Building Better: Technology's Role in Revolutionizing Supply Chains with April Moss

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Business Chop Podcast, where I guess speak on meeting the challenges of entrepreneurship as well as offer tips and advice on business, marketing, technology and more. Whether you are a newbie or seasoned professional, this episode is for you. I am your host Audrey Wiggins. Let's chop it up!

[00:00:30] Hello Chop Squad, it's exciting to be with you again and my guest today is as April Moss. And of course I'm excited about having her to. Her business is global, you'll learn later but she has an office in in Bracale, Florida. So she's in the Sunshine State. She's a COO and co-founder of DigiBuild where she supports supply chain management procurement of materials and mental health with the company's software. DigiBuild is a construction software company that

[00:01:00] streamlines and removes approximately 30% of administrative burden and costs associated with procuring materials. So April is a 20 plus year executive building and running global sales teams for PNG, Starbucks and a billion dollars sales and marketing broker. Her last position with PNG was running in a or North American operations where their second largest customer team. Earlier on in her career she worked at construction specifications,

[00:01:29] construction specifications, and was a real turf for one of the largest US brokerage firms. We'll learn more about April on the other side of this message.

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[00:02:09] April, welcome again to the business shop.

[00:02:13] Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be fun.

[00:02:17] Okay, speaking about fun, one of the fun things I'd ask they usually ask us to share something fun and I don't like yours. This says work is play.

[00:02:27] You cheat.

[00:02:32] So true. I feel like every day I'm going out in the play yard and friends and doing stuff and you know, you got to get a play hard work hard and somehow, you know, the two of those things sometimes get crossed but I really enjoy what I do.

[00:02:47] I think I, I did a little stint where I had my own consulting firm and worked with direct to consumer companies. And I, and although it was becoming very successful, I absolutely hated it because I was doing it by myself.

[00:03:01] Oh, no interact. No fun.

[00:03:06] Play with no playmates.

[00:03:09] I can't do anything here with just all the same.

[00:03:12] Exactly. And nobody throws sand at her to build a sand.

[00:03:16] Absolutely.

[00:03:19] Yes, but my work should be fun. If it's not, we need to find something else to do.

[00:03:24] Absolutely. And and it's a privilege to be able to enjoy what you do. A lot of people have to work to work and take care of their families and maybe do, I mean, we all do things we don't like.

[00:03:35] I mean, I think it's a good thing to do with the minute, you know, with our work. There's pieces of it where as fun as others, but the compliment, accomplishments are really what drives it and.

[00:03:45] And so I'm very fortunate to have been able to do things I love.

[00:03:49] Let's get right on into it and tell us more about did you build software?

[00:03:53] Yeah, so when you think about everything that goes into all simplified building a house, right?

[00:03:58] You built your own home and it was custom made. And you've got, you know, 50 different vendors coming in to sell you windows and doors and knobs and carpet and furniture and paint and all those things that go into a house, you can exponentially

[00:04:14] buy that to a building or a skyscraper or a hospital or, you know, some type of biotech company, whatever it is, you know, building is one of the oldest industries in the globe. Right?

[00:04:26] And so you have 150 people that come together and they have all these supplies and all these materials. And if you're a general contractor owner who's running these projects and paying for that, one of the biggest issues they have is 70% of the overrun on budgets as well as being behind on schedule are all related to procurement.

[00:04:49] And so typically if you were to go out and just let's just say windows and doors, not the electrical, not the lights, not the flooring all the things that go into it. You're just wanting to go out and find out, you know, the best prices, the materials, maybe some options of substitute materials because you have a customer that says hey I want something a little bit more sustainable or it has to endure hurricane force wins or tornadoes.

[00:05:13] So all these things that go into it typically what happens is the general contractor goes out and they'll look for suppliers, but they can only get to two maybe two three suppliers per item when there's thousands of items that need to be purchased. So they'll go bid those things and then they'll find the best price and sometimes it's about timing as well like electrical switch gears right now. I think it's 26 weeks out to order and it's a you know they can't manufacture them enough so it might be about I don't care how much it costs.

[00:05:42] This project is going to get behind and cost me a lot more money than those switch gears. So I'll pay whatever if you can get them to me in three months, months versus six months.

