178: ‘Empowering Strategic Thinking’, with Matt Cooper

178: ‘Empowering Strategic Thinking’, with Matt Cooper

Evan Troxel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the TRXL Podcast. I'm Evan Troxel. And in this episode, I welcome Matt Cooper to discuss the subject of unlocking efficiency in architectural practice operations. A little bit about Matt. He joined BQE Software as CEO in 2023, where his role is to ensure that they become an increasingly "customer obsessed" organization, delivering both great software and service to customers, which I particularly value when it comes to software companies, especially in AEC.

It's my gut feeling that we all keep tabs on who these companies are, and we also know the ones who are not. So kudos to Matt's leadership at BQE for saying this and demonstrating it publicly. Prior to BQE, Matt spent nearly a decade at Serent Capital, a leading investment firm focused on building great businesses. That is where he helped roughly a dozen mostly bootstrapped companies scale. Our [00:01:00] conversation today explores the challenges and opportunities within the architecture industry -mostly in the operational side of things- and particularly highlighting the underserved nature of firm management technology.

Matt's relatively fresh and outside of the AEC silo perspective is useful when applied to our industry as we discussed the advantages of tracking project data accurately, and using it to make strategic business decisions. If you haven't already, do me a favor and show your support for the show by hitting the subscribe button, wherever you're watching or listening, and leave a review on Apple podcasts and or Spotify, it really helps others find the show, which then helps me continue to be able to do what I'm doing here. Lastly, if you would like to receive an email from me when new episodes are published with all of the show notes and links and other information as they come out, sign up for that by becoming either a free or paid member at TRXL.co. All right. [00:02:00] So now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Matt Cooper.

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Evan Troxel: welcome to the TRXL podcast. It's great to have you.

Matt Cooper: It's great to be here. I've been looking forward to it.

Evan Troxel: Give us an idea of, of where you've come from. I know that you are, let's just put it in relative terms. You're relatively new to the industry and to the, the place that you're working now, relatively. Again, maybe not new to you. It might feel like quite a bit longer, but let's kind of place that, but then also kind of tell the story of how you got to where you are.

Matt Cooper: Yeah, absolutely. And maybe running a software company is a little bit like living in dog years. Uh, but I joined BQE Software in mid 2023. Uh, I got my career originally started in professional services working for a large consultancy. Uh, enjoyed that setting, enjoyed working with clients. Ultimately realized I wanted to work with [00:03:00] technology and I wanted to work with software companies that were growing.

Uh, there's just something compelling about that. And about a decade ago, I joined a firm called Sarin Capital. It's an investor and founder run in bootstrapped businesses. It is. Almost entirely business to business software companies, and was fortunate in my role there to work with a dozen or so companies that sound an awful lot like BQE for other verticals or industries.

BQE for restaurants, BQE for hotels, so on and so forth. One of the companies I was fortunate enough to work with was BQE, and just fell in love with the business. I loved the notion of working with architects. There's just something so rewarding and inspiring about working with the community and being able to see the work that architects are producing.

I loved the, what the company was trying to do, but also felt like there was an [00:04:00] opportunity to improve the company. And lastly, it just felt like the architecture industry from a firm management software standpoint was underserved historically. And it felt like there was an opportunity to do a little bit of good in the industry.

And so the opportunity when there was a founder transition came about to join the company full time as CEO. Uh, and I'm thrilled I did. It's been a great ride

Evan Troxel: Not very many people, Matt, go from outside of architecture into architecture. I think, especially on a podcast like this, where we're really focused on the technology side of things. I think a lot of disgruntled people or dissatisfied maybe is a, you know, not quite as strong of a word, but there's a lot of disgruntled people too who, because of, you know, toxic work environments or opaque corporate ladders, you know, there's many reasons why people leave the industry to go maybe just adjacently, maybe not completely leave it, right?

But they go into the tech side of things. [00:05:00] I mean, you're on the tech side of things, but you also joined in. From outside, inside the industry. And I'm curious, like there, I, I feel like there's, there's always a story out there. It's like, oh yeah, I wanted to become an architect too. Or, you know, even, even like President Obama said that at an a i a conference during a, a keynote.

Like a a, an interview. Right. And, and it was, uh, that we, that there's a little bit of a romanticization of being an architect. I'm curious for like, where did. I mean, you said there was growth opportunity here, but was there something else from like an AEC standpoint that there was like you wanted to be involved in people who didn't Change the built environment, made the world a better place, right?

Like there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of kind of things that go along with AEC that are also just, you know, outsiders have this perception of what, what it is or may or may not be that, that, you know, a lot of architects are you cynics who've been in the business [00:06:00] for a long time and they're, and they're, and they're like, can't wait to get out.

Matt Cooper: Yeah, I have not heard it framed that way, and maybe this is a later topic of conversation here, but I would think of the architecture industry as a bit self reflective, my way, you put cynical, I'll call self reflective, and I do hear fairly frequently about folks leaving the industry. For me, There may have been a dream of joining the AEC industry a long time ago.

