branding, more opportunities to continue to grow their business. So there is a significant opportunity for contractors to take advantage of Podium within the tech stack and the tech wheel.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It really is. I mean, texting is it. And we just had things done on our home and our contractor texted us, we knew what was going on, we're so happy afterwards. So Keith, talk a little bit about that. Talk about the importance of strong communication, your technology that leads to the reviews to, like Jon said, the referrals. It's such a great circle.

Keith Massey: Yeah, so like Jon mentioned, when we start getting a ton of reviews coming in, what'll happen organically is in their local markets, they're going to be showing up in the top three of Google's Map pack. That's where you want to be. That's the best place because number one, you're going to get a ton of leads because 77% of clicks happen on the first three companies that are listed in Google's Map pack. And if you are the obvious choice, if you've got 100 or 200 or 300 more reviews than the nearest competitor in your local market, everyone's going to call your business first. And so that's what we want. And so with Podium, we have all these different avenues for customers to be able to get in touch with contractors today, whether it's over the phone, email, some contractors might have SMS or they have third party sites that are pushing them leads.

So with Podium, we pull all of those leads into one inbox and we can automatically respond to leads as they come in. So if someone calls you and you miss the phone call, if you're using Podium's phones, we can automatically trigger a text message that says, "Hey, sorry we missed your call. How can we help you today?" That's something that automatically happens in the backend, where traditionally those roofers that don't pick up those calls and they don't leave a voicemail, now they don't have any way to be able to get in touch with that customer and they lose that lead right out of the gate. Now with Podium, we're capturing those leads, capturing the information and allowing that conversation to continue through text. So that's just one example with our phones tool, but also if they set up Podium's web chat on their website and someone messages in, we can automatically send them a response. It says, "Thank you for contacting ABC Roofing. If you'd like to schedule an appointment, you can use this link to be able to schedule that automatically."

So it's all about making it simple for the roofers to be able to interact with the customers and also coming to them, as Jon mentioned, on a platform that they prefer to communicate on it. A lot of people, they don't like picking up the phone to call anymore. So if we can be able to push all those communications through text, it's really going to improve the customer experience for the homeowners they're working with.

Jon Gardner: And Heidi, if I could just... there's a piece of information here that's really worth noting. It's like, well, what has Podium done and how has Podium helped our contractors and our network? And there's only one way to really showcase that in terms of Podium, and it's where did our contractors start in their reviews? What rating were they at in aggregate? And where are the contractors that are using Podium today in terms of their star rating? And it is a sizable jump. So Keith, could you share that, because I think Heidi and then the folks listening here will be like, wow, that helps you understand exactly what Podium.

Keith Massey: Yeah, to me it's a very stark difference. So we did a Google audit of over 24,000 Owens Corning contractors, and what we found was the average star rating for an Owens Corning contractor that's not using Podium is 3.9 stars. And so if you think about that, when was the last time you took your significant other to a restaurant that was 3.9 stars? Probably never, right? The average number of reviews, 36 reviews was the average and on average they were getting about one review per month. If you compare that to the contractors that are using Podium, their average star rating is 4.7 stars, 168 reviews and they're getting 25 new reviews per month. So it's a very stark difference. And so that's why I'm saying if we can get them in the top three and we can get them to be the obvious choice compared to the competition, they're just going to get a ton of leads and they're going to be very, very successful.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's impressive.

Jon Gardner: Yeah. And imagine amplifying that. In a technology stack amplifying that because now you take that amazing result and you actually amplify that, because Heidi, we're implementing Podium into the tech stack. So you have an opportunity to leverage Podium for what it does, which is amazing as you just heard. But two is you can actually make it even stronger by integrating it into other technologies that are so important to the business that really leverage Podium and Podium leverages them. I mean, JobNimbus, Dave is a great example of just the significance of integration when it comes to the tech stack. And Podium on its own, fantastic. Unbelievable. We love it. But that integration part just helps us double down and throw gasoline on it, right, Dave?

Dave Banas: Yeah, Jon, one of the biggest complaints from homeowners is a lack of communication. So we've already talked about how using a Podium platform can help contractors communicate with homeowners better manually, but integrating it with JobNimbus or some other CRMs, you can set up automations that will automatically notify homeowners when certain things change. If a status of the project changes, they get a text letting them know like, "Hey, this changed." If there's going to be a delivery of product, they can get a text letting them know that, "hey, expected delivery," can set up templates to let you know how you need to prepare for that delivery, make sure your cars are out of the garage and other type of things to watch out for. So using the power of a CRM and setting up those integrations with Podium to improve the communication to the homeowner is fantastic.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's exactly, as I'm sitting here listening to all this, I'm just thinking to me that communication throughout the project is so important and is what actually drives that final reviews and referrals and everything else because you just feel so good at it. I'm curious too, as contractors are looking at this and thinking about it, what is... I know tech stacks Keith, I'm sure you hear this all the time, technology, new technology is scary. It's something that companies are like, "It's a hassle, I don't know if I want to do this or not." But from your stats, which I love, those stats, it shows it's worth every second and you all make it easy. So talk a little bit about the importance of roofing companies really looking at this strongly and being a part of the Owens Corning tech stack overall.

