Pit & Quarry, June 2014
PERFECT PRICING An industry customized app is helping Bluegrass Materials win more jobs and maximize its freight rate P en and paper Thats how Pat Malaney did business with customers for the overwhelming majority of his 28 years selling aggregates Im old school says Malaney a sales manager at Bluegrass Materials in Atlanta I would always carry around my notebook and write things down If I had a phone call from a customer looking for a sales quote Id have to write everything down and call him back Within a day or two of a conversation with a customer Malaney would have to make a trip into the office read through his notes and spend a few minutes analyzing the route from the customers site to the quarry so he could issue a competitive quote The time Malaney spent calculating sales quotes in the office was time he preferred to spend in the field selling aggregates Fortunately for Malaney as well as every other salesperson at Bluegrass the company adopted a newer more advanced way to issue quotes on the fly The system Bluegrass adopted is actually an app developed by a Georgia based company called Catavolt The app is specifically designed for the aggregates industry and it gives salespeople the ability to quickly deliver quotes as well as gain geographic market intelligence and competitive data to which they previously did not have instant access Now I pull off to the side of the road pull up a projects map and ask the customer for cross streets or an address Malaney says The app automatically pulls it up for me I can see for example that from that point to my quarry its 12 miles and my competitor is 35 miles away Well I have a haul advantage And the aggregate business is driven by how far your stone can or cant go Seeking a solution Malaney whos been with Bluegrass since it acquired four Atlanta area quarries last year from Lafarge developed the concept for an aggregate specific app at Lafarge with former colleague Cameron Garrett whos now a director of sales and pricing at Summit Materials We were talking about a large project sometime in early 2012 Malaney says We were sitting at a computer using Google Maps and trying to figure out freight rates and our competitors locations We both said Wouldnt it be nice if we had an iPad and we could somehow build and track jobs via pushpin something that could figure out all the miles for us Jason Teter another former colleague who is now with Vulcan Materials encouraged Malaney and Garrett to pursue the idea Garrett found a partner in Catavolt midway through 2012 after considering about five other companies Malaney says Catavolt was able to show us some ideas as we were talking to them about what we wanted to do Malaney says They said give us 48 hours and within 48 hours we had a rough system TECHNOLOGY BY K E VI N YANIK 30 PIT QUARRY June 2014 www pitandquarry com
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