If you’re running a ready-mix or building material supplier business, this will feel familiar: You invest $50,000 in a horizontal CRM system because it promises efficiency and growth, only to spend over $100,000 every year just to keep it running. 

This isn’t an isolated story. 

Many construction material suppliers underestimate the hidden costs that come with horizontal CRMs.

In this blog, we’ll explore why these systems drain resources and how a purpose-built alternative can deliver faster ROI. But first, let’s understand the difference between a horizontal CRM and a purpose-built one. 

What is a horizontal CRM?

Before we dive deeper, let’s first clarify what a horizontal CRM is.

Horizontal CRMs are platforms like Salesforce or Dynamics CRM designed to serve any industry. They offer broad capabilities for contact management, pipeline tracking, and reporting. 

But when it comes to construction materials, these systems don’t fit out of the box. You’ll find yourself paying for expensive customization, integrations, and maintenance just to make them usable.

These CRMs are built to be everything to everyone, which means they’re not purpose-built for the complex needs of suppliers who juggle dynamic pricing, dispatch schedules, and compliance requirements daily.

But there are better options available. 

What is a vertical CRM?

Now let’s look at what vertical CRMs bring to the table.

A vertical CRM is purpose-built for a specific industry. For construction material suppliers, this means the platform comes ready with the workflows, data integrations, and margin protection you need. A strong vertical CRM typically includes:

• Dispatch system integration to connect quoting directly to delivery schedules.
• Live material pricing feeds so quotes always reflect current costs.
• Dynamic quoting workflows that automate approvals and reduce errors.
• Margin control tools to protect profitability.

Because these features are built-in, you don’t have to spend months (and hundreds of thousands) configuring the software to fit your business.

Next, let’s look closely at the specific ways horizontal CRMs can inflate costs.

4 ways horizontal CRMs are increasing costs for building material suppliers 

You might invest in a horizontal CRM expecting it will help you increase profits, but when you look closely, the hidden costs tell a different story. If anything, implementing the wrong CRM can drain your resources, both in terms of time and money.

Here are four of the biggest contributors to this:

1. Implementation and consulting fees

Getting a horizontal CRM off the ground requires extensive configuration. This often involves hiring consultants who charge $150–$300 per hour. Even a modest project can quickly balloon into six figures before your team ever logs in.

2. Admin overhead

Horizontal CRMs are complex. You’ll likely need a dedicated administrator or an IT team to maintain workflows, manage licenses, and troubleshoot issues. The average CRM admin costs over $100,000 annually.

3. Custom integrations and maintenance

Horizontal CRMs don’t integrate seamlessly with dispatch systems or batching software. So, you end up paying extra for developers to build and maintain custom connections to systems like Command Alkon or Sysdyne.

4. Slow time to value

Even after months of setup, it can take a year or more to see any return on investment. For many suppliers, that’s simply too long.

In fact, even if your initial license fee is only $50,000, you could easily spend another $100,000 trying to make it functional.

But these hidden costs are only part of the problem. The bigger issue is that horizontal CRMs simply can’t handle the realities of construction materials sales. Let’s explore why these systems also fall short operationally.

Why horizontal CRMs underperform in the construction supplier industry 

Here’s why horizontal CRMs simply can’t handle the realities of construction materials sales. 

• No live materials cost data: Construction material prices are volatile. Your team may have to update material costs manually, even after using a CRM. As prices fluctuate constantly, this means quotes can be outdated before they reach the customer. This creates unnecessary back-and-forth and delays when clients ask for revised estimates.
  
• No built-in dispatch integration: Without dispatch visibility, sales reps can’t see delivery schedules or truck availability. This leads to delays and confusion, and sometimes, overpromising on delivery times.
  
• No automated margin protection: Horizontal CRMs don’t enforce margin floors. Reps can accidentally send quotes that erode profitability. Over time, this can compound into significant margin leakage across projects.