Keith Massey: Yeah, so one of the common themes we hear from a lot of roofers is, "I've been doing it this way for years. I don't need to change, I don't need to update." And the fact is, if they don't start applying some of these new technologies, they're going to get left in the dust by the competition. And so when we start looking at the tech stack and the things that it can do to enable their business to be number one, more efficient, number two, easier to do business with them. And if we start putting those tools together, for example, JobNimbus and Podium, we have the ability to sync those contacts automatically between both so they're not having to double enter the customer's information. And as soon as we mark a job as completed in JobNimbus, we can automatically send that text message asking for the review for the customer without them having to do anything additional on their end that they're not already doing within the system.

And we're going to be continuing to add more and more functionality between the integrations between Podium and JobNimbus as well, but it's all about helping the contractor get more done, less time and then utilizing the technology to be able to help automate the things in their life that they don't need to be spending a whole lot of time on. So that's what I would say.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You're really working with all-

Jon Gardner: Heidi, and there's this... I'm sorry, go ahead Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, no, I was going to say, Jon, I think you were going to go there too, but really you're really working with all of these companies, these technology companies that we've been talking to. So Jon, talk about that. I mean, how they all come together, I think from marketing and Podium, you're right, kind of travels through the whole process.

Jon Gardner: Yeah, it really does. So the uniqueness of Podium is significant in the tech stack because Podium, in the very beginning, it's all about homeowners finding you. So Podium is embedded into our contractor's website. That integration allows for a seamless integration into the Podium platform. Homeowners know nothing except like, "Wow, they answered me right away via text. That's just so amazing."

And then Podium also comes into play at the end of the tech stack where the job is complete, the homeowner's super happy. That's where Podium is leveraged again to drive the review. And you can see how we arrived at that 3.9 rating all the way up to a 4.7 rating because we've closed the loop for that homeowner. The homeowners are exceptionally happy with the job because of that significant part called communication.

And you had mentioned, Heidi, that there's a lot of friction with something like this. And no doubt as a small business, you have to decide where am I going to invest my dollars? What technology am I gonna put in first? And that's one of the things that our contractors can lean on Owens Corning for specifically with Dave as part of the team here that built it out. Dave's technology background allows us the opportunity to understand a little deeper about how our contractors businesses are running and understanding some of those metrics inside of the technology if they have it or if they don't and measuring where we might want to implement the first technology for our contractors.

And so when you look at all of the technologies that are built within the tech stack, Podium no doubt is one of the most important parts. And I do want to mention this. You had said Heidi, and rightly so and I was just making mention to it a second ago, that there's a lot of angst and I'm not sure where to start and what technology should I pick, where should I go? Utilize the resources we put together in the tech stack to help you unpack those real questions. 'Cause we've actually put together a pretty cool packet and a resource for contractors that help to uncover the value of the tech stack and where you might want to go with some of the documentation that we built into the tech stack platform.

But the part that I want to make mention here is look, contractors are texting homeowners all day long because that's the way homeowners want to be texted. Imagine I have five salespeople. Five salespeople are texting homeowners all over the place. "What did you say? When did you say it? Did you put me in charge of something? Did you say that it's now somebody else's responsibility to contact the homeowner?" Texting is powerful, but used in the wrong way it become much more confusing for the homeowners because now they have multiple texts coming on and not quite sure if I connected all that good stuff.

One of the valuable parts of Podium is the platform itself that allows as an owner to look at all of the text conversations are going on by customer, who is texting the homeowner, when that text was passed on to the next person in charge of it, whether it's going from intake to sales to production to close, that text, that communication flow, one of the most valuable parts of Podium is allowing the owner, the salesperson, anybody in the organization to have full transparency of what the communication was, and it allows them the opportunity to jump in when needed or when the owners of the company said, "It's time for you to get going on this particular customer, your turn." All the while the homeowner's just going through this whole communication and they're like, "Oh my God, this is the most amazing experience I've had with a contractor." Because there's so many touch points in that I wanted to share with you because it kind of helps to understand, well, texting is one thing, but texting with a platform that's built with a company like Podium takes it to a whole 'nother level.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And the whole risk factor-

Keith Massey: And if I could just add one... Oh, go ahead.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Sorry, go ahead.

Keith Massey: No, I was just going to say, like Jon was saying, if we can put all of the customer's communication in one spot, so we've got all their text message, all the pictures, all the videos, we can include their text links for collecting payment and then including our phone's information. Our phones will actually give an AI created summary of the call with bullet points. And so now there's no guesswork of where the customer's at. You can assign a conversation to someone within the business instead of having to call him and say, "Hey, I just got off the phone with Joe. He needs X, Y & Z." You just assign a conversation. Now you have full transparency of everything that's been communicated there, and it clears up so much misinformation.

We had one customer that had a dispute with American Express, which you guys know how difficult that can be to be able to get chargebacks reconciled. And he went back to his Podium instance where he had a conversation with the customer, and we had the transcript where the customer had agreed to the $18,000 charge and he took a snapshot of that, sent it over to American Express and was able to get American Express to side with him. So those are just some of the reasons why having everything in one spot just clears up so many communication dead falls that companies face today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And I know this is a lot and it gets exciting, because just hearing all this, I'm kind of going, oh, I love this so much. So Dave, just real quick, as you are working on these integrations and as you're working with the different folks, what are you hearing back from the contractors about being able to really use all this different technology?

