Digitizing Our Environment with Autodesk Construction Cloud and How the Right Team Matters

MATT FERN: Thanks, everyone, and welcome to our presentation of Digitizing our environment with ACC and how the right team matters.

Today, we're going to tell you a story of how Stowe Australia successfully road tested the Autodesk Construction Cloud environment with our technology partners, Arkance, and Autodesk. Through this journey, we are hoping that you will take away strategies or ideas to compare your own implementation strategies, define your own key measures of success, assess the ACC suite against your own business objectives, and look to adopt a more collaborative approach to an ACC rollout.

But before getting into this, I'll quickly introduce you to the speakers today. And in no specific order, we have Matthew Bien-Izowski-- sorry for pronouncing his name-- Named Account Executive from Autodesk, Brett Bridgman, Construction Lead ANZ from Arkance, and myself, Matt Fern, Digital Engineering Manager for Stowe Australia.

Now, for many of you watching, I assume you won't know who Stowe is. So to hopefully put some of this into context, Stowe Australia operates solely on Australian soil, and we are Australia's largest privately-owned electrical and communications contractor.

With a history in Australia's electrical industry that dates back to the 1890s, Stowe Australia today is Australia's leading family-owned electrical contractor. We employ more than 1,500 staff in over 14 office locations, with an annual turnover exceeding $500 million.

As we continue to evolve and adopt to our industry, one of our challenges was and is embracing new technologies and workflows, not just to meet our contractual obligations from our clients, but to improve our own internal delivery and improve the collation of data that we were already generating. While looking at our existing project data and the way it was being generated, we identified some key areas of improvement that would benefit the business the most.

For us, this was establishing a supported and connected common data environment, connecting our various data-generating software packages and creating our own data lake, and, ultimately, improving the efficiency of data transfer, accessibility, and a reduction of replicated data. These were the areas of improvement that were identified internally as a requirement for our business, but with any software or technology adoption, you must ask and answer the question, what problem are you trying to solve?

With those goals in mind, Autodesk Construction Cloud started making its way into conversations. Our existing relationship with our clients, who managed our Autodesk software licenses, were able to facilitate early investigations and demonstrations, ultimately engaging with the ACC Autodesk team. From another angle, our businesses had adapted PlanGrid, whereupon purchased by Autodesk, we brought these two connection points together. After further conversations maturing, we created a professional partnership with a few individuals from each company that we thought shared our goals, transparency, and to develop the strategic implementation strategy for the proposed proof of concept moving forward.

As a family-run business, Stowe prides itself on the networks our staff build and maintain. Arkance at Autodesk have hundreds, if not thousands, of team members. It is the individuals we found within these businesses that helped us achieve our goals. This is where the right team matters.

And in our case, it was Arkance and Autodesk that helped us fill the blanks. In their own ways, our two partners on this journey could demonstrate their knowledge and various software solutions. But it took commitment from all of us to establish a level of trust we needed to make this work. With that said, let me introduce you to our partners joining me today, starting with Brett from Arkance.

BRETT BRIDGMAN: Thanks, Matt. Great to see you all got the memo, the plain shirts in all the flow of today. Most of you here today would know us by VinZero A2K. However, in recent months, we're now formally Arkance, the world's largest Autodesk partner and reseller. We're located in 18 countries with over 50 offices worldwide, and we look after 40,000 customers across the AC industry.

At Arkance, we pride ourselves on putting our clients first, leveraging our global reach and suite of offerings across the Autodesk software solutions. Our priority is ensuring our clients are maximizing their return on software investments by customizing workflows and implementing our IP and industry-leading tools to enhance and optimize their efficiency gains.

With the constant pressures of delivering more in the same period of time, we strive to enable our clients with industry-leading tools and enhanced ways of working. We trust in our team of world-class technical specialists and work in partnerships with our clients to drive success.