• No construction-specific forecasting: You’ll get generic pipeline reports that don’t account for seasonal trends, plant capacity, or regional demand. That means your planning remains reactive instead of proactive.
  
• Data overload without context: These platforms track activities but don’t connect them to profitability. You can’t see which deals are truly driving revenue, making it hard to prioritize the right opportunities.

So, if you still have to handle so many tasks manually even after spending $50k or more on a CRM, you have to ask: are you really getting your money’s worth? 

You could simply switch to a building material supplier software, like Slabstack, and avoid all of this complexity.

A vertical CRM for construction material suppliers that pays for itself in 2 months: Slabstack

Unlike horizontal CRMs, Slabstack is purpose-built for construction material suppliers. Here’s how it helps you avoid the hidden costs and unlock faster payback:

• No extra admin costs: Slabstack is easy for non-technical sales teams to use. It has an intuitive interface that doesn't need much training, so your team can get started fast without hiring a dedicated administrator.

• Built-in dispatch integration: Connects directly with Command Alkon and Sysdyne so your quotes reflect real-time costs and delivery availability.

• Margin protection and forecasting: Set target margins by customer or material, auto-flag risky quotes, and access forecasting tools that help you plan demand and production capacity accurately, including visibility into seasonal trends and pipeline health.

Many suppliers see a full return on their investment within 60 days of going live and improve their quoting accuracy to near 100%.

Here’s what John Malcolm, Vice President at Carew Concrete, has to say about using Slabtack,

“We chose Slabstack because it isn’t just a tool for today; the team is committed to building the features the ready-mix and aggregate business has always needed.”

Ready to see what a purpose-built CRM can do for your business? Talk to our experts to see how Slabstack can help you quote faster, protect your margins, and get up and running quickly.

Author: Aymeric Halvarsson

Many building and construction material suppliers feel the pain of shrinking margins, but the reasons often aren’t as obvious as they seem. You might think it's external factors like market competition, but it’s often internal inefficiencies like bad data and outdated processes that lead to losing margins. 

In this blog, we’ll break down five internal hidden issues that silently kill your margins and explain how efficient suppliers are turning things around. If you want to stop underbidding yourself, improve quote accuracy, and win more profitable deals, this one's for you.

Key takeaways 

• Five hidden issues—outdated cost data, internal underbidding, slow quote turnaround, lack of win/loss insights, and poor forecasting—are silently killing supplier margins.
  
• Many of these issues can be addressed manually using shared spreadsheets, approval checklists, and regular data updates, but even these processes demand time and discipline.

• Software solutions help automate and streamline quoting, tracking, and forecasting to remove friction and improve margin protection.
  
• Slabstack is purpose-built to solve these exact challenges with tools that quote faster, track performance, and protect your bottom line.

5 hidden issues that are killing your margins (and your win rate)

These five issues often go unnoticed until it’s too late, costing you deals you should be winning and profits you should be earning.

1. Outdated cost data leads to inaccurate quotes

Prices of construction materials like cement and additives can shift rapidly—especially as suppliers explore greener, more cost-effective alternatives like SCMs.

As a result, quoting from outdated spreadsheets causes misalignment between actual costs and bid values.

Your reps could be using numbers that are weeks or months old, and that gap means you risk either underpricing and eroding your margin or overpricing and losing the bid entirely.

Without live cost data, you're quoting on outdated assumptions, and in a business where pennies per cubic yard make a difference, those assumptions can add up to thousands in lost revenue. 

2. No visibility across teams causes internal underbidding

When your sales reps can’t see what their peers are quoting, they end up competing with each other. One rep hears a customer went with a lower price and immediately slashes their next quote—not realizing it came from their own team. 

This kind of internal undercutting happens more than you think, especially in companies using siloed tools or spreadsheets. It drives down your average price and creates a race to the bottom, where everyone loses.