Dave Banas: Yeah, Podium solves a lot of problems. We talked about it helps them with their communication from the website. It gets them into something that's organized that they have insight into, that they can see, helps them communicate directly to the homeowners, especially setting up those automations like I mentioned earlier that keeps the homeowner informed. That's one of the big takeaways is that if a homeowner knows what's going on, they're going to feel better about the whole entire process. And they're more likely to leave a better review at the end of it because they feel like they've been in the loop, my contractors have been transparent with me, I know what's going on. And just going through and increasing those reviews and ratings, like Keith said, it's so important to get great reviews to show up in that Map pack and that's a huge part of it.

Jon Gardner: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Wow. Well, I love this. I love this. Thank you Keith, so much for, I mean, first of all, the technology, for everything you're doing with Owens Corning and this is just... I have so many thoughts in my head right now, I can't even tell you. The amount of risk, everything else that Podium's going to take care of. So Jon, any last thoughts?

Jon Gardner: I would say to folks that are listening and that want to learn a little bit more about it, our tech stack, including information with regard to how Podium fits into it, is available on oc.com, owenscorning.com. In addition to that, we have plenty of information via our area sales manager. So reach out to your local area sales manager to unpack a little bit more about the tech stack. And at the end of the day, and Dave, you and I talk about this a lot, is like, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, and this is exactly how contractors may want to approach their technology and the integrations is with regard to look, take it as a priority. So what part of the business needs the attention the most? Or where do you think you're leaking the most? Or where's your biggest opportunity to scale? And that's where you start with your tech stack.

And Dave, there's one other piece too with regard to that is if I'm just starting from scratch, it's like where should I start? Because that's probably one of the most interesting questions is if I don't have technology today, where on earth do I start? And so Dave and I worked a lot on that part too. And so Dave, there might be something to share as well.

Dave Banas: Yeah, and one thing we recognize is contractors aren't all starting from the same place. They're starting from different maturity levels in their business and different pain points. So there's a core piece of technology that we outline in the resources, a group of three tools, CRM, accounting, measurements that the contractors should have as their base. And then there's also resources, other questions that contractors can ask themselves when looking at their tech stack and looking at their problems to find out where they're at and they're what they can address next.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Well, Keith, any last thoughts?

Keith Massey: No, I look forward to working with you guys. If you're interested, feel free to reach out. Like Jon said, you can go to the Owens Corning website to learn more about Podium. But normally we'll set up a 30-minute demo call to show you what the platform can do for your business. And usually after the end of that call, you can determine if it's something that's going to be a benefit for you guys. And then the last thing is onboarding for us is very simple. So if you've ever gone through onboarding with a CRM, it's nothing like that. So we can get you guys up and going in 30 minutes and sending texts with your customers makes it very, very simple to get going, especially for those that are not as tech-savvy as you would like to be. We make it really simple and our onboarding team's really great to work with, so.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So important.

Jon Gardner: And Heidi, if you don't mind, I'll leave with one more piece of data, some information.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yes.

Jon Gardner: And really it kind of unpacks all of this here. It puts it into perspective, which is we talked about communication, really important. We talked about reviews, really important. But at the end of the day, all of this is being driven by really one thing, which is speed, speed, speed. And speed to lead, speed to communication, speed to anything in business is super important. And one piece of information that I read recently in an article was that after five minutes from the time that the homeowner requests to be connected with the contractor to get some work done or at least understand them a little bit more, after five minutes, if the contractor has not responded, that opportunity to convert that lead drops by over 80%.

And so when we think about speed, it's no longer in hours. It's certainly no longer in days. It is being measured in minutes. And that's why technology is such a critical part of the business, and that's why technology that's integrated is so important to the business because you want all the technologies to serve that. They want the technologies to serve what I'm trying to get done in this case, speed, speed, speed, communication and a predictable process that I can repeat time and time again regardless of how much I scale the business. And that's why Podium is such a critical part of the tech stack that we brought to market.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. That's so perfect. That's it right there. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much. We have more coming, more on the tech stack from Owens Corning during this Coffee Cast, so watch for the next videos. Again, thank you all for being here today.

Keith Massey: Thank you.

Jon Gardner: Thank you, Heidi.

Keith Massey: [inaudible 00:27:26]

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. We'll be seeing you on the next CoffeeCast with Owens Corning tech stack, so stay tuned.

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Episode 8 - Jon Gardner and Dave Banas of Owens Corning and Nick Brouillette of CompanyCam

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello, and welcome to another CoffeeCast from RoofersCoffeeShop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and we are here with Owens Corning to talk about their Tech Stack. Yes! We are up and personal with all of the partners in that Tech Stack and we're finding out what it all means. All these small videos are coming your way, short videos, that really give you tons of information about how you can use the Tech Stack Owens Corning and build your own within your company. Let's get start with some introductions.

First of all, Nick, Dave, Jon, welcome.

Jon Gardner: Thanks, Heidi. Good to be here.

Nick Brouillette: Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. Let's start with some introductions. Jon, if we could start with you, if you could introduce yourself and what you do with Owens Corning?

Jon Gardner: For sure. Good to see you again, Heidi. Nick, Dave, good to see you as well. Always as pleasure to be here on RoofersCoffeeShop.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Always a pleasure.