We are a full stack of services provider, with a strong trusted partnership with Stowe spanning over five years. We pride ourselves and provide Stowe with Autodesk solutions and support, project-specific family content, and professional consulting services. In summary, we have a strong hand-in-hand working partnership with the Stowe team.

Matt mentioned trust and the right solution. He's absolutely correct in saying this, and it's our main motto as a business. For our team, from the beginning, it's been about understanding those short, mid, and long-term objectives, which ties into our Think.Future methodology in ensuring the correct pathways and roadmaps are put in place for a successful outcome.

Throughout a partnership with Stowe, it's been about developing the right team to support, collaborate, stand side-by-side with Stowe, and we believe this has been a success for all parties involved. With this proof of concept with Stowe, we knew from the start that they were trusting us to get it right. That's why it's been imperative that the right team and solutions mattered, with everyone involved playing their crucial part.

Managing expectations and proving success, not only now but in the future, has been vital from my perspective. Listening and evolving throughout the journey has provided Stowe with the confidence that ACC is the right solution. We've worked in collaboration with the Autodesk ACS team as one. I think Matt, we've probably spent more times on the phone and emails and face-to-face than our families at the moment, so it's been--

MATTHEW BIEN-IZOWSKI: My wife wonders sometimes.

BRETT BRIDGMAN: It's been a huge priority to ensure that we've understood and proven value within the Construction Cloud offerings against Stowe's needs and requirements. ACC is not just a point solution product but an end-to-end platform, so ensuring alignment, structure, and strategic approach has been imperative. For us, collaboration, trust, partnership, and transparency have all been keys to this success. Thanks, Matt.

MATT FERN: Yeah, to summarize-- thanks, Brett. To summarize Brett's statement there, the right reseller should be someone that just does more than add their 20 points-- alternative solutions, leveraging a larger partner network, additional Autodesk contacts, et cetera. Personally, we needed the right business, but also the right person. Now I'll throw it over to Matt, Autodesk.

MATTHEW BIEN-IZOWSKI: All right, thanks, Matt. It's great to be here with yourself and Brett today. So with that, let's dive into some insights I'd like to share with you all.

Many people within the industry best know us as the AutoCAD company. Well, what might surprise you, and it sure surprised me, is Autodesk is the leading software provider across media, manufacturing, design, engineering, and construction. And in just a few short years, Autodesk Construction Cloud has seen a significant growth, with over 120 million users across nearly 3 million active projects.

So what is our point of difference? We leverage the knowledge and experience of our team's history within the industry. And in this case, prior to joining Autodesk in 2022, I spent 16 years in the electrical engineering and contracting world, looking up to businesses like Stowe, which allowed me to help educate and empower our teams on the needs and requirements for Stowe's business, working in collaboration with our technical team, customer success, implementation, and product managers. Lastly, it cultivated a culture of high standards, capturing lessons learned and wins, which allowed us to focus on improvement, and prioritizing our energy on what really mattered.

MATT FERN: All right, cheers, Matt. I think developing the contacts within Autodesk should be a priority, but it can also be a challenge. 13,500 people, I think-- yeah. Understanding the huge beast that Autodesk is and finding the right channels to communicate through can take some time. However, when you do get through these hurdles and find the right contacts, your implementation journey will be a lot smoother.

After sifting through the options in the market and in principle, landing on ACC, we needed to seek the endorsement for a proof of concept in the business. Now, I assume most people would not be the sole decision maker and would need to seek endorsement from their board, management, or, in our case, executive.

Now, ask yourself, do you use your vendor proposals as is? Or do you take the time to tailor them to suit your business? Personally, big fan of tailoring these messages to suit our business. They can help improve your internal messaging and expectations. You can tailor it to suit your internal positions, role descriptions, business units, et cetera, and help potentially less-informed decision makers understand the proposal and the business advantages, both immediate and forecast.

