Industry-wide super app
Super Apps will Rescue Us
For the past 20 years the model coming out of Silicon Valley has been the “single purpose” app. As the name suggests, these apps are single purpose and focus on solving one consumer pain point and have a clear, easy to use interface. These apps are built to be scalable at the global level with architecture that enable them to expand globally without changing much.
However, over the last 5 years there has been a new trend of “Super Apps” coming out of China. China has a rapidly growing, high density, urban middle class population that has enabled tech companies to capitalize on a “leap frog” effect.
Consumers embrace companies that are able to provide a service with a clear and intuitive interface; that service is then augmented by adding other services/functions. This encourages other merchants to want to partner with the app and provide their services on the app as well. Chinese users are accustomed to seeing a busier interface and appreciate the “one stop shop”. Users will be very loyal to an app that is easy to use, friction free, functional, provides good services and allows for a multifaceted experience. An example of a Super App would be an app where you can order your groceries, book travel, and buy a concert ticket all in one place.
This “Super App” creates an ecosystem where the user’s time is monopolized and there is no need for them to use a variety of apps. The Super App model is rapidly growing in emerging markets such as India, South America and Southeast Asia. The US/Silicon Valley model is to grow vertically and go global. The focus of these super app companies is to aggressively expanding horizontally and dominate a specific geography.
The emerging markets present the opportunity for digitally born companies to thrive. There is no outdated infrastructure to overcome in these markets – everything can be built and tailored to a new generation of internet users.
Many of these emerging markets (i.e. China) are densely populated areas which has spurred another new trend: the “group purchase model”. This has the potential to be a major macro trend and is worth looking into and understanding.
The developing super apps and “group purchasing” model trends are also spurring a new era in the payments space. In China it is nearly impossible to pay for anything with a credit card, everything is done through mobile payments. Anecdotally it has been said that beggars on the street in China will have a mobile payment QR code so donors can give charity via a mobile phone. Every mom and pop shop will have a mobile payments account set up. It is difficult to find anyone who wants to accept a credit card as payments as they do not want to incur the transaction fees. Legacy credit card companies such as AmEx, Visa, and MasterCard would be well served to consider how mobile payments may disintermediate their user base across all geographies. More smart mobile payment apps will continue to emerge with much lower transactional fees.
The world is becoming a smaller place as more and more people are becoming internet users. These developing geographies are untapped markets – digitally born companies who understand the needs of these business users are racing to become to become category winners as larger legacy companies are too slow to meet the rapidly increasing demands of these markets.
MODERN MOBILE FIELD APPS
Single page, minimal click design allows for super-fast updates.
The Commitment Token
Why is our Commitment Token so powerful?
Excerpt from BisNow Magazine
This diagram shows how commitment tokens would work to distribute funds from the construction loan to the project owner, subcontractors and manufacturers.
The lending institution behind the construction loan would issue "commitment tokens" to the builder, which the builder could then distribute to subcontractors when a bid is awarded. Once the subcontractor completes the work, which could be scheduled and accounted for daily, the builder could approve the token and the subcontractor would be instantly paid.
Likewise, any supplier, such as an HVAC manufacturer, could be paid by the subcontractor using the tokens, which would be activated upon delivery. Bowden said this approach would help builders using the tokens be more attractive to subcontractors — in a market that is currently short on subcontractors, which can delay work and drive up construction costs — since they would be paid instantly.
It would also reduce liability across the board since payment for goods and services would be instantaneous and would be tied directly to the construction loan.
For all the potential it holds, Bowden said his mission isn't to proselytize about blockchain. "I want to create real value and real impact in improving the construction industry's efficiency," he said. "I don't look at the blockchain as the end, I took at it as the means to the end."
Hear more about blockchain and other technology disrupting the industry at Bisnow's CRE & UrbanTech Summit Oct. 18 at the Omni San Francisco.
The Validation Token
Validation brings a new level of efficiency to the vendor bid process
Excerpt from BisNow Magazine
BuilderChain's first application uses blockchain technology for a process called "tokenized validation," which basically enhances the pairing of general contractors in search of qualified subcontractors that meet the bill.
Subcontractors sign up and provide all of the paperwork necessary, which is validated by an outside third party. They are then granted "validation tokens" that they have met the requirements for the token.
Tokens could include certifications for specific types of work or being a minority-owned business.
Then, only member subcontractors with the proper tokens for a job can submit proposals for those projects. It speeds the process because the general contractor can trust the tokens and doesn't have to do its own verification and the subcontractor only has to submit its documentation once, not for every company with which it places a bid.
As Bowden puts it, the approach is to "verify once and use many times."
Distributed Ledger Technology
Why Everyone Missed the Most Important Invention in the Last 500 Years
You’ve never heard of Yuji Ijiri. But back in 1989 he created something incredible.
When people look back hundreds of years from now, only the printing press and the Internet will have it beat for sheer mind-boggling impact on society. Both the net and the printing press enabled the democratization of information and single-handedly uplifted the collective knowledge of people all over the world.
So what am I talking about? What did Ijiri create that’s so amazing?
Triple-entry accounting.
Blog Post by Daniel Jeffries
Triple Entry Accounting
Triple-entry accounting can be thought of as a way of agreeing on objective economic reality, a single source of the truth.
Triple entry accounting is an enhancement to the traditional double-entry system in which all accounting entries involving outside parties are cryptographically sealed by a third entry.
Thus placed side by side, the bookkeeping entries of both parties to a given transaction are congruent. The third entry in the system, entered into the blockchain, is both a receipt and a transaction.
It’s proof that something happened between two parties, which goes beyond the receipts that each party holds in double entry.
Beyond Recording Only Financial Transactions
There are many other activities that can occur on a construction project beyond simple accounting transactions.
And many of these parameters are just as important to record and document as the financial transactions themselves. These can include scheduling performance at the individual task level, inspection failures, product failures, safety infractions, etc.
In our case, all of the construction project parameters are recorded to a common ledger as an immutable record.
Single Customer workflow
The Multiple Merchant, Cross-Organizational, Single Customer Workflow
Business application software has been around a long time. Whether it ran on mainframes, mini-computers, personal computers (PC’s), or the latest mobile device, they have all shared a common element, simple "forms over data".
Why was that so valuable at the time? Reporting. You could manage much larger business operations and do so at an even more granular level using data organized into a database.
But now that is table stakes. Modern day applications are now orchestrating business via process flow. You can see that with business applications such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Here we see user interaction with the business process flow, where the task of maintaining "forms over data" moves farther and farther into the background.
Certainly, asking sales reps to spend hours keying data that today is easily replaced with third party lead source providers such as LinkedIn and others, making much of the Account and Contact data available automatically. And your sales reps will love you for it.
scheduling control tower
Our Construction Scheduling Control Tower uses AI and blockchain to serve as a system of engagement
Builder Scheduling's A.I. driven Control Tower is not your typical control tower, that provides visibility to immediate construction project participants only.
Our Construction Scheduling Control Tower monitors, manages, and controls decisions and execution across functions and across companies to optimize the entire network.
The Construction Scheduling Control Tower uses AI and serves as a system of engagement not only across construction trades, but also orchestrates architects, lenders, code enforcement, real estate brokers, appraisers, etc., to work together in real-time to serve all stakeholders.
Until recently, construction scheduling have been all about providing visibility to your immediate construction trades. But with the development of multi-party, blockchain-driven construction network (Builderchain), advanced control towers now provide real-time visibility, collaboration and powerful AI capabilities to move beyond decision-support to decision-making and autonomous control.