I do not have the talent to do so, but I think it's, as you described, it's so compelling to serve a community that is so diverse. Sort of designing buildings, helping the community, doing everything, and it's, it's such a wonderful community. I think for me, where I thought I could add some value is while I hadn't, for the past few decades, been serving the architecture community directly, I had been serving [00:07:00] a lot of other industries and sort of understood the firm management software game and thought I could lend, bring some of those takeaways I had gleaned from elsewhere to this particular industry.

There wasn't hubris there. I spent most of my first few months talking with architects. I think I probably had two, three hundred conversations in just my first few months here at BQE. We've made sure to hire architects and others from the industry. Uh, but I think it can be helpful to have an outsider's perspective, uh, to try to bring new tactics, techniques, what have you, uh, to any industry.

Evan Troxel: Why do you think that AEC is underserved in this way? Is it something where it's like, well, it's just, you know, Maybe they're not power users of this kind of, they don't have a focus on business as much as they do on design and delivering for their clients and meeting those [00:08:00] kinds of challenges. I'm curious from like your perspective coming from outside. And obviously doing a big survey, I'm sure, of, of, you know, how different types of underserved industries out there and, and how come this one, I mean, did it bubble to the top and you, and it was really noticeable, was it just general dissatisfaction with the type of software that people were using for this? Type of a thing inside their companies or maybe dig into a little bit more into what you mean by underserved and, and, and what there is that, that you saw that there was to do about it.

Matt Cooper: Put it into a little bit of context. And I, I didn't have these data points before I joined BQE necessarily, but if we're talking about the kind of software that we built, for the law industry. So legal practice management software. If you were to go and survey 20 person law firms, a [00:09:00] hundred percent of them or so I think are going to have legal practice management software in place.

If you go and survey a 20 person architecture firm, it's probably a coin flip. And as you get even smaller, you're probably talking two in 10, three in 10 firms leveraging professional purpose built software to help run their firms. And I think there's two sides of it. I do candidly think the architecture industry tends to be a little bit on the lagging side when it comes to technology adoption.

I think in some ways, because it's a precise industry, it can be difficult to make decisions about the right software. But I put the onus more on the software industry that has not necessarily delivered great software. I think there have been good options in the past, but those have tended to focus on the very largest of firms, [00:10:00] or try to build for a more horizontal market, or there was innovation that kind of got gobbled up by larger acquirers, and that innovation got a little bit, uh Squashed, so to speak.

Uh, and so I'm, I'm sympathetic because I don't think there has been great software for the industry. And that's a lot of what was appealing to me. Certainly look for a business opportunity, um, but also just the opportunity to serve this community better than it has been served in the past.

Evan Troxel: That's really curious. I, I mean, I, I immediately thought of QuickBooks, right? When you think of like a small firm and online, you know, some art, let's just call it bookkeeping of some sort. And I think there's probably some like, yep, good enough attitude out there. So maybe you can talk about what firm management software actually means, because when you talk about, you know, using a piece of software like this, there's gotta be a. compelling value proposition there. And I [00:11:00] think a lot of people probably just don't even understand what's possible in that, as far as it goes with these smaller firms that you're talking about.

Matt Cooper: Well, and the, the QuickBooks plus Microsoft Excel tech stack is the most common option out there still, especially for, for smaller firms. And as you get into a few people, And certainly as you scale from there, that tech stack starts to break down. QuickBooks doesn't handle phase based projects particularly well.

It doesn't handle multiple contract types particularly well. It doesn't handle vendors or consultants particularly well. And as you can imagine, any time you are trying to pass data, essential data for your business back and forth between QuickBooks and Excel, is the formula correct? Did we enter in the wrong bit of information?

How do we know that, uh, we're, we're tracking things [00:12:00] appropriately? We hear all sorts of, frankly, horror stories that are often the catalyst for a firm to make a change. Oh, I sent a client the wrong invoice value and they got very upset. We lost track of where the project was and overspent a ton. It's awfully problematic if you're not using purpose built tools.

What we think of as firm management software, the way we might think about it is from proposal to paid. You could theoretically operate in firm management software, and that might be you are creating a proposal for a client, you win the bid, you flip that into a project, a work breakdown structure, you manage to that project, you invoice and bill for that project, For example, in BQE Core, by just pressing a button effectively, you're collecting payments for that project.

And ultimately, a lot of our customers, splits about 50 50, will continue to use QuickBooks for the general ledger, [00:13:00] or will use BQE Core. But it, it makes for a much more efficient, streamlined workflow. You know, you don't have the employees who are tired of double entering information, or having to track down Excel based timecards.

Um, We, we acknowledge that running a small to midsize architecture firm is an incredible challenge and the word that we hear often is sort of chaotic. It's very chaotic. It's very difficult. And our goal is to bring a little bit of efficiency and a little bit of insight in the form of clear data, the right data to the right people at the right times to those firms.