Lessons learned and experienced of previous adoptions or rollouts can also be incorporated at this point. Personally, I think just hand-balling a vendor's proposal or statement of works will devalue the impact of your message and business case. In our case, the business accepted our proof of concept, and now the hard work began.

BRETT BRIDGMAN: Thanks, Matt. A question for the audience today-- who here watching this has embarked on a proof of concept or a pilot in the past, or currently engaged in a live one? I'd like to ask you to-- start again. I want to ask yourself these questions. Can you share a little bit on what you learned? Was it beneficial? Did you have the right team? Was it a success or failure, and why?

If you haven't embarked on a proof of concept around an [INAUDIBLE] solution prior, no doubt you've looked into Uber Eats, Apple, any of the apps that are available in the common day-to-day world. Again, ask yourself the same question. Did it work as you thought it would? Did you do your own research, or was it word of mouth from a friend or colleague? What formula did your decision on keeping the app versus discarding it?

MATT FERN: Yeah, thanks, Brett. And for us, establishing a proof of concept was essentially does it do as written on the tin? But on top of that, how are you going to measure it?

Again, I ask the audience, are you considering embracing ACC right now? And if so, what problem are you trying to resolve? And how are you going to measure the success of this implementation?

For us at Stowe, our key measures of success were evidence of the common data environment being leveraged by multiple business units, identification of the efficiencies the business will have the potential to earn, and finally, understanding the suite provided by ACC, that it will provide the business the necessary tools and technology to lead industry in the years ahead.

Establishing your own key measures of success provide a measure to evaluate against. With this agreed upon and written down, we can move into the testing and evaluation phase.

The end-to-end testing and evaluation is a test of commitment and resilience. Asking users to keep an open mind and not just comparing against the way we have always done it is most certainly a challenge for any business. Through the testing phases of ACC, all our business units, it was not just about operating the software, but challenging our existing workflows, witnessing unintended benefits and side effects, and the ability to provide feedback to our vendor and Autodesk.

The unintentional benefits and side effects are interesting points, because they are categorized as findings we did not predict during our early investigations. And I ask, if you've tested any software, if you've implemented anything, have you experienced any unintended outcomes?

For Stowe, one side effect that our testing and evaluation process highlighted was unearthing a single point of failure with one of our existing systems that actually represented a risk to the business, regardless of the implementation of ACC or not. This wasn't intentional, but through connecting our staff in ways they had not done before, we realized that in one aspect of the business, decisions and maintenance of one of our packages was actually sitting with a single person. But on the contrary, one unintentional benefit was highlighting to us that we had other systems outside ACC's scope that we could connect and share data through, using the same connection methodology that Arkance helped us implement, thus expanding our potential data lake and the ability to provide the business data efficiently and on demand.

And last but not least, the ability to provide feedback on the suite, both constructive and positive, allowed us to help develop the software. Where we found elements in the suite that got us 80%, 90% there, we were able to offer our advice on additional features or tweaks that would satisfy our deliverables. By association, we call our delivery group partners in development, and I believe this is a major part of our success.

Leveraging the strengths and abilities of ourselves at Stowe, Arkance, and Autodesk-- our partnership in development-- helped provide the collaboration and skill sets needed to successfully deliver our proof of concept. Attempting to go it alone limits your opportunity to explore workflows and ideas that you may not have considered.

It was interesting in preparing this slide that the three points raised are applicable to all three businesses, just in different ways. For Stowe, working with Autodesk and Arkance helps to create a common industry ecosystem. This is of benefit to us, as the platform becomes business as usual. And playing in the same sand pit helps create more equitable terms in our local market. The ability for us to provide our feedback allows the software to be further developed to suit our role, generally as subcontractors, but even more niche as electrical and communications contractors.

And finally, our clients, again, generally tend to be the managing contractors, MCs, or general contractors in the local tongue. As they are embracing the ACC environment as well, we can better understand their requirements and data transfer protocols. Our partners in development further have assisted here by facilitating additional networking opportunities.

