Verizon brings mobile devices to the construction industry

Mobile operator Verizon has announced that it will be working with BuilderMT to make mobile phones more useful to the construction industry. The two companies will be bringing the BuilderMT home-building software onto mobile, to help build a better tomorrow (see what I did there? Huh? Ah, forget it)

BuilderMT creates workflow management software for small and large scale construction jobs. With Verizon, it hopes to create a solution that a contractor can not only use to manage a project, but also push all of the that information out to the phones of the people working on it. As an enterprise level product, it would target not only his employees, but also affiliated companies, traders and suppliers.

From the release:

“We can now lower cycle times on projects, and integrate wireless mobile application to full back-office systems,” said BuilderMT’s Tom Gebes. “We are sure that those contractors who select these solutions from Verizon Wireless and BuilderMT will see dramatic productivity benefits. Those companies that have already done so are seeing a 5X ROI in a very short time. For example, with this Verizon Wireless – BuilderMT partnership, we can help builders approve purchase orders or change orders, automatically generate accounts-payable invoices, send cash-flow updates to accounting, and even track sales activity or update an executive dashboard for “C” level employees, to name just a few of the many processes we are pushing out to mobile applications.”

What we think?

I’m a big fan of decent enterprise-level mobile products. Getting these kind of huge products off the ground proves how useful mobiles can be, not only to the large companies involved, but also to all of the employees who can benefit from the applications. Of course, this product is extremely limited by the fact that it will only work on Verizon phones… the head of a construction firm can’t guarantee that all of his workers are going to be on Verizon.