See It in Action
Rylko Builders is one of the major construction companies serving the San Francisco Bay Area. Over the years, the company has earned its reputation for excellence in commercial and retail building projects throughout the region.
As a privately-owned company, Rylko Builders fosters close teamwork that has been a key element in the ability to meet and often exceed client expectations with consistency. Services include general contracting and construction management, part of their comprehensive effort to seamlessly serve their clients.
The success of Rylko inherently singularly is in commitment to solid but real relationships within and outside the corporation, with its clients and partners. Its leadership, through the President and CEO Sherry Rylko, embraces collaboration as a core part of its ethos.
This means smooth project operations at all points, where the contribution of every single team player contributes toward the final success-a seal that was branded into Rylko's success in the construction industry.
As Rylko Builders grew their operations, business development opportunity management and estimating cost tracking were becoming increasingly difficult. With more projects ahead, the system their company was using - Excel spreadsheets - could not keep up anymore.
"We needed the ability to track business development opportunities and estimating costs. We were tracking this information manually in Excel” explains Sherry Rylko.
Every week, during company meetings, Rylko's team would manually update the spreadsheets to follow through on project estimates, leads, and business development opportunities.
This not only took several hours of time and labor but also brought inefficiency in their workflow, since most of the data being reviewed was already outdated.
Because this system was manual, it prohibited real-time updates and not all opportunities could be seized.
And for increasingly complex projects, Rylko had to find an efficient way of managing incoming leads, estimating costs, and maintaining clear oversight into projects at every stage.
It started to become obvious that their current approach was holding them back and they needed to transition from spreadsheets to a construction CRM.
After a thorough analysis of several CRM solutions, Rylko Builders chose ProjectMark Construction CRM as the best solution to their operational challenges.
Among the main reasons to choose ProjectMark was that it’s a CRM specifically designed for the construction industry.
This meant that Rylko would now be able to effectively "track actions of stakeholders, estimate costs and manage tasks on projects won" according to Sherry.
Because of the intuitive interface, opportunities were quickly input and updated in real time by Rylko's team. That meant that, during meetings, they could act on leads immediately, track estimates, and assign tasks without delays.
This shift from tracking spreadsheets manually helped Rylko better control their project pipeline and empowered their decision-making process.
"ProjectMark is easy to use and update especially after adding your prospects, clients and contacts; creating opportunities is easy.” Rylko says. "It's also extremely customizable so you can add fields that are important to track and reorder the sequence."
But the construction CRM gave them so much more than an easier way to manage their contacts. With ProjectMark, Rylko can easily follow up on bids while assigning tasks and staying top-of-mind with clients and prospects, giving them a strategic advantage in closing deals.
Since the implementation of ProjectMark CRM, Rylko Builders has realized huge changes in workflow efficiency and overall productivity. Perhaps among the most immediate benefits was the ability to update opportunities in real time, especially during their weekly meetings. This allows the team to start focusing on projects already won while keeping tabbed lists of high-potential leads.
Rylko no longer does estimates on every single job. ProjectMark helps them pre-qualify opportunities so that Rylko can earmark resources in advance based on their experience with the client or broker.
With this, Rylko has avoided spending a lot of time going after leads that wouldn't have materialized, which has greatly reduced their overhead costs.
This has really streamlined Rylko's process - from trying to chase every lead to focusing on the most promising opportunities. With careful vetting at the beginning of each opportunity, the company has been able to invest in projects that have a high likelihood of success and to avoid wasting time and energy.
Beyond fine-tuning the vetting process, the task assignment and follow-up functionality in ProjectMark has enabled Rylko to capture more projects. By getting ahead of price issues and removing obstacles expeditiously, client relationships have been bolstered, and projects have remained in motion.
"A few projects that we thought were on hold actually resurfaced and closed,” Rylko says. "ProjectMark helped us refocus our efforts on opportunities with a higher potential to close, which has been a game-changer for our business development efforts."
One of the biggest gains Rylko Builders have been able to realize with ProjectMark Construction CRM is that there is a lot more teamwork in their company. The tasking and follow-up tracking capability makes it easier for the team to be organized and proactive with their workload.
"We update the platform in real time on a weekly basis and it's made all the difference," says Rylko. "We're able to follow up with prospects more efficiently, ensuring we stay top of mind and close deals more quickly.
ProjectMark's collaboration tools let Rylko's team work better and reduce misunderstandings, thus never allowing any opportunities to fall through. Since the platform has kept everyone on the same wavelength, it has helped create and constantly improve more coherent work culture.
Perhaps most impressive for Rylko Builders was the onboarding experience with ProjectMark. According to Rylko: "ProjectMark's customer support is exceptional. They were extremely supportive and helpful throughout our entire implementation process."
Customer support from ProjectMark didn't end after everything was up and running. The team remained accessible to continue answering questions and providing support to ensure Rylko Builders used the features more and more in the platform as they became accustomed to using it.
"They continued to have weekly meetings to ensure we completed implementation and were using the product without any issues" Rylko says.
For Rylko Builders, implementing ProjectMark Construction CRM has been a key step to better efficiency, improved workflows, and winning more bids. Keeping the platform updated in real time, managing tasks more efficiently, and adjusting workflow to business needs let Rylko keep up with the latest opportunities and bring into sharp focus high-potential leads.
"ProjectMark Construction CRM is an easy program to implement and use and it provides many insights for business growth." Rylko concludes.
To Rylko Builders, ProjectMark was not just a CRM platform but a tool that reshaped the way they did their job. By managing growth without compromising quality, ProjectMark helped Sherry Rylko and her team take Rylko Builders to new heights in the construction industry.
See for yourself how our modern CRM is revolutionizing the construction industry.
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