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So true. I built a website for a company that works with heavy equipment rental business frequently, including going to their trade shows. One of the recurrent

So true. I built a website for a company that works with heavy equipment rental business frequently, including going to their trade shows. One of the recurrent themes is how bad the software is. The flooring industry is another place that might be ripe for "disruption", the software often sucks.

at-fates-hands 10y ago
>> The flooring industry is another place that might be ripe for "disruption", the software often sucks. Actually anything in the building industry is ripe for disruption. I've worked with architects and every single firm has a different way of handling documents and change order requests. There's actually a TON of companies that still use paper trails for change order requests. Some use dropbox, some use SFDC (salesforce.com), some use some archaic cloud storage solutions. It's literally all over the map. And every time one of my firms works with a new sub-contractor then they have to try and sync up how they all handle their project documents - its insane. If someone developed a decent documents management company, based in the cloud, and integrated it with some nice mobile solutions, they would take a HUGE chunk of the market. I mean, think of how many companies are involved designing and building a house.
- arbuge 10y ago
  >> If someone developed a decent documents management company, based in the cloud, and integrated it with some nice mobile solutions, they would take a HUGE chunk of the market. Not necessarily. Convincing people to fit their workflow into your new software, effectively running their companies around it, is not as easy as it sounds. Coding it is not the hard part.
  - frankydp 10y ago
    > Coding it is not the hard part. Truer words have never been said. Selling your vision/workflow/business structure/data presentation is the hard part. Many of the things one may code as a solution will directly and negatively effect the job security of the exact person your are selling to, but that is the challenge. The secondary effect is a chilling of innovation by limiting the automation gains/improvements in some way to limit the impact of value depreciation of current workers.
  - golergka 10y ago
    As someone with a failed B2B company in CV, can confirm. Also, don't think that you just need to sign a contract with a suit — it's only the beginning. Your toughest challenge will be getting their lazy and unmotivated IT department to actually do anything.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      Shoot, I work as a professional services consultant doing software setup/hardware installs for a major tech company (actually the market leader in our niche) and all the time I get pushback from the engineers I'm working with who are resistant to change. If I had a nickel for every time I heard "we didn't choose this software" or "management is making us use this", I'd just about double my salary. I ran into a client where they preferred their home-grown Perl script to our million-dollar solution because grep searches faster than we do, even though we have literally a billion more features. It's not just a challenge with your startup trying to get name recognition. It's a challenge for the major players, too. Inertia is hard to overcome.
      - traviscj 10y ago
        > I ran into a client where they preferred their home-grown Perl script to our million-dollar solution because grep searches faster than we do, even though we have literally a billion more features. Did they need any of those features, or did they need to search?
- nathan_f77 10y ago
  > If someone developed a decent documents management company, based in the cloud, and integrated it with some nice mobile solutions, they would take a HUGE chunk of the market. Yep, they're already on it: https://www.procore.com/ https://www.procore.com/
dejv 10y ago
I am doing maintenance for some software in roofing industry. The software was written 25 years ago and it sux in so many ways. My first reaction was that it would be very very easy to make much better version of this software and take the market (other solutions sux in same way). After working on it for past 9 years I can say that the software might looks very simple on the outside, but then you find a lots of proprietary data that are really hard to get (say the information how many man-hours will take laying down the some kind of roof using some type of technology process) and some partnership that will make it quite hard do as an outsider. I am not saying the disruption is impossible, but it could be very hard and just a better software itself will not help.

at-fates-hands 10y ago

>> The flooring industry is another place that might be ripe for "disruption", the software often sucks. Actually anything in the building industry is ripe for disruption. I've worked with architects and every single firm has a different way of handling documents and change order requests. There's actually a TON of companies that still use paper trails for change order requests. Some use dropbox, some use SFDC (salesforce.com), some use some archaic cloud storage solutions. It's literally all over the map. And every time one of my firms works with a new sub-contractor then they have to try and sync up how they all handle their project documents - its insane. If someone developed a decent documents management company, based in the cloud, and integrated it with some nice mobile solutions, they would take a HUGE chunk of the market. I mean, think of how many companies are involved designing and building a house.

arbuge 10y ago
>> If someone developed a decent documents management company, based in the cloud, and integrated it with some nice mobile solutions, they would take a HUGE chunk of the market. Not necessarily. Convincing people to fit their workflow into your new software, effectively running their companies around it, is not as easy as it sounds. Coding it is not the hard part.
- frankydp 10y ago
  > Coding it is not the hard part. Truer words have never been said. Selling your vision/workflow/business structure/data presentation is the hard part. Many of the things one may code as a solution will directly and negatively effect the job security of the exact person your are selling to, but that is the challenge. The secondary effect is a chilling of innovation by limiting the automation gains/improvements in some way to limit the impact of value depreciation of current workers.
- golergka 10y ago
  As someone with a failed B2B company in CV, can confirm. Also, don't think that you just need to sign a contract with a suit — it's only the beginning. Your toughest challenge will be getting their lazy and unmotivated IT department to actually do anything.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    Shoot, I work as a professional services consultant doing software setup/hardware installs for a major tech company (actually the market leader in our niche) and all the time I get pushback from the engineers I'm working with who are resistant to change. If I had a nickel for every time I heard "we didn't choose this software" or "management is making us use this", I'd just about double my salary. I ran into a client where they preferred their home-grown Perl script to our million-dollar solution because grep searches faster than we do, even though we have literally a billion more features. It's not just a challenge with your startup trying to get name recognition. It's a challenge for the major players, too. Inertia is hard to overcome.
    - traviscj 10y ago
      > I ran into a client where they preferred their home-grown Perl script to our million-dollar solution because grep searches faster than we do, even though we have literally a billion more features. Did they need any of those features, or did they need to search?
nathan_f77 10y ago
> If someone developed a decent documents management company, based in the cloud, and integrated it with some nice mobile solutions, they would take a HUGE chunk of the market. Yep, they're already on it: https://www.procore.com/ https://www.procore.com/

dejv 10y ago

I am doing maintenance for some software in roofing industry. The software was written 25 years ago and it sux in so many ways. My first reaction was that it would be very very easy to make much better version of this software and take the market (other solutions sux in same way). After working on it for past 9 years I can say that the software might looks very simple on the outside, but then you find a lots of proprietary data that are really hard to get (say the information how many man-hours will take laying down the some kind of roof using some type of technology process) and some partnership that will make it quite hard do as an outsider. I am not saying the disruption is impossible, but it could be very hard and just a better software itself will not help.