[00:05:51] So supply chain is really tough and it's broken and most people they only look in their local area and they don't have time or money to start going outside the circle or to go global unless it's just per chance because they don't have an entire procurement team doing that.

[00:06:06] Well, our software allows you to go in put in what you're looking for and allows you to start local or look global at all the different materials that are available that you're looking for.

[00:06:17] And we can get you prices for those. And so then if there's something there that's not quite in your market or you want something different.

[00:06:24] We have an easy button where we'll actually go do that work for you and find additional resources like we had a customer recently that needs this particular type of Italian.

[00:06:36] And it title in gray doesn't have to be from Italy porcelain and so so where do you go to get that will we're able to connect them, you know from a manufacturer in India who sources from the exact.

[00:06:51] You know, Corey that they wanted and it wasn't you know so right now they look at also like slave labor. That's a big thing that's becoming an issue.

[00:07:01] Identify you know so there's there's different things to do but we can do all that for our customers and it's almost like instantaneously so they can go get 15 bids versus two to three bids.

[00:07:12] Another cool thing is that if you have suppliers, you have relationships with we invite them to join our platform for free.

[00:07:19] Suppliers and manufacturers we love them get on our platform. If there's people in your area looking you get the opportunity to bid on these other projects that maybe you didn't have exposure to a relationship with right.

[00:07:32] And so so that's an opportunity for suppliers and then what I really love is within our supplier database, which is.

[00:07:39] I think we now probably had the largest global supplier database out there in the largest sustainable database.

[00:07:45] We identify minority owned companies women owned companies and veteran owned companies.

[00:07:51] So that if you've got a government contract and you need to hit certain requirements by the government, we can get all that for through our suppliers.

[00:08:00] So it benefits us because we get their business and benefits the minorities because they're getting an opportunity they've never been able to jump into and a lot of times those minority companies or smaller companies that they never get asked to join a larger.

[00:08:15] So I think that's a great thing to do with this project. So and I'll tell you my personal story why that means so much about that, but that's kind of how we operate is to be able to bring all different types of worlds together under one platform where everybody's benefiting in this ecosystem.

[00:08:29] So that's that's kind of did you build.

[00:08:32] That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

[00:08:35] I also have a lot of people who have been motivated you to co-found did you build and how does your past experience and sales and operations contribute to your CEO role.

[00:08:44] Yeah, so at Procter and Gamble, I probably wasn't your typical what they called proctoids they called us.

[00:08:51] I think that's our competition did because we all have these same scripts and I mean the best training in the world amazing company to work for nothing but great things to say.

[00:09:02] I would not be where I'm at today without them they really formed me early on the women who influenced me early on.

[00:09:09] The global leaders there just how they thought in fact, I've modeled a few of my companies after some of the things that they've taught me so I love love it but I was kind of a little bit of a

[00:09:20] you know outlier because I didn't have all the degrees from Harvard and all the top 10 schools that they recruited from I kind of slipped under the radar with that.

[00:09:31] But I always had a love for business my aunt who influenced me she was the first butcher female butcher in Michigan she had her own little country store.

[00:09:41] She would give me her green bar paper you know if anyone knows green bar if you don't look it up but this big paper and it was just all this inventory stuff and I would take that home and I'd create my own store in my own restaurant and I had the best mud burgers in the world.

[00:09:57] And I would sit there and pretend like I was running my own business and she just really influenced me that way.

[00:10:02] And so that that was one of the and then all of my family almost all my relatives and really influenced me into business because they all had small businesses and yeah so that's really cool that piece and then you know I've had my grandmother was a huge influence on me she.

[00:10:18] She got married when she was very young she had lots of children but she was a type of person that it was 65 she went back and got her high school diploma she even took what is it building traits no auto mechanics.

[00:10:31] She wanted to make sure that her son who ran a auto mechanic store was making sure that he was doing what's right by his customers.

[00:10:40] So so a lot of women have come around me but the story when it relates back to did you build in construction as my dad was a subcontractor and sometimes he'd contract his own work and he we were really poor we we had a house he took a barn and converted it into a home and and I remember in the winter time just because you know there's.