Evan Troxel: It seems like there's a misunderstanding of the value placed on, or the, okay. So maybe, maybe the, the words here are tricky, right? Because there's value, there's,

there's, there's time management. There's like, you're, you're talking about things where. Somebody, probably [00:14:00] an owner in a firm, if it's, if it's a smaller firm, is spending their time tracking this information. Right. And

the value placed on that time and the efficiency of, and and I guess just, um, you know, like, am I, how, how confident am I in where that data is going? What's, what is being used for? Is it precise? I mean, there's so much to be said about that. Small percentage of time. It means so much. Right. And so I'm curious when you talked to people who maybe weren't using software like this to run their practice, what's the sense that you got about how they valued that time that they spent doing that kind of a thing, because on what level, like they didn't open practice to do that kind of stuff and yet they have to do

it and it has to be precise and perfect and all of these things.

Right. And so I can imagine it's [00:15:00] just like. Chaotic is, is a great word, right? Because they didn't feel like that's what they, the best use of their time and they have to do it and I'm just curious, like what, what, what kind of stories did you hear from people when it came to this stuff? It's like, it's, it sounds like they're just MacGyver in it, right?

It's like, it's like bubble gum and, and toothpicks and it's like strung together and, you know, And yeah, if a problem occurs, where do you find it? But, but then bringing some order to that probably has to feel like ice water and hell being served, right? It's just like, I, so I'm curious, like, like when you're talking to these people, I'm sure light bulbs are going off about like how you can help.

Matt Cooper: So many great points there to unpack. I would start by saying, uh, the MacGyver analogy is a decent, is a good one. Uh, but I also want to acknowledge I have a lot of respect that folks have been able to build and run firms with the MacGyver [00:16:00] approach. There's a, there's a cleaner approach out there, but I just want to acknowledge it takes a lot of ingenuity to

Evan Troxel: they do it with design software too. Like it's not just this side of the

business. Yeah,

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Matt Cooper: it, it, yeah. So, so you also called out, you are right, no one got into the industry because they love chasing time cards, or figuring out how to get invoices out the door. Or, they love figuring out why there's a data discrepancy in the numbers and that, you know, you're unpacking spreadsheets at that point.

Uh, I think a lot of the reason though folks don't sort of recognize the cost of those hours is one, it's a little bit hidden, you know, you add it up over the course of the day and you don't immediately see in the moment how much it's costing you. I think the other one might just be inertia. When it is so chaotic it can be difficult to take the time to invest back into the business.

When [00:18:00] you are serving your clients as well as you possibly can, and trying to put out some fires. And so I just acknowledge that's a challenge that we often then try to help people through in the implementation process. But before you commit to it, it might feel like a burden or hours you just don't have in the day.

I would also say, yeah, you asked about some of the things we hear. I think the, the visceral feelings. that cause people to re evaluate are things like, gosh, I just, just don't trust my numbers. Gosh, I'm not delivering as well for my clients as I hoped I could. Gosh, there, there is that chaos. Eventually it sort of breaks down.

Um, I, I will relay one anecdote though that might make it a little bit more tangible. Uh, I was talking to a principal at a firm and, We, we want to [00:19:00] make sure we're a good solution. We don't want folks jumping and leveraging our software unless we are. We want to make sure there's value there. And we asked some questions.

How are you doing this? How are you doing this? Or how are you doing that? And it came to light that he was spending himself about 20 plus hours on invoicing every month. And if you sum up the cost to him, the cost of the firm economically, and probably in sort of emotional wellbeing. Like, that's when you start to recognize there's different ways of doing things, I

Evan Troxel: This is a totally typical technology, like the lens, looking through that lens of time spent to do something and time you could spend doing something more valuable. How much it actually costs at a billable rate to do those things versus spending some money on something, let's just call it technology. that will save, like, [00:20:00] extrapolate that over a year or longer, right? A lot of times these investments are, you know, if you're talking about a piece of software like this, you're talking about multiple years. If you're talking about a piece of hardware, it could be up to two years, you know, on the low end, um, longer on, on the farther end, right?

And, and this is a common thread. in the industry, again, going back to the value of one's time, and maybe not stepping back and thinking about it that way. Uh, same argument goes for a faster computer, right? If you're standing around waiting for something to happen because the computer itself is four years old, five years old, and that happens.

Computers, computers can easily make it that long nowadays without replacement. Right? And a lot of times, you know, you look at 000 as a large expense, but then just divide that by the number of hours you sit around waiting, and all of a sudden it's, you know, at a billable rate, it's hardly anything. And, and I'm [00:21:00] just curious, you're on the money side of the business here.

You're tracking time, invoicing, you know, financials, all of these things. Do you put it in those terms for people that you're working with to help them understand what, what we're actually talking about when it comes to these kinds of conversations and these, these topics that keep coming up over and over again?

Matt Cooper: We, we do the, the traditional software way of framing it might be an ROI or return on investment analysis. I, and I think a lot of prospective customers, are skeptical about those. They make some assumptions they're not in the software. And so I, I haven't thought that, which is very quantitative, tends to resonate the most with folks.