Jon Gardner: Thank you. For me, Jon Gardner. Of course, I'm with Owens Corning. I've been in the industry since the early '90s and I've had the pleasure of being with Owens Corning here for about 13 years. Today, I head up our learning and development platform as well as our strategic partnerships. Both of those are elements, and resources, and tools that are all within the contractor program that we provide our contractors.
Love the opportunity here to talk about one of the most critical parts of what's helping contractors scale and solve those problems. It is technology. We've invested some time, some energy, resourcing and partnerships to bring some of the best in class technology solutions, integrated technology solutions to our contractors. Thanks for allowing us to be here today, Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Oh, it's so great. I love this. I'm going to learn so much with each video, let me tell you. Dave, can you introduce yourself and tell us what you do with Owens Corning?

Dave Banas: Sure. I'm Dave Banas, digital contractor manager here at Owen Corning. My role is to help contractors understand technology and implement technology. I work closely with Jon. We developed a Tech Stack together and I'm really excited for this.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So great. Nick, please introduce yourself and tell us about your company.

Nick Brouillette: Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for having me today. I'm Nick Brouillette, and I'm with CompanyCam. I've been here for about three years now. I do partner relations, so working with other manufacturing partners, suppliers, distributors, really to allow the contractors to understand the value, and really add more value to them to grow their companies and become more efficient in their space.,

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. CompanyCam, oh, what a great, great software for roofing contractors and such an important part of this Tech Stack. Let's just start off, Jon, as a reminder, the Tech Stack from Owens Corning, what it's about. Then we can dive into how CompanyCam fits in there.

Jon Gardner: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, a little bit about the Tech Stack and what it's all about. As I mentioned before, Heidi, part of the solutions that we bring our contractors through our program is through our business solutions partners. These business solutions partners are vetted and brought into the program so that we can deliver it to our contractors. They're best in class companies that solve some of the most critical needs that our contractors have.

When you look at that, the Tech Stack represents the best in class technologies that are designed and do integrate with one another that help the contractor, and more importantly the homeowner that wants to do business with the contractor, stay 100% connected. From the contractor's perspective, the technology allows full cycle, that homeowner to have the best in class experience, allowing the contractor to not only provide an awesome roof, but fantastic reviews and plenty of margin and really running that business at optimal level. When you think about the Tech Stack, think about it in that context.

These are technologies that are designed to work together to help our contractors scale and solve problems. We think we have some of the best in class companies that can help provide those solutions to our contractors. And CompanyCam is, for sure, one of those companies.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Perfect. That leads us right in, Nick. Please tell us about CompanyCam and your technology.

Nick Brouillette: Yeah, absolutely. CompanyCam is a cloud based photo and video documentation and communication software, really to build trust and transparency with your internal teams and with your homeowners. Really, a one-stop shop for all photos, videos, documentations for specific job sites to help keep everyone on the same page.

The problem we saw often and the problem we solve is really when you're on a job site, taking hundreds of photos, all these photos are being taken. If you have multiple people on your team, then they're taking photos. They're texting them, emailing them to each other, text and email them to someone in the office. Uploading them to their CRM platform. If they have to send anything to customers, they're having to download them to send them three at a time in an email. The biggest thing with CompanyCam is realtime photos based on that project location. Everything is organized based on where that photo was taken, who took it and what time they took it. Just a very easy way to get everything organized, as far as the field data that needs to be captured at each job site.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, I'll tell you what, Nick, I love that. I have to admit, I was of the age in the industry when we were collecting all those pictures and we were trying to figure out what to do with them, and the file folders, and all of that. Jon, you were right there with me.

Jon Gardner: I remember.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: This kind of ... I'm really showing my age. But I remember when CompanyCam launched and what a brilliant solution for the industry this has been.

Dave, I just want to come back and say how do you see this integrating within the Tech Stack, especially the importance of documentation and photos?

Dave Banas: Yeah. I will say about CompanyCam, talk about integrations. They have over, I believe, 50 plus direct integrations with other players in the industry or in the service industry. It's really exciting to just see, when I'm working out solutions of what I can all connect CompanyCam to.

The way we outlined it in our Tech Stack is for inspection. Nick mentioned that it's easy to manage those photos. But if you use a complete Tech Stack and you're using CompanyCam, not only are you capturing those inspection photos, but you're also able to put those inspection photos in your proposal, be able to use them during a presentation. You'll be able to take shots afterwards and they have their own widget that they have, Showcase, that you can use those photos and you can put that on your website. You can show before and after photos to really help to build trust with the homeowner.

If you just look at all the capabilities of what CompanyCam can do and where they integrate, it's a very exciting software solution. I highly recommend that contractors take a look at it. Not just use it for inspection, but just see how else they can take advantage of it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Nick, Dave just mentioned all of your integrations. One of the questions we have is how do you see CompanyCam interacting with the other Tech Stack partners? Especially the CRM, JobNimbus and that relationship you have within the Tech Stack.

Nick Brouillette: Yeah, absolutely. To Dave's point, yeah we have a lot of integrations. We really want to stay in our lane. We want to make our product the best that it can be. Like Dave said, a lot of other aspects of the job outside inspection need photos, whether that's with a quote, whether that's with just a project in general.

To your point, with JobNimbus, we want to make it as easy as possible. When you create a project in JobNimbus, it will actually auto create a project in CompanyCam. When someone shows up at the job site, everything is based on that location. They will actually open up their app and right there, they'll see nearby projects and they can start taking photos. All of those photos that they're taking at that project are going back over to JobNimbus. If you need to use them in one of the other, really we integrate with the majority of the people on this Tech Stack, which is awesome. Because you can pull these photos and plug them in wherever they need to be because photos, people love photos. People love looking at photos. It's very clear, very concise. It's easier to understand than just a block of text.