[00:11:00] Very little work in the winter time sometimes you get jobs sometimes you win he would he would do a lot of a poultry work or just odds and ends in the winter time and we would all sleep in the kitchen because and close off the rest of the house because it was the only place that had heat.

[00:11:14] Yeah don't remember it you know it's fun we got to go playing cold rooms and have the run of the mill the house and the cold and you know so you don't look at those as bad times are hard times but your parents you know they protect you from that my mom to head of my dad but.

[00:11:28] But my dad really struggled he was good at what he did but he was a terrible businessman and then he would get taken advantage of which is typical within this industry and still today nothing's changed.

[00:11:39] And what happens is they they feel bad they can't provide for their family they get into a drink culture now it's a drug culture and most people don't know this but the construction industry has the third largest suicides.

[00:11:54] Oh wow reason for that is because it's men and they don't talk about it and my dad actually took his own life so for me it's a good all motions probably because I'm a little sick but it to me it's very passionate about it it's always front of mine for me.

[00:12:08] It doesn't matter anytime I talk about it get choked up because the implications of that it's not like okay my father died and it's done and we move on no my entire life I've been without my father yes you know all that influence and all my siblings.

[00:12:23] And all my siblings with that and so the repercussions and the the challenges in my life and the mental challenges and the things I've gone through are very different.

[00:12:33] From anybody else right because you've lost a father of quirky and even if I had a stepfather and he provided he still didn't have that you know.

[00:12:42] Yeah he didn't have that it wasn't there right he'd never had children all of a sudden he had a crew of them so it was like you know so those are the things why this industry I feel like we're doing something with Diggy build and helping the industry in the small guys is large large eyes anybody.

[00:13:00] And it's a win-win because we usually save people anywhere from 10 to 15 to 20% of the materials and we take two to 3% of it.

[00:13:08] It is an absolute win-win it doesn't matter how big you are how small you are we're it to help everybody and so that's what's exciting for me and then I'll pause there but I guess the last thing I'd say is all of this in working the last five years with Rob Selvedor who's the CEO of Diggy build he actually worked for me at Procter and Gamble and.

[00:13:29] You know one day came back and said hey why don't you come work for me is he knew my nickname it PNG was bulldog.

[00:13:36] And there was something that needed to be done or a team that need to be created or something hard they'd say give it to April you know go give it to April so I've always loved new business and so the appeal to be a startup company is just always been in my bones right just start a business and lot tougher than I expected but what what an amazing.

[00:13:58] Way to grow and pivot in a career from large huge you know CPG retail companies and then start off the ground up with venture capital bass back to industry just what a privilege to be able to do that and to serve a community that is so under disserved right now yes absolutely I like that servant leader in you thanks for sharing a story about your dad very sorry to hear that you mentioned mental health and in your bio so how does Diggy build.

[00:14:27] Address mental health within the construction industry.

[00:14:31] Yep so just helping people get the materials get paid on time making sure these projects aren't behind the helps the flow the workflows of all that in construction so it just takes that pressure off it gives exposure to like my dad if he had an opportunity to be on a platform and provide a service to people and get exposure to more projects I mean what a win that would have been for him.

[00:14:56] You know to have those resources come in versus him pounding down the door and it's word of mouth and you know so and so gave it to their best friends versus actually looking at the product of what my dad can deliver right right.

[00:15:08] And then the second thing I've done I've created a nonprofit it's called construction technology institute and I just started that six months ago and what I'm hoping to do is we'll tie into Diggy Pro here but we're out there building.

[00:15:24] I mean work flow applications for the mid size small mid size to large construction companies that help them run their business more efficiently more effectively make sure they get paid on time so it's almost a 360 degree we're going to help you get set up will teach you how to run your business will create applications that are your applications you don't need to go by.

[00:15:49] 1500 subscriptions to do acts will make it for you and we'll do it for under five thousand dollars this entire workflow thing and we'll give it to you if you want us to maintain it great if you feel like you can maintain it great we don't care it's your product and then the other pieces we can come improve it later if you want we can do integrations for you into some other platforms like of course we're integrating it into Diggy Pro here because we want them to know procurement system to do that.

