Combination connects critical selling and service workflows for mechanical contractors

The inaugural Mechanical Benchmark report shows that top performers grow 49% more and invoice 5.4x faster than peers

November 10, 2022 – Ahead of next week’s Digital Wrap Conference, ServiceTrade, a leader in purpose-built software for commercial contractors, announced the acquisition of NorthBoundary, a pioneer in sales solutions for commercial mechanical contractors.

A selling system built for mechanical contractors

Today, many business development teams struggle to deliver maintenance and project proposals that meet corporate margin goals. This is due to the laborious and time-consuming process of searching for asset data spread across multiple systems and the lack of repeatable best practices resulting in long client delays and, even worse, proposals that run over budget.

A sales rep today can’t sit back and wait for an RFP; they need insights based on equipment data and industry standards to deliver accurate proposals that meet margin goals and create great customer experiences. Likewise, the sales manager can’t manage their team on intuition alone, they need access to critical KPIs like prospecting activity, quotes delivered, and bookings to have confidence in hitting the number.

“We started NorthBoundary to streamline the sales process for mechanical contractors,” said Vince Kugel, CEO of NorthBoundary. “Before NorthBoundary, creating a single sales agreement was a laborious process requiring manual steps that didn’t benefit from any intelligence. In addition, existing CRM tools were too broad for a mechanical sales team, so we inserted 30+ years of selling best practices into an application teams love to use.”

At the heart of NorthBoundary is the Proposal Engine. The platform harnesses industry expertise and standards to assess coverage and delivers accurate pricing that meets margin goals while optimizing resources.

With NorthBoundary:

• An HVAC sales rep can quickly generate accurate proposals with a professional look and feel, and quickly close deals with an e-signature.
• A project-based sales team can leverage libraries of past proposals, easily modify to customer requirements, and price projects based on margin targets.
• A sales manager can understand the business’s key performance indicators, making real-time changes based on data vs. intuition alone.

“NorthBoundary has been a game-changer for both our sales team and senior leadership group,” said Jim Moscariello from The Tustin Group. “The software is very flexible and user-friendly which enabled our team to quickly adapt to using the platform to its full potential. Before deploying the platform, we struggled to gain granular visibility into our sales performance and future pipelines. Through the use of the robust automated reporting features we now have insights into our business like never before, and utilize the data to continuously improve our sales and operational performance.”

Today’s news and the recent Asurio acquisition make ServiceTrade a complete platform for commercial contractors’ operations.

“Proactive mechanical contractors see 49% higher growth than those who sit back and react to what the market gives them. Our mission is to help customer-facing teams focus on the most valuable work and minimize the aggravations and avoidable mistakes with better planning and data-driven processes,” said Billy Marshall, CEO of ServiceTrade. “We’re excited to welcome NorthBoundary to the ServiceTrade family. Together we’ll deliver a more compelling solution for mechanical contractors looking to drive productivity and revenue from all of their field-based personnel, whether it be sales reps delivering contracts or the techs completing the work.”

ServiceTrade’s new Mechanical Benchmarks Report shows the stark contrast between high and low performers

This acquisition comes against the backdrop of uncertainty in the mechanical contractor market. To truly understand what separates high-growth companies from their peers, ServiceTrade looked at anonymized transaction data in their platform of 1000+ customers and found:

• Top performers are growing 49% more than poor performers and 31% more than middle performers on a year-over-year basis.
• Top performers complete work on time 22% more often.
• Top performers invoice 5.4x faster than their peers, with most invoicing in less than one day.

The “Mechanical Benchmarks Report” joins the “Business Growth Trends for Commercial Contractors Report” published in 2022. For more on ServiceTrade’s research on the commercial contractor market visit here.

More Information

• Visit NorthBoundary to learn more.
• Read more about ServiceTrade’s 10-year, 1000-customer milestone here.
• Explore the ServiceTrade Mechanical Benchmark Report here.