Now that people are taking all these photos and they're organized in realtime, and they have thousands of photos to use, we want people to be able to use those for quotes, for marketing, for whatever they need to use them for, for that transparency with customers. Dave mentioned Showcase. It's just an easy way to upload these photos onto your website without having to go through the tedious tasks of downloading photos, selecting a few, cropping them to fit, anything like that to fill the gallery. Really, just want to make it as easy as possible. Specifically with these integrations, it's something where we stay in our lane, we do what we do well and we play nice with others. It's what it comes down to.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It sounds like the perfect partner. I'm telling you right there. One of the things, with all of the things you can showcase, marketing, sales, but I also believe that there is a huge benefit when it comes to risk mitigation to really have those photos.

Jon, I'd love for you to talk about that. When contractors are thinking about a Tech Stack, I think everyone, we don't always think across the board about how it helps mitigate risk.

Jon Gardner: Yeah, 100%. We spent some time talking about the contractor to consumer benefits of something like CompanyCam. You mentioned risk mitigation. When you think about a picture is worth 1000 words ... Look, if you haven't been in some sort of lawsuit or potential lawsuit with a homeowner because something went crazy, you need to have solid documentation and that's in the form of photos. There's one example of where this technology can help you quickly and easily get to the source of what the potential conversation may look like if the homeowner is concerned about something and it requires you to follow up.

But the other part that's really important is the whole piece around whose doing the job for you. As a subcontractor, you're being told, "Hey, this is your job." If you don't have the right resourcing ahead of time, then that job could potentially be an issue. Said another way is that the CompanyCam is allowing the companies to easily and quickly tell that subcontractor that, "Here's the areas you need to focus on, here's some critical areas that I talked to the homeowner about."

The areas around the home, unassociated with the roof itself, the risk mitigation goes beyond just a potential lawsuit. It goes to the production. It goes to the order of the materials. It goes to any adds that are going on the job that the homeowner said they want you to do. It goes to these problems that pop up on every single job. Risk mitigation, at the end of the day, could be lawsuit. But let's think about the real risk. The real risk is, "I delayed my job by a day. Homeowner wasn't happy because I did something that they asked me not to do. Subcontractor didn't show up or time," or even went to the wrong house. Who knows? At the end of the day, CompanyCam is such an important element to making sure that this job is running smoothly from every aspect of it. That's why CompanyCam is a critical part of the Owens Corning Tech Stack.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's so important. Whenever you think about the pictures and how many places they are important within the whole job process, within the customer experience, it is critical.

Nick, last question that we have for you, but I think this is really important. Why is it important for contractors, roofing companies to focus in on their Tech Stack? Also, the Owens Corning Tech Stack capabilities and integrations, what they can bring to their company? Why should contractors be thinking about that Tech Stack?

Nick Brouillette: Yeah. For many reasons. I think the Tech Stack that Owens Corning put together is an awesome thing to start with. I feel like a lot of contractors are trying to improve their efficiencies, whether it's job site, whether it's just internal standard operating procedures. A lot of things can get lost. Having one place to go to look and see, "Hey, these softwares are something that can better my business." But not only better the business, but they work well together. They compliment one another.

I was actually thinking, I was at my nephew's second birthday party recently. There's these things called Magna-Tiles. I don't know if you're familiar with Magna-Tiles. Think of Legos, but with just blocks and shapes that you can just connect these Magna-Tiles together. Well, if you buy him a truck for his birthday, the truck is just a truck. It's a firetruck, he can throw it and pretend it's a plane. But as itself it's just a truck. To where everyone wants the one-stop shop, they want one product that does everything and they want it for free, but that's never going to be the case. But what I was thinking with these Magna-Tiles is you can buy more, you can constantly add and you can build and recreate and just put them together piece-by-piece.

You don't have to start with the entire Tech Stack when you get going, but you can find the pain points in your company and you can find the areas where you need to improve and start with those things. Whether it's CompanyCam, whether it's Leap, whether it's JobNimbus, you need a CRM. Depending on where your company's at, at that moment, you could start with one or two things and then just slowly build from there. Which I think is very important because it can be a lot, starting all these things, all at the same time. It's not necessary. I think the Tech Stack offers a place for contractors, whether they've been in business for a while and see some pain points internally or externally or they're just getting started, it's a great place for them to go and see things that work and have been proven to work that other contractors ... They can even talk to other people that have used them.

It's just a great place to come together, both from the software side, but also just as a partnership side of really working together to enhance these contractors in their businesses and help them to grow, to become the businesses that they want to be.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So well said.

Jon Gardner: 100%, that was fantastic.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: 100%. That is so great. Well, Nick, thank you so much for joining us on this CoffeeCast and for sharing your knowledge, and for everything you do. I have to tell you, one of the nuggets I'm taking away is that you work well with everyone. We need more of that in this world.

Nick Brouillette: We try, we try.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love that. Everyone, remember, this is just one of several videos in this CoffeeCast for Owens Corning Tech Stack, so continue to watch. Jon, Nick, Dave, thank you so much for this segment.

Jon Gardner: Thank you, Heidi.