There are two ways of framing it that I do think tend to work. If you were to take a rough, [00:22:00] or average, sort of, billing rate, or bill rate for a firm, and roughly what it costs for our software, if you could save everyone in your firm 15 to 30 minutes a month, you'd pay back the software. And I think that can pop a little bit more than a, you long spreadsheet of various benefits and things like that. I think the other one tends to be, and, and this is why we try to understand it a little bit. Some of those stories, those visceral challenges, it could be one project went sideways because there wasn't good tracking on it. And that alone might pay for the software. You don't know when the next one of those is going to come, but it happens eventually.

And it's those kinds of, I think, more. anecdotal instances that pop more than the detailed business analysis in many ways.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I, I'm thinking about kind of, you brought up a good point, which is a lot of times in the [00:23:00] type of, Mode that somebody might be in when they're tracking different things. I think a lot of times, it's like, oh, what was I doing? Uh, and, and, and there, the inaccuracy just in the, that kind of like going back in time, having to think through what you look through your notebook, look through your calendar, look through your emails, even just spending the time to do that because it's not kind of in the moment. It's very difficult to accurately track what's going on on projects. I mean,

Matt Cooper: Sure.

Evan Troxel: And then there's this whole argument you hear it all the time. Like stop, stop trading hours for dollars, right? I'm curious how you, how you think about that from, you know, you're in this, in this world of tracking hours and for dollars, right?

Uh, so do you have a, uh, a kind of a a feeling about that and, and like the level of the amount of fiction that goes into time cards and project tracking. But then also that, like, it's actually a pretty difficult business model to build time for hours. And yet that's what architecture is pretty much based on.

Right. So I'm [00:24:00] just curious from, from your perspective, again, maybe coming from the outside and looking at other industries, um, where there might be, or may not be something that, that could be applied as a lesson in this way. But, but what, what's your thoughts around that? That topic,

Matt Cooper: Well, first of all, no one likes filling out a time card, uh, myself right? uh, at all. Um, the, the way I might think about it here is, and I, I've lived in the world of Excel based time cards where I'm doing it every two weeks, maybe, uh, more than that. And I'm just plugging in a number. Uh, and, and that's not good for anyone because there, there's implications for clients and there's also implication for the data in the firm.

And our, our goal is to make that process of filling out a time card a little bit easier, uh, and make it possible for the people responsible for making every, sure everyone fills out their time card to make [00:25:00] that a little bit smoother and just take the frictions out of it. So it becomes much more plausible to be filling out weekly, maybe even daily time cards if you've got the software up next to you.

Uh, I think we will increasingly be making it easier and easier to fill out time cards. Uh, there, there's lots of tactics. I think there's an opportunity for AI, uh, to play a part there. But the friction to filling out the time card, shifting from Excel to software like this, A lot of it's taken out. I would also say, um, it is important in the, in the status quo in many ways.

Uh, if you don't have accurate time going against projects, how profitable are your projects? How should you be structuring the projects, bidding for the projects? which clients are the right type or not, which business should you be pursuing? And so I acknowledge that's an investment to take some time to build that data.[00:26:00]

But once you do this is really where there's an unlock for firm leaders because that's what helps you make the more sort of strategic existential decisions for the firm. I think A lot of folks come to find this software because they are frustrated with an inefficiency. Oh, it was annoying to fill out all the time cards and put the Excel pages together and do all of that.

Oh, it was annoying to manually produce all the, uh, invoices rather than just press a button and have it produce the invoices. Uh, that's where a lot of people find the software. I think 80 plus percent of the value is in having the data to make better decisions around how to run the business at the end of the day. Um, the, the last one, which is just an interesting piece. You, you've talked about this being a sort of, uh, hours for dollars type of, of industry. I would say part of, I think, the architecture industry self [00:27:00] reflection that I keep hearing is, is that the right model going forward? Should we move toward a more fixed fee type of model?

Even in that paradigm, the tracking of hours still matters because that's how you're going to understand the margins on your projects.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. And then going back to that idea though, of, of fictional hours and fictional tracking, right? Because you just can't remember what you did or, I mean, it's like, let's just say it's not even not nefarious at all. Let's say you're not trying to hide anything, right? It's just like, but there is this level of fictitious data entry and what you're talking about is. using this data to make decisions on future projects. And that's relatively impossible when there's fictitious data, right? It's like to be accurate about it, let's say, you know, there's, there's general sense, but I think I see that. I think that was a frustration point for a lot of my practicing career.

It was like, you're working in a large firm, people are making shit up and they're [00:28:00] putting it on projects and you're just hurting future you, right? When it comes to projects that you are. competing for to win and what you're going to charge to do that project and how many hours there are to do it, let alone that the projects are all different from each other, there's a different client group, there's different jurisdictions, there's different delivery methods, there's all these things that are, that are different anyway. It's a pretty tough sell to say, yeah, we're going to use this information. We're going to base our business on this information that you're relying on people to enter accurately. And they're just not right. And so, I mean, in, in your perspective, when you're developing software, how are you removing the friction to make it easier for people to accurately put that information into a system that it can be used to their benefit in future endeavors?

Matt Cooper: What you just described completely resonates and goes to [00:29:00] the point I made earlier around software not necessarily delivering for this industry. And what you just described is the garbage in, garbage hmm. notion. And I, I think a lot of the legacy software that folks have been using for what's called the last couple decades built in a way that is so complex that it becomes only the general ledger for a company.

