Jack Wagnon - Getting Aerial with SkyMeasure - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Jack Wagnon with CoreLogic SkyMeasure and Heidi Ellsworth, RoofersCoffeeShop Owner. You can read the interview below, or listen to the podcast.

Speaker 1:
Welcome to Roofing Road Trips with Heidi. Explore the roofing industry through the eyes of a longterm professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews, and exciting news in the roofing industry today. 

Heidi Ellsworth:
Hello, and welcome to a Roofing Road Trips on Roofer's Coffee Shop. This is Heidi Ellsworth an RCS partner. And I am here today with some really interesting information. My guest today is Jack Wagnon with CoreLogic SkyMeasure. He is a senior product manager there, and I have to tell you, SkyMeasure is doing some pretty incredible stuff when it comes to technology, property reports, aerial imagery, aerial measurements. So this podcast is going to be full, full of information that roofing contractors, all of you out there, can use in your everyday business. Jack, welcome to the show.

Jack Wagnon:
Well thank you for having me. 

Heidi Ellsworth:
Well, I'm just so excited. I'm really looking forward to hearing all the great stuff that you have going on. Before we dive into that, Jack, could you maybe introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your role? I love senior product manager, product management, I think is just so interesting. So many fun things you get to work on. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jack Wagnon:
Yeah, I'd be pleased to. And so I'm Jack Wagnon, I'm the senior product manager managing the SkyMeasure service here at CoreLogic. And my role is to basically drive the strategies in and around product market fit. So I basically stand at the intersection between sales, marketing, service, and product operations, and make sure that we provide the best customer experience, the best solutions that meet the needs today for our customers, in a cost-effective kind of a results oriented environment. So product management helps you build products more effectively to meet the needs of the market. And that's basically my job.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow. Well, and we just met, but I'm a sales marketing person. I love sales and I love marketing. And I have to tell you, there's nothing more important to a sales marketing person than a really good product management team, because then you have great stuff to sell. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your product, about SkyMeasure and how you're working with roofing contractors with everything that you provide?

Jack Wagnon:
You bet. So SkyMeasure is in essence, an aerial measurement solution. And using a variety of digital image assets, we've got some proprietary processes that allow us to model a roof using ortho imagery, or oblique imagery, or LIDAR imagery, just depending on the situation. And it gives us the ability to measure length and pitch, run, rise, and a variety of different measurement elements within the roof report that we sell that gives the roofer the ability to assess the project prior to ever climbing up on the roof. And gives the roofer data in which to compare and contrast their field observations, which ultimately drive a much more efficient estimate delivered to the customer, increasing your odds to win the job.

Heidi Ellsworth:
It's amazing when I think about the fact that 20 years ago, this wasn't even something that roofing contractors could use.

Jack Wagnon:
No.

Heidi Ellsworth:
This wasn't even around. And now it's just a given that you need an aerial measurement report for every job. I mean, to be able to look at your production, your sales, everything. Jack, can you share with us a little bit, there's a number of our listeners who I think we'd be very interested in understanding the history of CoreLogic really who CoreLogic is, and then how SkyMeasure, and the history of SkyMeasure, how they came to be together?

Jack Wagnon:
CoreLogic is a really fascinating company. It was created out of the title industry, quite some time back. And in essence, the company was founded around the premise that there is an incredible amount of data generated across various real estate centric activities, whether it's the buy/sell process, the build process, the insure process. And so CoreLogic was founded with a vision to be the central aggregation point for that data to then be able to make it available to a whole host of stakeholders within the real estate ecosystem, I suppose you could look at it that way.
And that's everything from insurers, insurance companies, to contractors, to real estate developers, property managers, et cetera. And so, in essence, when you think about who CoreLogic is, we are one of the leading providers, I suppose you could say, of property, mortgage, consumer information, analytics, software, and service to both business and government, that all revolves around the real estate.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. Knowing that property. Knowing what's on the property. The data that out of that, I've seen it, the CoreLogic reports before, they're so impressive.