Dave Banas: Thank you, Heidi.

Nick Brouillette: Thank you for having me, Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. Thank you all for watching. Be sure to stay tuned for the next segment of this CoffeeCast from Owens Corning, all about their Tech Stack. We'll see you soon.

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Episode 9 -  Jon Gardner and Dave Banas of Owens Corning

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello, and welcome to CoffeeCast from Roofer's Coffee Shop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and we are at the end of a journey. We have been visiting with all of the partners in the Owens Corning tech stack throughout this CoffeeCast. And now we're here to kind of get the down low, see what we thought of all these great interviews and really talk about where the Owens Corning tech stack is. So first, let's start with some introductions of two of my very dear friends, who have taken this entire journey with me. Jon Gardner, please introduce yourself.

Jon Gardner: Hey, Heidi. Good to see you again there, Dave. Heidi, Jon Gardner, as you said and I am with Owens Corning. I've been with this fantastic company for about 13 years, and today, our learning and development platform, as well as our strategic partnerships and as I've said in the past, all that is all wrapped around and within our contractor program. These are solutions. These are services. These are resources for our contractors to really help them scale and solve some of those most difficult challenges. So we're in the right place at the right time and I'm really happy to be here today to wrap this up.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So excellent, and this is a great wrap up. Dave, please introduce yourself and tell us what you do with Owens Corning.

Dave Banas: Sure. Dave Banas, digital contractor manager. My role here at Owens Corning is to help contractors understand and implement technology in the industry to help them get more work and get work done. And I work very closely with Jon to help make that happen.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. So this CoffeeCast is several videos in the playlist that you have all been watching. Hopefully, you started at the very beginning and worked your way through the very beginning where Jon and Dave and I talked about the tech stack and what that is, and then we worked through and talked to all of the partners who are part of that tech stack in individual videos. Hopefully, you've watched all those. If you haven't, be sure to do that.

And now, today, we're wrapping it all up. We're going to talk about what were our favorite parts, so let's start with that. Let's start with: What really stood out to both of you? And Jon, let's start with you, as we look back at all the integrations and all the partners who we've talked to through that series.

Jon Gardner: Yeah. It's been quite a journey and ride with our partners on here. And I think that the biggest takeaway that I have for the entire experience is just the breadth of technology that's entered into the roofing industry. And so we're probably, looking at the roofing industry, we're maybe a little bit behind. We look at an industry like HVAC or others, we are catching up really quickly. And case in point is the iteration and the launch of the tech stack from Owens Corning in partnership with our business solutions partners. We couldn't have done this 10 years ago. We probably couldn't have done it five years ago.

But today, we can. And the real value and takeaway for me is, number one, as I said, technology is here and we're so happy about that. And two is, Owens Corning and our commitment to our contractors is way above product. And with our partnerships and our ability to be able to do some of this background work and some of the tough work with regard to understanding technologies and selecting the best of the best, that's another big takeaway is just how many technologies are out there. And as our contractors will see and learn when they dig into this tech stack, it is very comprehensive. And it is best in class with regard to the technologies that are out there, so we're super excited about it. Those are my two big takeaways, Heidi, and they're big ones.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They are big ones. They are because there's so much within this tech stack. I just think it's so important for contractors because it's not an easy project for any company to start building their tech stack, and you've given them so many tools that they need right now. And you're right, no way five years ago could we ... I mean, this is moving like speed of light. Dave, what stood out to you throughout all these interviews?

Dave Banas: Yeah. My two big takeaways, and a lot of it was around that conversation that we had with Nick at [inaudible 00:04:53] camp. Number one was just integrations. When you're looking at software, looking at its ability to integrate with tools that you're already using or tools that you want to use. And that leads to number two is that, Nick said it can be very daunting for contractors, especially when you look at it like: Do I have to implement everything all at once? It seems like a very, very large task.

You don't necessarily have to, but what's important is to look at that, have an understanding, and maybe have an idea or a vision of where you want to go. Right? Maybe it could be within a year, in two years, or whatever. And start to plan for it, and as you're deciding on solutions, does it work in with my processes? Does it work in with where I want to get to, my overall strategy that I [inaudible 00:05:39] to? And start to build it out from there. You could start out small. Maybe if you don't have a CRM, maybe a CRM is something that you implement first. You could take a look at, and maybe there's some bigger pain points that you have, where maybe you have a problem with closing sales, or communication with the homeowner or something like that, that you can then look at some of those other pieces to help solve those pain points now, as you look to build to the bigger picture of where you ultimately want to get.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. So true. And really when I look back at all of the partners, Art Unlimited, Podium, Haver, Company Camp, Ingage, Leap with SalesPro and Job Nimbus, one of the things that really stood out to me throughout all of these conversations was, to your point, Dave, and to your point, Jon, the integrations and the partnerships, how it all works together, so contractors don't have to figure it all out by themselves. Jon, you have that look, I can tell. That's it really right there. It's so hard to figure out on your own.

Jon Gardner: Yeah. And some of the things that the audience know, which we're about to tell them, is the work that we did behind the scenes before this even became something that we were going to bring to our contractors. And to that, I'm look at Dave here. Dave and I, even a year and a half prior to this launching, we launched it just a few months ago, is where all that work began, where we were in a controlled setting. We're evaluating all of the technologies from, as you mentioned, Heidi. What are they performing? Is it the critical step within the tech stack itself? Right? So it's got to start out with the homeowner and it's got to finish with the homeowner. Everything else in between is a supporting element of the successful customer, and so that's number one.

