About Chandos
Chandos Construction is one of North America's most innovative and collaborative general contractors. They provide construction management, integrated project delivery, design-build services, and general contracting services.
The Challenge
Delayed project discovery and time-consuming lead generation methods
The Business Development team at Chandos stays busy with face-to-face meetings, coffee chats, and recommendations from others to find potential projects. Along with leveraging their network, Chandos relies on various sources for researching early signals, including industry databases, local government websites, and legacy software solutions.
Despite having success in identifying new leads, navigating all these sources proved cumbersome, time-consuming, and still resulted in delayed project discovery. Chandos needed a central tool with accurate data in early opportunity signals to reduce the noise on potential new projects and close knowledge gaps in the market.
"I find that once there's an article about a project, it's often too late. We try to have as many meetings as we can to get information on projects, so it takes a long time to build a good list of leads. It's not as time efficient."
Business Development Manager
The Solution
Increased lead intelligence in less time
Chandos discovered their solution in Mercator AI, a market intelligence platform powered by artificial intelligence. Mercator allows the Chandos team to increase market intelligence and improve the efficiency of generating new business by accessing accurate, real-time information and reducing the manual work involved to identify new projects.
Map opportunities visually
Chandos uses an interactive project map as a fast and efficient way to conduct research and identify new opportunities. They can quickly search for addresses they already know, or apply filters like sectors, zones, keywords, and project stage to surface results based on their criteria.
Chandos uses early indicators like Land Use Redesignation, Development Permit, Building Permit, Electrical Inspection, Tenancy Change, and Business License to quickly dial in on the projects in the right stage for their business.
Project details connected in one place
Chandos accesses critical information on projects, like recent activity, permitting, zoning, description, real estate listings, and companies involved to quickly determine if an opportunity is worth pursuing or not.
They use the activity feed like statuses on permits and licenses, and access project-relevant documents including applications and exterior drawings to get an understanding of the scope and stage of a potential new project.
For Chandos Business Development Managers, they’re finding that Mercator’s project insights allow them to cut through the noise faster, and on average an hour of time in Mercator can surface five valuable leads.
"If I have one coffee meeting, I might walk away with two leads in an hour. If I'm on Mercator, I could find five leads in an hour. It gives us intel to bring to meetings. We can position ourselves better in the market and become more dialed in."
Business Development Manager
Insights on future partners and competitors
Chandos uses Mercator's directory of companies to gather important information such as projects, trends, contacts, top locations, and annual revenue. They use the "Commonly Works With" list to see which companies frequently collaborate, identify potential new connections, and gain intel on the companies in their space.
This breakdown of companies and their associated activity allows Chandos to easily uncover new intel to inform future or ongoing conversations.
"We are adding value to the person we're having a meeting with. They're more likely to want to meet with us again and maybe they'll bring something next time versus just coming empty-handed."
Business Development Manager
Automate finding projects within customized search criteria
When Chandos first implemented Mercator, the Mercator team created a set of custom groups to automate the heavy lifting of research. These groups automatically cut through the noise and notify Chandos users via email of new projects matching their criteria. These emails contain quick, scannable details like size, location, companies involved, and a brief description.
These saved searches eliminate time and effort by automatically identifying and notifying them of relevant new projects, without needing to login to Mercator.
Building the future of Mercator AI together
As a part of the beta program, Chandos and Mercator conduct bi-weekly check-in calls to collect feedback and collaborate on future improvements. These check-in’s allow Chandos to flag what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and influence product development based on their workflows and processes. This innovation period with Mercator has resulted in Chandos suggestions being implemented since the start of their beta program, including shortcuts to Google search a project, and a major re-design to our filter experience.
Working with Chandos, Mercator averages a 4-6 week turnaround time for implementing their feedback and continues to take feedback from users on how to improve their experience.
"This has saved us extra time now that they've integrated our feedback in the platform. It leans up our processes by making the experience faster on our side."
Director, National Sales