Jack Wagnon:
Yeah. They're very detailed. And it gives the customer an incredible amount of flexibility to use the data, to help optimize their business. And so I view the value proposition of SkyMeasure as being twofold. A, it's a highly functional tool for you to use in the field to improve the accuracy of your measurements, to increase the profitability of your estimation, drive time savings, productivity, et cetera. But that's just the tactical use. You could come up with some very entrepreneurial ways to leverage our data, to help scale your roofing business, to offer new inventive ways to improve the customer experience between you and your customer, Mr. Roofer, Mrs. Roofer.
It gives you the opportunity to look at ways to streamline your operations to control costs. And so as roofing companies evolve, and they recognize the value of data and software, and basically information technology as a discipline, we can help you scale your business. But it requires you as a business owner, to recognize the need to better understand the data, and to better understand evolving use cases for the data in order to take advantage of it. And so, it's funny that you say that because I wish that everybody would order a SkyMeasure report, but there's still some in the construction industry that are slow to adopt.
And part of our mission here at SkyMeasure is to educate and make aware how you can evolve the simple management of your business moving forward, grow your profitability, increase the number of estimates that you issue, improve the accuracy of the estimates, which translates to more efficient material ordering, which loops all the way back to project net margin. And so we've got a very interesting story and I'm not under any false presumptions about what it's going to take. But we exist to help the construction industry move to that next level. 
And we're not alone. There's a lot of software entrepreneurs in the marketplace that are in workflow management for construction and CRM Solutions for construction, and better ways to manage the accounting aspects in construction. We're just a piece of that overall ecosystem of software vendors that can help this industry move to that next level of efficiency. So we're excited to be here. It's a great time to be in construction software.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That is so cool. So now SkyMeasure was an acquisition of CoreLogic, right? 

Jack Wagnon:
Yes.

Heidi Ellsworth:
So SkyMeasure came into CoreLogic. Can you tell us a little bit of that history?

Jack Wagnon:
We acquired the SkyMeasure business in 2014, recognizing the compatible synergy between construction and insurance claims. And CoreLogic has a substantial insurance line of business in and around property and casualty, and providing spatial solutions to the insurance community. And so it was a very logical acquisition. It gave us a way to bridge the connection between contractors, working with insurance companies on claim type of work, and while having a service to keep our service lines diversified, and to have something that's attracted to the contracting segment.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And roofing has a long history. I think construction does overall, but roofing has, I should say a long memory, with contractors. So I think that's what a lot of contractors knew and know about SkyMeasure. They may not know as much about CoreLogic and really what you... I mean, it's so fascinating how you're bringing the data of CoreLogic that they've done for so many years with the aerial measurements of SkyMeasure. So what are you offering? How are you looking at using some of that data that maybe in the SkyMeasure reports are a little bit beyond the measurements on the roof. 

Jack Wagnon:
You bet.

Heidi Ellsworth:
What other data do you bring into those reports?

Jack Wagnon:
Well, let me try to paint a picture. When you think about content that makes up the sum total of the SkyMeasure roof report, the primary component is the aerial measurement data. And we present that with both ortho and oblique imagery. It's the XYZ coordinates from a wire frame perspective that give you an understanding of what that roof structure looks like. The number of facets, the complexity of pitch, et cetera. That's the practical data that's used day, to day, to day.
Then there's this whole value add category of information that makes SkyMeasure reports extremely unique in the marketplace. And I kind of bucket that, this value add group, under a category called insights for contractors. And insights are the data value from the broader CoreLogic environment that could help contractors through insights in the data, grow their business, become more efficient, profitable, better customer experience.
A couple of examples of that are our material estimates list, which is a way to... We use a proprietary algorithm to analyze the measurement data and cross reference that against several extensive data sets that are regional by nature, that look at material costs and assembles dynamically within the report a table of all the relevant materials that you're going to need for that local project at that local address. One of the interesting things about the material estimate lists is it automatically recalculates venting to meet modern codes. And one of the hardest things to do is, when you learn to become a roofer and as a roofing owner, training your staff to measure a roof is probably the single greatest challenge. 
Secondly, estimation. These are skillsets that develop over time and if you want to scale your roofing business, bringing on new folks to help you in that area, sometimes it's pretty tough. One of the biggest challenges roofers face is inspection failure because they don't have the necessary number of venting spaces cut into the new roof to meet modern code. Our material estimate lists makes it a lot easier for the local field staff, because we will automatically recalculate the venting needs, and give you within our material estimate list, an updated material count for meeting modern code compliance for venting. So that's just an example of how that data in some creative and entrepreneurial software development can drive value for the roofing company owner.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah, I love that. 