[00:16:17] Yeah so it's just a way to really help all these small businesses and then my real passion is I'm looking for companies there was one in London I really liked that actually help mental health and construction and there was only two companies out there and none of them exist.

[00:16:32] There's local companies that help with construction but it's kind of you know there's so much mental health needs today that you know the specific reasons why different groups or industries have mental health.

[00:16:46] Mental health challenges right and it could be because of work and they don't get paid and they're trying to you know like my what my dad went through and then there's other things of.

[00:16:54] It will pressure and everything over here but there's other reasons in other industry so I'm trying to identify who would be a great partner and this company out of London they actually use animals like most people dogs and pets to actually help people through that process and for construction that seems just like a natural fit you know you got your dog jumping in the back of your truck with you to go.

[00:17:14] Yeah so I like they're going to have their kitty cat jump into their truck with them and go to.

[00:17:20] Oh yeah I love it.

[00:17:23] Anyway we're just looking at that right now and I hope within the next 68 months we'll figure that out.

[00:17:28] Yeah all right that's cool.

[00:17:30] We're considering your extensive experience how does Digi build different you a myself from other construction software solutions in terms of efficiency and cost reduction.

[00:17:40] There's nobody out there right now doing what we're doing some of them like attach a little piece to it where they'll they'll go out and they'll do some of that but it's not a big sense if they don't have the database that that is solely what we're focused on.

[00:17:52] We originally started where we wanted to be a project management platform we were doing payments we're doing all these other things and then we had back in 2019 we partnered with IBM because we're building our software on blockchain to drive that transparency to say yes I gave you this this.

[00:18:09] You know quoted this time and this is the truth and so it kind of it's like a little truth tell timeline thing we have going.

[00:18:17] But nobody's really doing that and we decided after we did this summit with IBM and brought in some of the top leaders within construction small medium size subcontractors to get their feedback coming out of there the number one issue was supply chain management and procurement being top of mind.

[00:18:35] So that was October 2019 and then in January February 2020 covid hit us bad we identified what it was in the entire industry shut down.

[00:18:46] And so we pivoted at that time and started putting we were fortunate to erase some money and we pivoted and started putting all of our time and energy into retooling starting over and trying to build out this procurement tool and there's still things we're working on with it it's a ever growing thing because every industry has different things they need.

[00:19:04] But what's cool is we now have it modulized where you can just go on and find new suppliers and utilize our supplier database and will charge you X or you can do all the ordering online and we track it.

[00:19:17] Track it all the way to the job site for them.

[00:19:22] So they can get in 24 seven in there in their in the system. They can get in owners who put the money for these big developers love it because they don't they don't want to get into the degree but what they want to know is is my project running on time and where's the evidence of that and they can get in there looking say, oh OK well it's on the slow boat from China right.

[00:19:43] Whatever it is right and so and we have a backend team of construction managers do worked in every field and construction that if they see something going walkie like hey that doesn't seem like it's true.

[00:19:56] They said it was on the truck a week ago they'll give them a call and they'll start tracking it down. So we become an extension of people's procurement team and in fact we've got a couple big customers were working with right now that they actually want us to be an extension of their procurement team.

[00:20:11] That's very exciting. Yeah, yeah definitely so on what ways does did you build leverage technologists such as AI or your automation to improve your workflows and decision making.

[00:20:22] Yeah, so we're using that we're building an end so that if somebody wants to earlier I give an example of someone wants to substitute a particular product for a sustainable product right or they have specific regulations in a certain area about what they can where they can source their materials from.

[00:20:42] We can use AI to go out there and search and understand where you know those materials might come from what they're made of so we can use that for that also the automation of just connecting different industries together within the platform as well.

[00:20:58] So say is there gosh can't think of a particular thing but say there's a need for one project needs something that another project needs right we can get AI to start identifying for us and creating and putting it in the software to be able to create and understand where there's crossover of people who might need the same thing.

[00:21:19] And then what that does allows us to go negotiate with our supplier a bigger yeah join us come on board but really we've got quite a few of these suppliers or projects that need this particular thing right and so it helps with that even just in the design of how you design your product you know we can use AI to help do that.

