Meritage Homes
Meritage Homes works closely with Hyphen Solutions’ Customer Success team to optimize BuildPro for their process
“As my job is to monitor production, having all the info in one place allows me to see the trends in all the divisions”
– James T, National Production Manager Meritage Homes
Hyphen Solutions | Meritage Homes Case Study – Customer Experience
Optimizing the customer experience is paramount at Hyphen Solutions. This led the top cloud-based construction management software company to develop a unique three-team customer service approach. Joining the Customer Care and Professional Services team in 2018, the Hyphen Customer Success team was the first of its kind in the home building industry.
“Hyphen’s entire business is focused on increasing the performance of our customers, so we want to ensure that they are getting the maximum benefit from our integrated solutions: BuildPro, SupplyPro and BRIX. This team was created to make the process of training, adoption and daily engagement with our products as easy as possible”
– Aaron Gray, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience, Hyphen Solutions
Meritage Homes Wanted to Know What More They Could Do to Manage Their Large Workload Better
With 17 divisions, 600 employees and 9,000 homes per year, inefficiency can be very costly for major home builders like Meritage Homes. They had been using Hyphen scheduling modules for years when James T assumed his current role as National Production Manager.
James started with Meritage in the field nine years ago, as an end-user of the scheduling software. When he took his new job, he looked for ways to make monitoring and managing the production of 9,000 homes across the country easier and more effective. He contacted Hyphen’s Customer Success team for help.
“We reached out to Hyphen to kind of say, ‘Hey, let’s sit down and let’s take a look at what we don’t know,’” explained James. “Because the saying is you don’t know what you don’t know. And the Customer Success Team was so responsive. They took a couple of weeks to go through the modules and prescreen them for us, looking for things that would work with how Meritage is set up. Then we spent two days just going line by line on every module.”
Together, Meritage and Hyphen’s Customer Success Team were able to identify pieces that Meritage had on their system but didn’t use or need, as well as new enhancements that could help the home builder.
“We went through our entire system, shutting some modules off to simplify and clear the noise out from what our builders see on a day-to-day basis, and turning modules on that could benefit us.”
– James T
Finding the Right Products and Making Them Easier to Use Was a Win-Win
Meritage implemented multi-job scheduling, calendar drag-and-drop, multi-drop scheduling, mobile JME, a new various purchase order process and lien waivers as part of their restructuring. They turned on some new features right after the meeting while others, such as lien waivers, became part of a longer-term plan.
James knew that he and his workers would need training immediately on the new processes. “Chris and Jake were not only quick to get us PDF instructions but for the next 12 months or so, Chris would meet me at our divisions around the country and perform in-person training with the staff.” Meritage also worked, with Hyphen’s support, on making processes easier for the people in the field.
“We realized that our people in the field didn’t really understand how templates are built, and when you click on one task, what effect it has on the other tasks. So, we simplified their work by structuring our templates so that each stage has a master task. If you recalculate the end date in the master task, it automatically adjusts and waterfalls all the templates in that stage. They can update one date, with just a click of a button, instead of 60. Now all 17 of our divisions use the same template format, so somebody in Charlotte could literally pick up a template in California and have no issues.”
When Meritage wanted to make adjustments to make things easier for their team, they asked for and valued the input of Hyphen’s Customer Success team. James said, “I mean, they can either explain to me why we can and what the benefit will be, or they can tell me why we shouldn’t and what it will harm.”
“They’re very knowledgeable about the system and how it interacts with E1, which is our main platform.”
– James T
Day-to-Day Problem Solving Is Also Part of Customer Success
James also appreciates the day-to-day help he can access from the Customer Success Team. He is a knowledgeable user himself, but things come up and it helps to have access to the people who know the software in depth. For example, Meritage was having problems deleting tasks after performing a restart on a home. Chris, Jake and James worked together and discovered that the problem was that the contract had expired when they ran the restart. The issue turned out to be the purchasing team not updating their contract bid information.
“It’s generally a user error, not generally something that’s set up on the Hyphen side. I can often find it, but if I need assistance, I contact Chris or Jake, and they’re both there to assist. He responds in minutes, either by calling me or texting me to say when he can call. So, the communication is always there, even during the pandemic when it was all virtual.”
– James T
BuildPro’s Biggest Benefits for Meritage
MONITORING CONVENIENCE
James reports that he is on the Hyphen Solutions system for about two hours every day, on his computer, phone and touchpad. “Without BuildPro, it would be hard for me to track all of the 9,000 homes that we’re going to close this year. As my job is to monitor production, having all the info in one place allows me to see the trends in all the divisions. I can also see trends in the performance of specific builders. Without this, I’d have to travel and stay for weeks on end at each division just to evaluate their performance. But I can do that sitting in my chair, in my office with this software.”
CONVENIENT AND TIME-SAVING RESCHEDULING
In addition to restructuring templates to include a master task — which greatly simplifies rescheduling within a single job, Meritage is now leveraging multi-job scheduling to make changes to multiple jobs with a single change.
ACCURATE EVALUATION OF PRODUCTION ISSUES
Meritage uses EPO spends, VPO spends and template duration times, to judge how specific trades are performing against their template and what changes may be needed in the process — in resource allocation, compensation or the templates themselves.
James is enthusiastic about the information he gets from the software. “We can see, for example, if we’re giving a drywaller 15 days to drywall a 1,500 square foot house, and he’s doing it on average in 20 days. So, is he sending enough workers to the job site? Should we realistically be allocating 20 days to complete the work? And since he’s regularly dragging our schedule down five days, how do we adjust for this? How do we solve this problem?”
“The information that can be pulled out of Hyphen touches everything.”
– James T
Optimize BuildPro To Fit Your Processes
Hyphen Solutions provides over 76,000 builders, installers, and manufacturers with industry-leading supply chain scheduling, procurement and collaboration solutions. Hyphen’s online solutions deliver greater operational control, better communications and increased productivity and profitability for home builders and their building partners.
Interested in learning more about Hyphen’s BuildPro solution? Schedule a demo to talk to a Hyphen Solutions expert about how adopting BuildPro as your scheduling and supply chain management software will transform the way your business manages bids, purchasing, accounting, scheduling and more.
About Meritage
Headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ, Meritage Homes is a real estate development company that has been building homes across nine different states since 1985. Meritage is nationally recognized as an industry leader in building energy-efficient homes. They are determined to create overall smarter and healthier homes through higher quality construction, improved home energy efficiency and distinctive home designs.
Meritage is committed to providing an incredible home building experience for their customers. They have a strong focus on first-time home buyers by providing an easy-to-follow, detailed outline of their homebuilding process timeline.
Learn more at www.meritagehomes.com
Quick facts
- 7th largest homebuilder in the U.S.
- Energy-efficient oriented, all houses are energy star compliant
- Emphasis on building modern homes