And number two is with the work that we did in the background, it was all about making sure that one, the technology was best in class and that it was doing the job to the fullest benefit of the contractor. But two, is it open technology? Will it allow for additional integrations? And so that's a critical piece. And number three is: When we look at these technologies, where are they going in the future? Because it doesn't stop today. And so we're looking at our partners for today, for tomorrow, and into the future. And so we're really comfortable and just very proud of our partnerships and what we've been able to build together to have a very specific and direct impact on our customers all wrapped around technology called a tech stack. And there's some great places that our contractors can learn more about it. And so, Dave, you've got a whole bunch of things that you could share here too. But for starters, if you're interested in learning more about the Owens Corning tech stack, go to oc.com. And you can just do a quick-

Dave Banas: If you do a Google search for Owens Corning tech stack, you can get a lot of resources.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Went right up.

Jon Gardner: Correct. Go on our website, connect with our ASMs and they're ready to have great conversations with you. But within this, and Dave, share a little bit more about it, is the actual resources that we have not only give our contractors the ability to understand it, but we have some really cool information to help them really dig deeper into it and make those critical decisions. So Dave, fire away with some of those pieces that we built.

Dave Banas: We put together some really great assets for contractors to learn a little bit more. We have a presentation from Engage that digs in deep with each of our partners in the tech stack. We have downloadable PDFs that are part of the Engage presentation, or they're also available on the tech stack landing page. One great one that I hear a lot of great feedback is questions to consider when analyzing your tech stack, something that we put together that when you go through and you're evaluating, whether it's these partners or other potential solutions, things to keep in mind that a lot of times contractors will overlook. And then maybe they make a decision later on, it's too late, that's something like, "I wish I would've asked that question before then when I was taking a look at it."

So we have that, we also have an appendix that kind of outlines the different integrations with our different partners, not just the ones in this tech stack, but also, some of the other ones that weren't included in this tech stack of just how they kind of work together because my thing is that contractors don't all have the same tech stack. They don't all have the same processes. They don't all do the same thing. Right? So there's going to be variances, and so we kind of wanted to have a resource that can kind of guide and kind of explain when you integrate these different solutions together, what exactly happens.

Some people say, "There's an integration, but what does that mean?" What process is happening? What data is flowing back and forth? So we have that there as well.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, I think that's so important, what you both just said and shared. First of all, throughout all of these videos, a lot of these resources, you've all seen. We've had the Engage presentation showing on the screen as we've talked to the partners. You're seeing it probably now as we go through, and also, those top questions. I think the hardest part about technology is knowing the right question to ask. And I think as we really look at this, I want to encourage everyone, whoever's watching this, whether you are the business owner, whether you are a leader in your company, whether you are a technology person, share it with your full company because this is really a journey that you need to take as a company. And you will have seen that throughout all the videos, with all the different people who are involved throughout the company.

And Jon, to your point, there are a lot of new enhancements coming on. We have moved so fast in technology in this industry over the last five, 10 years, but let's talk about looking forward. What are some of the things that contractors should be having top of mind and maybe that they may be seeing as part of your tech stack going forward?

Jon Gardner: Yeah. So we're already thinking ahead with tech stack and technology and where our contractors can really lean in. And so the tech stack we're referring to here today is considered to be your classic re-roof tech stack. This is retail business and it's day in and day out in the majority of our contractors' business. But there's this new opportunities out there that kind of connect with roofing and that's solar. And so Owens Corning Solar Protect program, we launched that this year at IRE. And the point here I'm making is that we are and have built out a similar tech stack that uses slightly different technologies to help contractors really lean into and be best at roof with solar. And roofing with solar, at the end of the day, it's a real thing. It happens all day long.

This technology allows our contractors to really leverage the opportunity to do what you do great in, then introduce a new part of the business, maybe a bolt on, solar. And so between our education that we provide our contractors, and please go to Owens Corning University, you'll get fully educated on the Solar Protect program and and ways that you can build your business with solar. The tech stack is the technology element that we can have contractors plug into their business so they can get great at solar, roof with solar and begin to utilize the technology for a whole yet another part of the business that maybe they're into today, or maybe they're thinking about doing next year or tomorrow, either one.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We know solar is happening.

Jon Gardner: Right. It is.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We see it happening everywhere, and so you get the tools you need because it is a different way of thinking. And Dave, that's kind of one of the things that I wanted to bring up here too is how important it is for contractors to partner with ... John, this is going to go back to what you were saying a little bit earlier, but I think it's just such an important point, how important it is for contractors to partner with a major manufacturer, who can really deliver these types of solutions. And maybe part of that is talking about the expertise that you both bring, and that Owens Corning is so committed to, to have this kind of expertise. So Dave, talk to us a little bit about contractors working with you and with a major manufacturer on this kind of stuff, and how you have been focused on this.

Dave Banas: Yeah. I think a lot of contractors, they don't have any expertise, or maybe just the time or resources to go through and evaluate. So one I think they can do for us is really kind of rely on the relationship and our expertise, whether they go to their area sales manager and ask them about certain things, or they have those conversations. That's part of the value add that our ASMs bring to our contractors is just, "Hey, what pain points are you having? How can I help you grow your business?" And have those conversations as more than just just discussing our product.