Jack Wagnon:
We also have a... Yeah, sure. It proves to be an incredibly valuable tool. But it's kind of one of those little known things. And so our product marketing folks in our product support staff spend a lot of time educating on how to use the tool material estimate lists. And we see that that's pretty much our role in this relationship, is less about we can do inventive cool new software, and we've got great data, but our role is really to consult on how to use the tools. 
And so our product team takes a very consultative approach because when you start talking about insights for contractors, the material estimate lists, that's just the tip of the iceberg. We've got intense datasets for hail, lightning, and wind. How do weather events impact the property address in question? As a roofing company, why do I care about that? How can I use that to offer new services to my customers, et cetera? We've got a couple of interesting use cases that show how through understanding the effects of recent weather events, how that could illuminate new business opportunities for a roofer. 
Say there was a swath of three inch hail that fell within this specific geography, here's a list of all those property owners that experienced, likely damage in that event that occurred, hey, last night at 8:00. So today as a roofing company, I'm wanting to pick up the phone and call these property owners and talk to them about the hail event that happened and whether or not I could be of service to help them mitigate the storm damage. Another example, in terms of a business case on how to use the data. 
We've got a whole slew of this, roof age, condition, characteristics, reconstruction cost estimation. These are all examples of datasets that we are working to turn into productized offerings for the contractors, wrapped in a business case, and delivered in a consultative fashion to help the roofer understand how to drive new business, how to improve the customer experience, how to scale their roofing company.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And the thing is, is that I know over the last couple of years, just from a marketing standpoint, everybody's like content is king, right? But really now, more than anything, data is king. And the more data, the more intelligence you have before a job, the faster the job will go, the less labor you need. I mean, just all the things that are causing pain points with contractors. One of the things you just mentioned, I think is really interesting too, is if you know the age of the roof, or even the age of the home, you are going to be able to go in there, kind of understanding more is there going to be lead paint? Is there going to be problems? Does it have to be brought up to local building codes? I mean, that really helps contractors. So the fact that you're going over that with them as a team is really impressive.

Jack Wagnon:
Yeah. And this is all by design. We view the construction industry as a system. And just because you own the roofing piece to the solution, you have an opportunity to provide expanded service to this particular customer that could be doors, windows, walls, maybe anything exterior from a building envelope standpoint. And so that's why we've added our wall report, which gives a general contractor or a roofing contractor, to leverage our oblique imagery, to be able to look at perhaps storm damage, to siding, to windows, to doors, et cetera.
So we've got a lot of ways to look at the data, but recognize that that can be really overwhelming. And so my job as a roofing company owner is to sell and deliver great roofing solutions. I don't want to be in the business of trying to understand how to mine data, et cetera, et cetera. And so CoreLogic has taken the approach to allow us to be your business consultant, to understand the most efficient ways to look at the most relevant data sets in a way that can wrap a business use case around it. And that way the roofer can more quickly embrace it.
One of the problems about this wealth of data is information overload. And as a roofing company owner, there's just so much new information out there. Where do I focus? We deploy our product strategies based on being able to help the roofer understand and answer that question. Where should I focus? And so that's our focus at this point is the consultative voice on how to use the data.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And so through that consultation voice, are you also kind of looking at helping the different divisions, or the different departments, within the roofing company? So, I'm hearing all this, and it's just so interesting and the thought of this is going to help the sales teams, this is going to help the production team, and it possibly can help with warranties. It helps working with insurance. So, I mean, there's just so many areas, even within a roofing company that they can use these reports.

