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Blog · Alternatives and comparisons · Construction and building materials

How to choose analytics software for construction and building materials: questions, data and traps

How builders' merchants should choose analytics software: start from the questions, check the data you hold, ask vendors ten questions, avoid the traps.

By CoviragePublished 24 September 20264 min read
The short answerStart from the questions builders' merchants ask every month, not from features. List the exports you already hold, ask every vendor what it needs before the first answer and whether its AI calculates figures, and check that every total reconciles. Then compare the first-year cost, all in.

Most buying decisions for analytics start from a feature list. For builders' merchants the better start is the questions that come back every month, the files already on hand, and the traps that make a tool look right in a demonstration and wrong in the first board meeting.

Start from the questions

The question The measure behind it
Which trade accounts buy a category from someone else? Category share by trade
Which trade accounts have gone quiet? Dormant trade accounts, by prior value
Who is about to hit their credit limit? Credit limit headroom
How much quote value are we losing, and to whom? Quote conversion, count and value
Are we invoicing at the agreed terms? Price realisation against terms
Which projects in the pipeline match accounts we hold? Project pipeline matched to accounts

Any tool you consider should answer these from your data, not from a sample. Ask to see it.

The data you already hold

  • Ledger with category
  • Account master with trade
  • Credit file
  • Planning or project data
  • Quote log
  • Order file
  • CRM or call log
  • Terms file

If a vendor needs a warehouse built before it can read these, count that in the cost and the time.

Ten questions to ask any vendor

  1. What does it need in place before the first answer? A warehouse, a data model, a modelling language, a partner? Ask for the list and the typical weeks.
  2. Who does the setup, and who maintains it? Your team, the vendor, or a partner, and what that costs after year one.
  3. Does the AI calculate figures, or choose from computed ones? A language model that writes queries or code can produce a plausible wrong number. Ask what it is allowed to do.
  4. Does every total reconcile to a control figure? Ask to see a bridge that does not sum and what the product does about it.
  5. Can every figure be opened to its rows? An answer nobody can check becomes a debate in the meeting.
  6. What does it cost in the first year, all in? Licences, consumption, implementation, modelling and training, not only the seat price.
  7. How does data arrive, and who holds credentials? A file your systems already export, a scheduled drop, or a live connection with the vendor holding keys.
  8. What happens to the data, and where is it stored? Residency, retention, deletion, and whether names can be replaced with identifiers.
  9. Can we see it on our own data before we sign? A demonstration on a sample dataset tells you little about your own.
  10. What does the tool do when it cannot answer? It should say so. A confident guess does more harm than no answer.

Checks specific to construction and building materials

Ask whether the tool enforces these, and what it does when they fail:

  • Category share: Category spend sums to the account's ledger total; every account has one trade or is counted as untyped
  • Activation: Accounts opened = activated + not yet activated within window + window still open
  • Credit headroom: Balance ties to the receivables ledger
  • Quote conversion: Quotes = converted + lost + open

The traps

Category share by trade. Most merchants know an account's revenue and nothing about its basket against its peers.

Credit limit headroom. Sales and credit control look at different files and the customer falls between them.

Activation. Opening accounts is counted and celebrated. Whether they traded twice is not.

Measures to leave out

Accounts opened. Without activation it measures form-filling.

Branch revenue against last month. Weather and working days. Use the same month last year.

Average transaction value, alone. Moves with mix and delivery policy; no action follows.

A scorecard

Criterion Weight Tool A Tool B Covirage
Answers our six questions on our own data High
Time to the first answer High
Needs a warehouse or data team Medium
AI calculates figures, or only explains computed ones High
Every total reconciles; figures open to rows High
First-year cost, all in Medium

Where Covirage fits

Covirage reads the exports above, answers the questions with figures our tools compute and check, and is set up for you within a week. See analytics software for construction and building materials compared, AI analytics for construction and building materials and Covirage for Construction and building materials.

For the measures in full, with formulas and exports, read Sales KPIs for builders' merchants and construction suppliers.

Questions people ask

What should builders' merchants look for in analytics software?

The answer to their own questions, from the data they already hold, with every figure reconciled. Features matter less than what the tool needs before the first answer and who maintains it.

Is a BI suite enough for builders' merchants?

It can be, with a warehouse and someone to build and maintain the model. Without them, the dashboard shows what changed and the explanation is still an analyst's job.

What data do builders' merchants already hold?

Usually: ledger with category, account master with trade, credit file, planning or project data, quote log, order file. Most analytics questions in this industry can be answered from those exports.

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