How Kingdom Construction saved thousands of hours, $30k, and wins more jobs by building their own internal operating system

Kingdom Construction is a general contracting company in Texas. It builds commercial, residential, and industrial projects. It's on track to do $8 million in revenue this year. The company has 5 full-time employees and 50 to 80 subcontractors. Its founder, Kevin, has never written a line of code.

Kevin rebuilt his entire company's internal operations on one mega app he built on Hercules called BuilderSuite. BuilderSuite manages everything in the business: CRM, invoicing, construction management, jobsite cameras, internal chats, and more. The custom software replaced the need for 4 other software vendors costing $30,000 a year, saves the team 100s of hours a month, and helps Kingdom win more jobs with faster, more accurate quotes. Kevin built all of it himself, after hours, with no engineering background.

When I'm in my office running my company, I don't want 16 different apps open. I want one, and I want it to do everything I need it to do.

Saving $30k a year and 1,000s of hours by running the whole company on one app

Before Hercules, Kingdom ran on 3 to 4 separate software tools that did not talk to each other. Together they cost $1,500 to $2,500 a month. The team would collectively spend 100s of hours a month manually sharing data between the tools and fixing mistakes. For example, Kingdom used Houzz Pro for construction management and CompanyCam for jobsite photos and AI walkthroughs, but CompanyCam could not sync those photos into the Houzz client portals where the team actually needed them. The team had to manually move the photos between the tools every single day.

Today Kingdom runs entirely on one app Kevin built on Hercules, called BuilderSuite. BuilderSuite does everything the other tools do and more: CRM, invoicing, construction management, jobsite cameras (BuilderCam), internal chat (BuilderTeams), client and subcontractor portals, and full equipment and fleet tracking with maintenance logs and checkouts. Because it is all one system, the photos, the schedules, and the invoices are already where they need to be. Kevin wired in his real tools using Hercules App Connectors, including QuickBooks for accounting and Twilio for messaging. Cutting the old vendors saves Kingdom $30k a year in software and the team estimates it has freed up hundreds of hours a month, thousands of hours a year, that used to go to duplicate data entry and chasing information across apps.

With BuilderSuite it's all integrated, it's all on the same app, it's all right there. We're saving probably hundreds of hours a month just in time.

Winning more jobs with faster, more accurate quotes

In construction, the contractor who answers quickly and gives an accurate quote usually wins the job. With Kingdom's old system, this was difficult. If a lead came in while the team was busy, they might miss it. Estimates were done by hand, so material counts could be wrong and bids could be inaccurate. If they didn't follow up after sending a quote, they could easily lose the deal.

BuilderSuite's lead automation has made Kingdom's quoting process faster and helped close more customers. When a lead comes in, BuilderSuite's CRM immediately texts the customer. Kingdom is always first to respond, even when the team is busy or on a job. BuilderSuite also includes a takeoff module that lets the team quickly count the required materials directly from the project plans. Estimates can now be turned around in minutes with fewer mistakes. Finally, the CRM automatically follows up with every lead. No quote is forgotten. For a company doing $8 million a year, just winning a few extra jobs will make a huge revenue increase.

As soon as a lead comes in, BuilderSuite automatically shoots a text off to them and contacts that lead right away. That's automatically increasing your odds of getting a job.

Why Hercules

Kevin had wanted one unified tool for years, but was never able to make it work. Off-the-shelf products like Houzz Pro were missing most of the features he needed and could not be customized. Hiring an agency to build what Kevin wanted would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But with Hercules, Kevin was able to build BuilderSuite himself without code or a 3rd party development team. Because of his domain expertise and Hercules' simplicity, he was able to build every feature exactly as he needed.

It would have been hundreds of thousands to hire a development team, if not more. I knew what I need it to do, and I know what it should look like. Hercules helped me make my dream become a reality

What's next

Kevin plans to turn BuilderSuite into a SaaS that he can sell other companies. He has started a subsidiary company, called Kingdom Technologies, to sell BuilderSuite to other contractors. He knows how much value BuilderSuite has created for him and he is certain that it will create the same value for others. He is planning to launch it publicly in the coming months, far cheaper and far better than incumbents like Procore. He is also building a native iOS app with Hercules Mobile so field teams can capture LiDAR 3D scans on site and turn them into floor plans and renderings back in BuilderSuite. As Kevin puts it: "This has opened up a whole new door of what the possibilities are for me. This won't be the last software I build on Hercules."