Uh, for an architecture firm, where you can manage your accounting there, but when it comes to the project management and operational part of the business, it just falls down and we hear that over and over and over again. Yes, we can maintain the books, but it's not providing us the information in real time that we need to run the business.

And we are not perfect at that, but our mission, our stated goal is to build easy to use. Sort of all in one comprehensive software. Uh, and those are difficult things to do, but that's what [00:30:00] we're trying to bring together to allow for all the functions in the business, uh, in the firm to be, be well taken care of.

And in this case, make sure folks are putting in their, uh, time, uh, accurately, which again, it's a lot easier versus having to pull up some Excel spreadsheet at the end of the week to have an in browser, uh, time card. We've invested heavily in our mobile experience. We'll be releasing a brand new mobile experience in the next couple of months.

So do it in real time on your phone. Uh, we have introduced, for example, an integration with Outlook, where if you're sending emails or doing different activities or have an event in your calendar, you can get that onto your time card. We, make it easier for the firm admin staff to track who has submitted their time card each day or each week in real time.

There, there's no one silver bullet to this right now, but there are a lot [00:31:00] of things that we're trying to do in the software to make sure we're as far away from the garbage in, garbage out notion as you can be and make sure that data is useful. Because you're right, it's dangerous to make decisions with, um, imperfect or imprecise data.

Evan Troxel: And it

Let's take a short break from the conversation to invite you to join the most influential technology leaders in the AEC industry at Confluence. Composed of in person events and a podcast co hosted by yours truly, Confluence is designed to foster conversations between AEC firms and technology companies so they can learn, share, and engage with each other to support industry innovation.

Evan Troxel: Software company Avail, which creates content management solutions for the AEC industry, started hosting Confluence events in 2019 to understand what firms are needing, wanting, and thinking around technology. To learn more about Confluence, explore upcoming events, and listen to podcast episodes, go to confluence.

getavail. [00:32:00] com. My thanks to Confluence for supporting this episode of the TRXL podcast. And now, let's get back to the conversation.

Matt Cooper: imprecise data.

Evan Troxel: And it seems like there's just a certain level of table stakes of, you know, having the right foundation in place so that you can get the information in there correctly the first time, easily, and then use it in the future, uh, but I assume that there's also some trends and other things that you want to build on top of that as BQE, right?

And there's a few other players in the space too, right, who are looking to. Take it to the next level, and I'm curious what those kinds of things are. So maybe shifting from kind of those foundational, like, let's assume all that stuff is in place and that's all running smoothly. Where does it go from there?

And what potential is there in using software like this to help run your practice? Mm

Matt Cooper: So what [00:33:00] I, the way I would think about it is the time entry project management and invoicing is kind of table stakes, right? If you think about the workflow of a professional services firm, if you're, if you don't do that, it's tough to, it's tough to know what value you are adding. But you're, you're right.

Um, there is a lot of value that we are, have and are continuing to layer on top of that. I think. The first and foremost one is how do you take that data that the firm has worked hard to enter and translate it into Insights. And we've been investing heavily, I'm very excited about some of our upcoming releases, in making sure you have easy, flexible reporting that can be dropped into someone's inbox Monday morning for the firm meeting.

That you, um, have sort of dashboards you can drill down into to understand, Oh, we're this level of [00:34:00] profitability. How does that break down by client? How does that break down by project type? Are you able to manage your staff effectively? And so we're investing, frankly, an enormous level of resources in making sure the data is as digestible as possible.

Uh, and we have some exciting stuff coming up there. I think the other one is, it's funny, I talk with a lot of firms who say, Well, gosh, we want to pursue business development efforts. So we should look at a Salesforce or something like that. And I think the more integrations you have, one, the more expensive it gets.

Uh, and two, there is no such thing as a perfect integration. And so we are trying to build functionality around that table stakes component. Uh, we're investing in a better, uh, client relationship management and proposal generation tool. Uh, we are investing in, without going too much into it, a few other [00:35:00] areas that serve the needs of the firm beyond just the basics. Um, I think the last one is. If you'd asked me nine months ago, I would have said AI is a long way out. Um, if you ask me now, I think that's not at all the case. And so what we've done is, uh, created an innovation center internally, have a few folks dedicated to figuring out the way that artificial intelligence can benefit our customers.

Uh, and we've got a list of a dozen things we'll start knocking down that I think are going to be really compelling for those customers. It's funny, I think a lot of companies, let's call it, uh, in the last year have gotten the AI bug, thrown a lot of stuff against the wall, and just tried to see what sticks, and we're trying to take a little bit of a closer, what challenges are we able to solve, can AI be applied to at Lens, versus we have to use AI.

[00:36:00] Throughout the product.

Evan Troxel: I'm curious what you mean by a Salesforce kind of integration. So when, when, when, uh, you hear that from a client, I mean, and, and, uh, doesn't have to be Salesforce specific. I'm just curious, what does that mean to them when it comes to generating proposals, winning work? How does that, how does that fit into a pipeline?