[00:21:40] In fact I just met a company yesterday who has is using AI to design they design all the UI UX everything in the front end that you see that you and I see when we go into an application that makes it user friendly.

[00:21:54] You can you can tie in you AI with that as well to say hey go develop me the code to create this front end X whatever that is.

[00:22:08] So those are things that we're looking at as well and it's changing every day they're learning models so you've got to be able to it's going to be trained so it's not like an automatic thing it takes time to do that they've got a see repeat business and repeat stuff for it to happen.

[00:22:23] How do you see the future of procurement and supply chain management involving in the construction industry and what role do you envision did you play playing in that evolution did you build yeah I don't know.

[00:22:36] I know there's a lot of people that I think suppliers are going to have to do a lot more partnering with companies like like Digi build right sometimes there has it to because they're like well you know you're you know you're bidding me against somebody else and every day that so you lose lose.

[00:22:56] So I think what it'll do it will bring down costs eventually and if you're not doing it and you don't jump on board you're going to be out of business because people there is not enough people in construction labor is one of the biggest issues they're having just like health care there's not enough nurses doctors anymore so you have to start thinking out of the box.

[00:23:16] Of how you can save money and get to the best materials and the best pricing and because sourcing is becoming a big issue sustainability is a big issue even these suppliers once supplier can't negotiate and do all those types of things so I see a deeper partnership among the people involved in supply chain and sustainability.

[00:23:38] And then I think when I think of my days at Procter Gamble with my last the customer team that I worked with we're doing blind receiving and blind receiving is this in this stuff comes in to the back end of your store and versus you sitting there and counting the inventory.

[00:23:56] We've gotten so good doing supply chain management that it's one to two percent loss and that one to two percent loss we give you in damages so just accept the product even if it's not perfect right and accept that and we're going to give you back more money to do that to drive efficiency.

[00:24:14] And right now in this industry very few use barcodes to track everybody's checking everything you know so eventually you're going to like life sciences are probably the the biggest industry that's ahead of that a little bit just because they they're so regulated they don't have a choice but to be able to track.

[00:24:35] So track barcode from you know China or anywhere else all the way to the US and to be able to do that efficiently like every other industry in the world that's where construction has to go to survive.

[00:24:47] Okay awesome April how can we get in touch with you and to learn more or you know to work with you did you just love to connect on LinkedIn so if you put an April Moss that did you build or you can just send me an email April at digibild.com

[00:25:03] We'd love to get on a call and talk to your audience about anything there and then if you're a smaller construction company and it's kind of been organic because we're just not it's like.

[00:25:14] It's beyond construction with some of the stuff we're doing under construction technology institute were creating applications now for smaller companies that aren't even in construction they might be infrastructure doing some really fun stuff but we're developing software for them were applications for them are helping them with their businesses.

[00:25:32] And so you can reach out to me at April at digibild the same place and just say you're interested in that or April at construction tech institute dot org.

[00:25:44] Okay, and we'll make sure to have those I'm addressing back in our yeah makes you get those in our my show notes what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs or individuals looking to make a difference in the construction technology sector based on your journey with digibild.

[00:26:01] Yeah, I would say that you must embrace technology this industry is still lagging that's scary.

[00:26:09] Find someone that can teach you this stuff take those 10 15 minutes a day to learn about the technologies that are out there but if you embrace them those who it's almost like the superpower now is AI right is AI so much for you don't be afraid of it i'm on my journey with this AI technology and stuff I mean I'm.

[00:26:29] Working with several different types of industries and companies you know with that don't be afraid of it and just embrace it because if you don't you will be out of business.

[00:26:41] Absolutely but that's great advice and i'm going home you know technology all the way chop squad make sure you tune in and i'm getting tough to digibild April and our team you see how they can can help you in your construction business whatever you know rolled or positioned at you playing there.

[00:26:59] And stay tuned thank you thank you.

[00:27:04] Thank you for listening to another episode of the business shop it is my hope that you are able to clean useful information from today's episode that you download and share this podcast be sure to plug into our guest go through their website and social media channels to see how they can help you further through their products and services as well as plug into our website all together dot biz will help you expand your brain.

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