Now, throwing it over to Autodesk, Matt, what does Autodesk gain from a common industry ecosystem, other than, of course, the not-widely-spoken monopoly?

MATTHEW BIEN-IZOWSKI: Firstly, no comment on that. Well, in short, we gain happy customers, you know? And to expand on that, we work with a range of businesses, from asset owners, builders, design firms, subcontractors, suppliers, and many more. And having the ability to make introductions across our network, not only at a local level, but at a global level, provides a collaborative approach.

And for many who work in this industry, the concept of digital transformation can be extremely overwhelming. Where do you begin? Where do you start? The more connected we are as an industry ecosystem, the more value is produced, allowing us to learn from our peers, work with each other, and achieve common goals. So yeah.

MATT FERN: Thanks, Matt. And you probably touched on it there a little bit, but what about adopting industry feedback?

MATTHEW BIEN-IZOWSKI: Yeah, that's a really good point. So when it comes to feedback, I truly believe this is key to any business out there. Taking ideas, suggestions, lessons learned, and those wins provides constant improvement, allowing us to build out a roadmap based on the industry's feedback. We build our solution based on what we hear from our clients, and the more feedback we receive from the likes of Stowe and others in the industry allows our team to build what the industry wants.

MATT FERN: Thanks. Brett, what about our clients? How does a vendor benefit from a common industry ecosystem?

BRETT BRIDGMAN: Great question, Matt. And Matt, plenty of synergies between our clients and Autodesk, as you can appreciate.

As a trusted vendor, we benefit from common industry ecosystem, through increased access to customers, networking opportunities, innovation, and improved credibility. Being a part of an industry ecosystem allows us to collaborate, stay competitive, and strengthen our brand and reputation.

MATT FERN: You're right. And what about-- what does a benefit like ours-- how does that help you understand your other clients' needs?

BRETT BRIDGMAN: Well, Matt, as you know, we're in the trenches every day, so the forefront day in, day out with our customers. So leveraging this information firsthand enables us to enhance optimal suitable fit for purpose tools and services that benefit our clients.

Working in a trusted partnership such as we have with Stowe has allowed us to ensure we understand Stowe's whole of business requirements, both now and into the future. This ensures Stowe is gaining the maximum return on investment from their solutions. Alignment, trust, and transparency are a huge factor in any implementation of this nature and why this has been at the forefront of our partnership across all the offerings with Stowe.

MATT FERN: Yeah, thanks, mate. Look, ultimately, I think it's important that you surround yourself with a team that can do more for you than just make the sale. Everyone wins in a healthy, working relationship.

Now, without a nice segue this time, I'll share with you some lessons learned that we've picked up along the way during our proof of concept with the ACC suite.

Now, was everything perfect and has written on the tin? Look, the short answer is no. Here are three examples that we picked up.

We were looking for more integration of the tools, of the module offerings. We identified some gaps in comparing our existing estimating suite with that of ProEst. And we need a more seamless way to upload mass amounts of data to Autodesk.

Now, Matt, this feedback has all been provided to Autodesk, so it's no secret to them. But can you explain what Autodesk's feedback process is and how suggestions like this are being dealt with internally?

MATTHEW BIEN-IZOWSKI: Yeah, sure, Matt. So working in partnership with businesses such as Stowe allows our teams to hear your feedbacks, your ideas. And by following a structured process, we complete feature request forms for our development and product teams, which then are taken through to a global Airtable.

So from here, this allows these suggestions, ideas to be explored in focused workshops to understand whether this is a local or a global requirement. And the ones which add value and see value for the industry then become part of our future solution roadmap for all to enjoy the fruits of.

And these three points which Matt has up on the screen have had a lot of attention to achieve Stowe's business requirements. And I'm sure at the time of the recording, there's probably some news being released on where these are all heading. So yeah, looking forward to it.