Matt Cooper: I, I think it is the notion that it is, take that one particular, in particular, it's a brand name. A firm says we need to do business development efforts. We need to track our contacts and clients. We need to run campaigns into those clients. We need to understand our pipeline and win rates and things like that.

And, and those are all good goals. Like I, I think that's important, especially as you reach a certain size for the firm. But there's a historical debate which, which the buzzword term would have been best in class versus best in breed. Do you want the single best [00:37:00] software for every single use case? In this case, do you want a Salesforce for CRM, um, for example, or do you want more of an all in one solution where it's not necessarily the best in class, it's not necessarily the best, most robust piece of software?

Um, but it's well integrated, it's purpose built for the industry, and it gets the job done. And that would be my pitch until maybe you reach a few hundred people. It's probably a lot more efficient from a cost and time perspective to leverage a purpose built CRM for the industry than try to plug a Salesforce, for example, into your tech stack.

I mean, if you think about it, Salesforce is a massive publicly traded company that can invest billions of dollars into the software. But most firms don't need the billions of dollars they're investing. They need [00:38:00] something easy to use. And I think that's What we're striving to do is sort of make it accessible for firms to get more functionality.

Evan Troxel: And are there ways, like speaking of integrations, and I think I'm thinking of, You know, software that people are using on the design side of things when it comes to integrations and passing data around and leveraging, you know, databases that exist out there for various different, you know, I could use it for, for environmental data, um, demographic data, all kinds of things, right?

I, I'm curious if there's that kind of, if you're thinking like that when it comes to software that BQE makes as well. Is there a way, are there ways to integrate it with practice based software that it goes beyond, you know, into the designer's toolbox, for example?

Matt Cooper: We haven't seen a ton of that yet. That doesn't mean it, it's not right or shouldn't be on the horizon. Some of the things that [00:39:00] I think are compelling is making sure that the design assets show up in the right place. I think there are ways of communicating between the business or project management and the design side of the house.

Those are things we have on on the map, but I don't think a lot of software providers have done a great job so far of bridging

Evan Troxel: Yeah, it seems like that's probably the case, but it also does seem like there's some opportunity potentially there, because when you're talking about project data, right, like that lives in a Revit model, for example, and if there are ways to pipe that back into your database of project, you know, time spent on projects, hours spent in different phases, things like that, it seems like there's insight potentially to be gained there because, you know, Anytime that project is separated from the project files itself, then you've got double entry, [00:40:00] right?

You've got to be

concerned about, about the accuracy of that information. It seems like there might be something there. But I, I would also, I think that would be kind of an interesting thing to see happen. Because then it ties the people doing the work to the people doing the proposals to the people doing the business development.

And, um, it just gives everybody a little bit more. depth into these projects about how, how have we done it before? How could we do it next time? And, and, and how similar is this project to that other project that had these people on it and we spent this much time. It just seems like there's a lot of business insight that could be gained from, and in the world of APIs that we live in now in cloud and, and, you know, file lists, data exchanges, it does seem like that the potential is, is better than it ever has been before.

Matt Cooper: I 100 percent agree with you, and maybe this goes to the point that the industry has been underserved. It feels like that is worthwhile to do. The couple things I had [00:41:00] I would caveat is, um, uh, what I described a little bit was a closed system. Like why should you integrate with a Salesforce, for example, to be clear, like there are, there are lots of reasons to integrate other software tools.

We believe very much in being an open software solution. If someone wants a Salesforce, ultimately you can plug in things like that. Uh, but we also do recognize that not every firm has the resources to do something like this. You know, 90 percent of. I'll get my number wrong, of architecture firms are below a certain size of maybe 5, 10

employees. You don't want to be spending the time, uh, trying to integrate all those solutions, but we do think it's, it's important to be able to do so.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I, I'm curious, uh, a lot of times I think when it comes to software in a EC firms or, you know, leadership, want to see success examples, uh, of successful implementations or outcomes using [00:42:00] said workflow or software, whatever. So maybe, maybe take that and run with it with BQE. Can you talk about some of the transformations that you've seen through the use of practice management software in this way?

Matt Cooper: Absolutely. Uh, I mean, for context, we have thousands of customers on the platform, uh, and you know, we hear stories and, and it may be worth calling out, like the stories come. in different tones from different parts of the organization, right? You have the firm principal who might be talking about You know, recognizing that they were serving a vertical or client base that just wasn't profitable for them, or they were sort of burning dollars, um, pursuing the wrong type of activities who now have meaningfully shifted the margins of their firm, they're able to hire more people and grow a business.

But they didn't have that insight before. You might be talking to [00:43:00] the finance leader, who was so ground down, uh, trying to cobble all of these spreadsheets together, who is now able to step back and breathe, and take a more strategic lens toward the firm. You might talk about the office manager or bookkeeper, who was in tears because the last few weeks they've been up past midnight trying to get invoices out the door and finally can get a little bit of time back for themselves.

And I think all of these are sort of stories in aggregate, but it's awfully rewarding to hear these types of shifts, um, in firms. Again, we, we often talk about the, you know, there was that ROI just part of the discussion. We often talk about the business impact. But what we also like to hear is the, the personal stories.