And a lot of times, from those conversations, the ASMs will reach out to me. They'll ask me questions. They'll use [inaudible 00:15:21] resource. I have a contractor that has pain point A, B, C that they're looking to solve. Can you offer a solution? Here's technology they're currently using, so we have a lot of that back, or I might have a direct conversation with that contractor to be able to offer them some guidance or suggestions from other things that I've seen or software that I've tested.

And I think for us too, with also have the ability to go through and evaluate these solutions and test it out. The four main things I look at when I'm evaluating software is: What role does it play in the process? And how good is the product itself? Number two, I look at integrations like: How does it fit in with the bigger picture and the overall strategy for the contractor? I look at the company for support and onboarding. What does it take for the contractor to start using that tool? And then the last one is: What effect does it have on the homeowner? Is it something that is [inaudible 00:16:24] that the homeowner face? Does it help to give a great homeowner experience that ultimately benefits the contractor in the end besides just allowing them to be more efficient in their business process?

Jon Gardner: As Dave, you were talking through this, let's just go around the wheel here and talk about the technology and the critical pieces of it. So let's just think about it from the homeowner standpoint. I'm a homeowner and I pull up a search for a roof. I have a leak or I just want a new color. Who knows? They're going to go to a referral. They're going to go to something, but they're ultimately going to go to the contractor's website. What does that experience look like? A couple things that we just bring up real quick is the technology, the integrated technology is super important, but the performance of the website itself is really important.

I use speed, and I know that sounds weird for us to talk about because websites seem to perform pretty quickly. But speed is a real thing, and so within their websites, our contractors need to think about what the homeowner's experience is. How engaged are they in this website? Are they staying on the website? Are they feeling great about your company on the website? But second, as you move through the wheel and you think about communication, and that's where Cody comes into play. How do homeowners want to be communicated with? Does the owner of the company understand and have full visibility of the communication that's been going on, on behalf of the company name?

And yes, you can walk around the wheel in terms of the production side of it, in terms of the install side of it, in terms of the enablement for the sales team to go in and make a solid presentation and have the ability to be able to get that homeowner to fully be embraced in the conversation with a sales person. And so as we kind of go through the wheel here, our conversation is really just another way of looking at: Is your technology solving those most critical problems? And are the homeowners having a fantastic experience through the whole part? And if you can answer yes to all of that, then you're in great shape. If you don't know, then I suggest that you look at the Owens Corning tech stack to learn.

And if you're sure that you don't know, then it's time to make some investments in some technology. That will actually take your game to the next level.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So Jon, how do contractors do that?

Jon Gardner: Excellent question, Heidi. So they can easily learn more about our tech stack by connecting with your local area sales manager. They can go onto owenscorning.com and take a look at our tech stack. We have some videos that we built so to help our contractors understand more about it. We have a fully baked in presentation that our contractors can dig into and learn about each one of our tech stack partners and what they do, and how that can help our contractors' business. Or they can connect Dave, with Dave, or they connect with me. Dave said only call him on Saturday mornings at about 7:00 AM.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Not during cartoons.

Jon Gardner: Outside of that, he could be more difficult to connect with, so Saturday mornings at 7:00, Dave. Okay?

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. And you know what, I just have to say, when I look at the expertise that both of you bring, and Jon, when I think about your vision for this and really looking at the industry and what they need, and continually bringing that to Owens Corning University to really help the contractors, and Dave, you two together, I just have to say is just pretty dang amazing.

Jon Gardner: We get her done.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. You get it done and you deliver. And it's not just technology. We're talking about technology this time. But when you think about business services, solar, all the different things that are happening out there, like Jon said, this is just really something contractors need to look at, take the time. Go on to Owens Corning University, go on to Owens Corning website and check it out on Roofers Coffee Shop. We have all kinds of articles, directory, all kinds of information there. So I just have to say it's been a journey, but I think this has been highly successful. Thank you, gentlemen, for all the great information. This CoffeeCast, I tell you what, I hope everyone shares this with everyone in your company.

Jon Gardner: 100%.

Dave Banas: Thank you, Heidi.

Jon Gardner: Thank you, Heidi, so much. It has been a journey. And you've given us an opportunity to share a lot about our tech stack and all of our partners. And can't thank you enough for what you do, what Roofers Coffee Shop does. When I first got into the industry, it was something that I read. And today, Dave and I have the privilege of being part of this, to share how our contractors can take their business to the next level with some of the resources that we have. So it's been quite a journey and really looking forward to continuing this conversation as we introduce more of our technologies and more solutions for our contractors, so much thanks, Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We're going to do it. We're going to bring more solar, yeah.

Jon Gardner: Yes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I'm so excited about that. And I am honored to have both of you on here. Thank you. Thank you for Owens Corning for being a part, for sponsoring this CoffeeCast, for the two of you sharing so much knowledge and wisdom with the industry. It's really what makes it such a special place, so thank you. And thank you all for watching. Be sure to check out all the videos in this CoffeeCast. Start at the beginning and just bring it right on back here. We will be here and we'll be able to supply these any time you need them. So Jon, Dave, thank you.

Jon Gardner: Thank you, Heidi.

Dave Banas: Thank you, Heidi.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you, all. We'll see you again on the next CoffeeCast.