BRETT BRIDGMAN: And Matt, just to echo that lesson, we've certainly taken on this point of view-- is to definitely collate and capture our clients' feedback, working both with partner and vendor to ensure that these are streamlined and messages are heard. So it's a great tool and great offering that Autodesk has at the moment. So it's fantastic.

MATT FERN: Yeah, and I think while it would be nice for Autodesk to wave a magic wand and fix issues, understanding that software development takes time, and that they are serving a worldwide market, is something we all need to remind ourselves of and every now and then. But switching to the other hand, of course, we have had a number of wins.

Now, not only recording wins, but saving notes on your early wins can help push through internal resistance. For Stowe, some of the early wins were recognizing the efficiency of the Docs environment, the power of the Sheets and Models tabs within takeoff and build, and finally, the templatization and scheduling abilities of the build reports.

And to put one example down that we used in our ROI calculations, we have recorded an average of seven minutes per day per user on just the adoption of the Cloud Docs environment. Now, this was a combination of data received from site and the office, and, to be honest, fairly easy to predict.

The ability to access files from any internet-connected device saved many minutes, potentially walking back to the side shed from the construction site, as an example. Now, if we use 200 daily users as an example, 200 times 7 minutes equals 1,400 minutes, which is about 23 hours per day. Now, with over 1,500 staff, you can see how this was used in our calculations without giving all of our secrets away.

Now, recording early wins are also a great strategy of mine when referencing my favorite implementation chart. And as part of any implementation strategy, I have personally found myself referencing the Gartner hype cycle as a way to predict the future.

While I rarely take much stock in stats and figures available online, this is one chart that has stuck with me for a while, so kudos to Gartner. And when you look at this chart, you see the innovation trigger. This is your proof of concept proposal, so to speak.

And internally, you'll have a lot of marketing, a lot of internal sales. You might have vendors come in. You might have, in this case, Autodesk come in. And we hype a new adoption new technology to-- it's going to be the best thing since sliced bread.

And as your users start getting into it, get using it, et cetera, there will be challenges in adoption. There will be changes in workflows. It won't do what they think it will do the way they want it to do it necessarily. And you fall into this area, which is the trough of disillusionment.

Now, when you get to this point, it is where we start investing in additional training, step-step. We get feedback responses from Autodesk. We leverage people, like our vendors, to actually get the implementation back on track again. And this is where your testing, and evaluation, and your rollouts will start to take shape. But eventually, it does get to a point where there is either enough confidence in the various software to keep going and adopt or, well, there's not.

But understanding that these events are going to occur, and in my experience, it is a way of telling the future-- this chart, you can prepare yourself in ways to come out of that trough of disillusionment. And I think that's the real key strategy here. So recording those early wins really helps get it out.

Now, finally, what's next for us? Well, for us, we will be continuing rolling out ACC within the business. But we are changing our focus now from proof of concept, from does it do as written on the tin to change management. Internally, we're going to have to go through quite a process of change management and potentially adopt and change the ways that we have been doing things in the past.

And we hope to look to streamline our existing technology solutions, and hopefully reduce the amount that we currently have available in the business. Matt, what's going to be next for Autodesk?

MATTHEW BIEN-IZOWSKI: So far, it's been a fantastic journey, so I think continuing that collaboration with Stowe, developing a long-term win-win partnership between both businesses. It's truly a people-first industry, and software's there as the tool to enable and empower people to achieve those outcomes and those goals. So looking forward to a prosperous future.

MATT FERN: Excellent. And Brett, finally, Arkance, what are you doing next?

BRETT BRIDGMAN: Yeah, Matt, for us, the continued and ongoing support and collaboration with Autodesk is one I think that's been proof in the pudding, and we'll definitely be continuing that at the forefront here at Arkance as our business embarks on this exciting journey moving forward. So it's very exciting times for Stowe.

MATT FERN: Awesome. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for joining us today. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your sessions. Thank you.

BRETT BRIDGMAN: Thanks a lot.