How do we empower individuals to again, maybe control a little bit of that chaos and focus on [00:44:00] what they want to be doing. Certainly if it's the, the architects, the practitioners, more design work, growing a bigger firm, but it actually also applies to all the other folks at the firm as well, we find.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I think you nailed it with this idea of putting people in a position of being able to be more strategic, right? Because they have information to work with. They're not just constantly reacting. And that, that's an entirely empowering situation to be in when you've experienced the flip side of it, right?

It's just like night and day different. And, and for you to be able to feel like you have. a window into what's actually going on. And therefore, now we can develop a strategy and We can execute on that because we're in a position of being able to have that survey, but also we're just not playing catch up all the time.

We're not just reacting, putting out fires, right? I think that's a, it's really empowering [00:45:00] for a certain role, but also for the business to be able to shift and move into that kind of a position. And I, I mean, I have to agree with your, your assessment there, like that software can do that. And software can put somebody in a position where they are ahead of. What's coming so that they can position the company appropriately to go after what they need to go after strategically. That's a huge shift. I mean, it can't be understated, uh, to, I think a lot of times when it comes to firms, it's like, just throw people at the problem, right? Throw more

people on the project. I think we all know what that's actually like, right? It's, it's all of a sudden, things just got a lot more difficult because people have to be onboarded, brought up to speed, figure out the way that this team does things. And you go slower. Then you are going faster, even though you've put more horsepower basically into the, into the engine compartment, right?

It's you would, you would think that it would be a great application, but on many times [00:46:00] it's not, especially for the people who are, who are having to do that on the spot training. I feel

like that that's a common error that we see all the time in architecture businesses, right? Throw. Throw this on somebody's plate who hasn't done this before, bring in somebody to clean this up, and I think a lot of times that, that lack of, um, strategy or forethought thinking of the stuff up front is a huge detriment.

And so, software actually has, gives people the ability, these tools do give the people the ability to get in front of these kinds of issues. and, and make the most out of them. Um, I, I, that's a, that's a very cool kind of transformation that I've seen in business as well. And software is a, is a really interesting tool that's doing that for people.

Matt Cooper: yeah, and what I will say is that the, the software is a much more economical way of doing it than throwing a new person at a problem. Uh, the, the relative prices there are, uh, make this an easy call versus if you [00:47:00] need to hire a bunch more folks. Yeah, I, I do think that the software is a tool that can be helpful, but it does take, Sort of the, the will to do something a little bit differently, the education for how we, uh, how to do it.

It is why we try to invest a lot in sort of putting out thought leadership and content into the world. But it, it does take a little bit of a lift, uh, and desire to do things a little bit differently from the firm as, as well. We're a, we're a tool that helps enable that change, I think.

Evan Troxel: If you were

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Matt Cooper: think.

Evan Troxel: If you were to kind of put your number, put a number on it, what do you think the percentage of firms with blind spots in this area are? Like you talked about coming at this from outside the industry and seeing the opportunity in this industry and this industry being underserved in this way. Is it? People just don't know what they don't know, uh, they're, you know, I'm, I'm curious from your point of view, just how, how much of a blind spot this is for our [00:49:00] industry.

Matt Cooper: It's funny, there's a kind of a, a, a trope I've heard a bunch of times, which is there was no business class in architecture school. I, I think that's a little bit, bit harsh. Uh, you know, most of the firm leaders that I have met are intelligent, talented, successful individuals. So I, I don't, I don't wanna sort of leave it with that, that particular note.

So I don't know if it's necessarily a blind spot for everyone, but most businesses are, are not optimized or not the most inefficient, and there is. I think a lot of opportunity and leverage in making some subtle changes that are ultimately going to benefit the firm. And I think there's a few places where we see that could be helpful.

There are a couple surveys I've seen. Well, so there's the business side, and we published a series of [00:50:00] benchmarks. And I would say the, the margins in the architecture industry are not best in class across all industries. And so there's probably a little bit of opportunity on the business side. But on the personal side, um, there is a, uh, a survey done, I think it was by ActionsProve and EMI, that said something like 70 plus percent of architects felt burnout.

I think there was another survey I saw, uh, in our, uh, where, uh, I'll, I'll have to look for where it was that suggested that 80 to 90 percent of the industry was pessimistic about the industry. Uh, and I think you called out the number of folks that were experiencing a bit of cynicism and leaving the industry.

And so, again, it, it's not to say that there are blind spots for every firm, but I think, you make a few changes and you can be driving better business results, happier staff and employees and things like that. And [00:51:00] you know, we, we talked about maybe, maybe with blind spots, um, what I have gleaned anecdotally and the feeling I've gotten talking with so many firm leaders is the changes that are coming down the pike in the industry are only speeding up a bit, right? You've got, um, sort of a generational shift with retiring firm owners, a gap in sort of mid level firm and project management. You've got a newer generation to the industry that works a little bit differently, um, and, and has some different values. There are more client pressures I'm hearing than ever to speed up projects, sort of take a hit on price and margin.