Jack Wagnon:
You're absolutely correct. And so we've stepped back and forced ourselves to be very disciplined about where the best effect of a SkyMeasure service can be, our biggest impact. And we view ourselves as really fitting in with the identify a job function. That's the prospecting piece. The scope the job, which is the field measurement function, and then the bid the job and win the job. And so, ultimately the sales function. Now, that's where you see the lion's share of the value.
However, when you think about training and how you get your field staff up to speed for accuracy of the measurement and correctness of the estimation, we can also really help the training department in terms of getting new field salespeople, new field measurement on support personnel up to speed. And the SkyMeasure measurements actually serve as a really good way to validate the field map. And so we've got a use case currently where one of our customers was looking to scale a local roofing company into a regional service provider that had a lot of new construction and storm mitigation focus. 
And so they used the SkyMeasure roof report. They used the roof report to help train 1,000 salespeople over 60 days. And trained them on the measurement and the estimation art. And the SkyMeasure, the roof measurement report, gave them a way to cross reference, how am I doing? Did I get that measurement right? And in essence, what they were reporting was they were able to put more sales guys, and more with a combined sales and estimation scope, more sales guys into the field faster, which ultimately allowed them to scale that business into a $50 million roofing company.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow.

Jack Wagnon:
That's the kind of business case that gets us excited. That validates how you can use the data. And it should be ultimately enough to get roofing companies thinking about tomorrow, excited to spend the time necessary to really understand how to leverage the aerial estimation and the value add data that comes from a SkyMeasure report.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That's amazing. And really it is all about the technology out there and the data right now.

Jack Wagnon:
Well, yeah, yeah. But it's how do you use it? And I think that's the point I make. Is there's a lot of people that are great in designing software. And we were clever to say, let's build a business around aggregating property data and make it available to the roofer. Okay. That's great. Those are good ideas.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah.

Jack Wagnon:
And up until the point where the construction company becomes overwhelmed and says, "Well, I get it. But that seems like it's taken a lot of time to master. And why do I stop and change my entire way of doing business, because of this access to information?" We feel that our role has to be in that awareness and education piece, helping our customers build new business case, realize the value proposition and to become, learn it in the 21st century, leverage the data space that we're in, without becoming overwhelmed. So it's an interesting balance.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah, it really is. So, I love the fact that you use the reports for training. Any other really kind of case studies, or in ways maybe interesting or different ways that contractors are using your reports, that you might be able to share with some of our listeners?

Jack Wagnon:
You bet. We've got customers that do a lot of claims, construction support work, and the aerial measurement report is an excellent third party validation of the field assessment of both damage and cost to replace. And we see more and more and more, the claims groups within the property and casualty insurance industry choosing to do business with contractors that provide that level of third-party validation, because it helps the insurance industry mitigate fraud. And it improves the cost of claim side of their business. 
And so if I'm a roofing contractor and I see the growth opportunity in being a contractor supporting claims work on behalf of an insurer, I want to be the company that can show the insurer we recognize the challenges that you face and we embrace the aerial measurement reports because we see that as validation from a third party that our field assessment is spot on. So that's another good use case.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah.

Jack Wagnon:
And it puts them right at the top of vendors, because the claims adjuster is going to say, "Hey, this is a company that really embraces the data and is doing business in the 21st century capacity, and is speaking my language. Therefore, I'd like that company to do a lot of our mitigation work."

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. And, and you can have the claims people working on your side then also helps the owners, your customers. It brings everybody altogether.

Jack Wagnon:
Without a doubt. There's no denying that the homeowner is one of the primary beneficiaries of all this insight, faster access to the roofing company, because, we know when, where, and what kind of weather happened, the ability to communicate as a contractor in the language of the insurer, which helps drive faster resolution for any kind of insurance claims. And then quite frankly, just a much more accurate estimate that goes to the property owner, who then gets a much tighter, more effective bid so that they can make a decision about who to retain as a installer to help them solve their property repair needs.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. It's a win for everybody. I love that. So, Jack, how do you recommend contractors get started? Using the reports, using the technology in their business and also in working with you through the consultative services?