There are macro conditions at play. And so I, I think this goes to the point that having the right information and managing in an operationally efficient way matters more and more over time. And, uh, if you think about, [00:52:00] you talked about the AEC industry as a whole, I think architecture tends to feel the brunt of it.

early on a relative basis. So being out ahead of things, uh, and having the right information certainly helps.

Evan Troxel: maybe final question as we wrap up here. I kind of feel like you've got something interesting to say here. You know, software companies go, right? But the tool being put into somebody's toolbox is not enough, right? Like they don't just all of a sudden. Experience that ROI or experience the, the better business because now they have the tool, right?

Because now there's training, there's customer satisfaction and success, and there's new ways of doing things, new behaviors, uh, all of these things. So how does a company like yours, you know, how do you go into that situation to help people be successful and have these outcomes that you're talking about being achievable?

Yeah. Because again, like just having it, [00:53:00] it's like many people in this industry are very aware of they have The most powerful tools and, and yet, right? It's like, what do we do with these?

What, how, how do we leverage these? And, and it's just, so again, just, just having them, just spending the money isn't enough.

What do you do as a company to help your customers succeed with your software?

Matt Cooper: Yeah. I've got a grin because my pithy answer is I try to hire people that are much smarter and more talented and adept at what they do than I am. And so that's across product and engineering and customer success and sales, you know, the, the whole firm. Uh, but I, I think we've made a substantial investment in that customer experience over the past year.

And if I walk through it, um, we, we kind of refreshed our implementation approach, made it much more programmatic and structured, We actually implemented [00:54:00] software that helps our customers see where they are in the implementation process, communicate clearly, so they feel comfortable during that implementation where there is a lot of change management, that things are going well and they can feel comfortable.

There's There's sort of a change management chart that I have in mind, which is, you purchase software, you're very excited, it's going to transform your firm, you get into implementation, and, and there is, there is a dip there, because it is some work, it does require change, but at the end of the day, you end up, um, because I think we've got a very strong implementation methodology, In a much, much better spot than you started, but it does require a great team, uh, and the right, right process there.

Uh, we've invested heavily in what we call our customer success team. The folks who, after implementation, are helping you get even more value out of the software, [00:55:00] helping navigate our own organization for training and things like that. Implementation never gets you to 100 percent power user in the software it's not designed to, that would take a long time.

But we've then got the folks and the teams behind that helping firms get as much value out of the software as they want. And it's, it's, I've made the little quip about hiring more talented people, which is true. Um, but over the last year we've been in a fortunate position. To bring in so many talented folks that are so customer focused and helping them be successful because you're right It doesn't just happen overnight that you get software and are Automatically have a different firm.

It takes it takes a close collaboration on both Yeah, I mean, the, the commitment level, and, and then just timing wise, if you can give kind of an idea, I don't know if there's a ballpark, but like, what is it, what do you normally see as a timeline for people to get [00:56:00] comfortable? So that they are feeling like it's a positive influence and they're going to actually build momentum with a piece of software like this.

It's actually surprisingly fast If you were again to tackle the entirety of the software, it would take a long time but we're able to Thank you Get folks in there, setting up projects, tracking against those projects, invoicing for those projects. Depending on firm size, generally we target between one and three months.

There are exceptions on both sides. But the value you accrue is pretty darn quick as you're ditching those spreadsheets, the legacy systems that were just bulky and were overhead and not actually helping the business operate. Um, it's faster than you, than I think a lot of folks, uh, think it might good. Well, I'm, I'm rooting for you because I know architects need a lot of help in this, in this realm. Uh, [00:57:00] and to know that there's solutions out there is just half of the battle, right? Like, just knowing that there's purpose built software to achieve, This, this kind of enhancement in your business practices is, is a big part of it because I think a lot of people just don't know they, they use whatever they were taught by somebody else or cobbled together on watching YouTube videos on the weekends, right?

Evan Troxel: And, I mean, every, everybody who's listening knows that that's how it works on some level with a lot of different things inside of our, our system. So, um, just knowing that these exist, I think is half the battle. So thanks for coming on the show and talking about this today. I know this topic is not necessarily kind of in the bailiwick of AEC design technology, but if you don't have something like this in place, it's incredibly difficult to have a high performing team that can use the other software that we need to use to deliver our projects.

And so it does all go hand in hand. So Matt, thank you so much for taking the [00:58:00] time. Kind of explaining what BQE has been up to and you as CEO there.

Matt Cooper: You know, I, I, one, really appreciate you having, uh, me on today. It's been great, uh, great chatting. Uh, I think two I, I'm awfully excited as well. We're in a fortunate position. We we're investing a ton in great software and great service to help serve this community. And I guess lastly, just to tie it back to the beginning where, where you asked about coming from outside the architecture industry.

If there is one consistent theme in my experience helping run software companies, it's you have to focus on the customer. That is the one essential truth. And for us, Uh, we just find it awfully rewarding to be able to serve this community and are doing, uh, our best to, to continue to benefit the industry.

Um, and so thanks for, for having me on and, and letting me share my piece of the, [00:59:00] uh, about us and what we're up to.

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