Jack Wagnon:
Okay. Thank you. One, I want to acknowledge that there are several service providers who offer a high fidelity, meaning a highly accurate roof report, and they're all competitively priced. And reasonably from an aerial measurement standpoint, these are all very similar products. SkyMeasure brings extra value to the equation. And from a service perspective, just getting the aerial measurement report ordered sometimes can be a challenge. And we've got a variety of ways to get registered at SkyMeasure.net, to become a new customer, and to set up your account.

Jack Wagnon:
We offer single point of sale orders through our e-commerce interface. You can also use our mobile application. We also have accounts that we'll set up with companies who are interested in doing volume pricing. And you would call into our service and sales support center and asked to be set up on a volume pricing account, which gives us the ability to bill you monthly so that you can help manage your cashflow, et cetera.
And so it starts by going to SkyMeasure.net. There's an 800 number that is on our website, that goes directly to our product support group. We answer our telephones. SkyMeasure has the best service out of any of our competitors in the market. Guaranteed. We guarantee our service and our support. We guarantee you that you will have an efficient results-oriented experience with our service staff, who's very knowledgeable. And you can communicate with us via email. You can communicate with us over the telephone, through a form off of our website. 
However you want to work, we've got away to get access to our support personnel. And like I said, we've been doing this since 2014. We've got a wonderful team in place who can help you create the kind of account that you need depending on the kind of business that you want to do with SkyMeasure, whether it's just simply, "I'd like to try it, let me just order a report and see how this goes," all the way to, "I'm a veteran user of aerial measurement service, and I'd like to expand how much we use it within our operations. Can you give me a volume deal?"
So we've got a solution for everybody. In terms of the consulting piece, our product support staff can certainly walk you through on best practices on how to use it. And as your volumes grow with the SkyMeasure reports, you become more and more familiar, we've got a variety of resources that we can make available to help meet with your ownership team, to talk about best practices and ways to embrace it. 
We've got several guys that are licensed architects, career general contractors, people with the functional expertise who also really love software, who are our sales group, and they have an incredible consultation acumen and can help company owners sit down and talk about practical, practical ways to use the data, to use the aerial measurement reports that don't upend your internal work processes. But by making small changes, you can realize over time, really big returns. So SkyMeasure.net, check it out. That's where it all starts.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That's where it starts. That's excellent. And I would encourage all the contractors out there. I mean, there is nothing like sitting down with a good consultive sales person or product manager, or whoever it may be, and really talking about how to take these reports, this technology, and incorporate it into the business, because you're right. It can be done in a way that just builds over time, and that's not disruptive.

Jack Wagnon:
Yep. And that's the goal. Small iterative changes. Otherwise, it gets too overwhelming. And we, by design, look for people on our business development staff who are not career salespeople, but they're more functional experts, licensed architect, for an example. But have the right consultative attitude and have a business acumen that can bring the data, the business value, and the functional application together in a very succinct conversation. And so we, by design, have built a team just like that to work with roofing company owners to help them scale.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That's cool. That is cool. Well, Jack, thank you. I learned a lot today. And I know everyone listening to this.

Jack Wagnon:
Well good.

Heidi Ellsworth:
I'm sure a lot of roofing contractors out there are very familiar with aerial imagery and aerial measurements, but they're not with the rest of how important that data that goes with it is. And you really shared that in a very succinct way that I think is going to help a lot of contractors. Thank you so much.

Jack Wagnon:
You're entirely welcome. I appreciate the opportunity to share the SkyMeasure story. And we look forward to working with your audience to help them identify ways to use aerial measurement and our insights for contractor data, to help them scale their business to success in the 21st century.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Sounds wonderful. Thank you so much. And thank you all for listening. Thank you for being here today. Be sure to listen to all of our podcasts under the read, listen, watch section of RoofersCoffeeShop.com, where you can catch all the podcasts, webinars, eBooks, however you want to learn about this great technology, this great innovations that are out there, just like we heard about today. Thank you so much and have a wonderful day. We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Speaker 1:
Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi from the RoofersCoffeeShop.com.