3. Slow quote turnaround and lack of oversight over rep behavior

In this industry, whoever gets the first accurate quote usually wins. But if your quoting process is slow, manual, and dependent on approvals from busy managers, you’re often too late. 

Worse, without controls in place, low-margin deals can slip through simply because no one double-checked them before they were sent. The right quote at the wrong time, or the wrong quote at any time, hurts your ability to grow and protect profitability.

4. No centralized view of win/loss data

If your sales team doesn’t know why they won or lost the last ten deals, they’ll keep guessing. 

And those guesses can be costly. Without centralized tracking of win/loss data, patterns are missed. Maybe you're always losing in a certain region or on a specific product line. Maybe a competitor is undercutting you consistently, or your lead times are too long. 

Without this data, you can’t adapt, improve, or optimize your quoting strategy. Every lost deal becomes a missed opportunity to get better.

5. Lack of forecasting & demand visibility

Many suppliers underestimate the value of quoting data as an early signal of future demand. 

If you can’t see what’s coming, you can’t prepare your plants, adjust inventory, or adapt your pricing in time. Without forecasting tools, decisions get made based on gut feel rather than data. 

That leads to overstocking, missed revenue from rush jobs, or even unprofitable work due to poorly timed price strategies.

But the good news is that these issues are fixable. Read on to get some practical tips on how you can improve efficiency as a building and construction materials supplier.

What winning suppliers do differently

Fixing these challenges doesn’t require an overhaul, just a smarter approach. The most successful suppliers have adopted a few key habits that consistently protect and grow their margins. Here’s how. 

Quote with live pricing, not static spreadsheets

Getting accurate, real-time data into your quotes is one of the fastest ways to protect your margins. Instead of quoting based on outdated spreadsheets, forward-thinking teams use tools that automatically sync material, freight, and fuel prices from dispatch. 

This ensures that every quote reflects today’s costs, not last month’s estimates. 

Even if your team still uses spreadsheets, a simple recurring update using supplier emails or dispatch exports can significantly improve quoting accuracy.

Standardize pricing logic and enforce margin floors

Clear pricing rules create guardrails that protect your profitability. By enforcing margin floors and standard pricing logic, you reduce the chances of accidental underbidding. This kind of discipline ensures that while reps still have autonomy, they aren't making pricing decisions that hurt the business. 

To start, even a basic pricing matrix in Excel with color-coded margin bands can help you create a clear view of acceptable quote ranges.

They use templated quoting workflows for speed and control

Templates help ensure every quote is consistent, accurate, and aligned with your margin goals. A quoting workflow allows reps to pull in pre-bundled materials, apply pricing logic, and get manager approvals automatically.

That reduces delays, eliminates manual errors, and frees up time to focus on customers. 

Even with basic tools like Excel or Word, templated quote formats with embedded rules can have a big impact. You can define pricing structures, bundle common material combinations, and include standard terms or margin checks.

Track every quote and learn from the data

Every quote—won or lost—holds insight into how your business operates. Capturing why deals fall through or succeed helps you refine your strategy with every bid. By tagging lost quotes with reasons like "price," "timing," or "spec mismatch," you can uncover patterns and course-correct quickly.

You could start this process by creating a shared spreadsheet where your team can manually tag each lost quote with a reason to help start this feedback loop.

Use forecasting to price and plan proactively

Forecasting accurately helps your sales and operations teams stay in sync. Instead of reacting to last-minute orders, use historical quote volumes and win rates to estimate future demand. 

This allows you to plan inventory, prep plants, and adjust pricing strategy before demand spikes.

Start by combining monthly quote volume with historical win rates to estimate demand and pricing strategy for the next quarter.

All the tactics we just mentioned work, but they also require time, spreadsheets, and a level of manual upkeep that most teams simply can’t sustain. That’s where a cost management software for construction material suppliers can help. Read on to know how. 

How Slabstack helps you quote smarter, win more, and protect your margins

Slabstack is purpose-built software for building and construction material suppliers that pays for itself in as little as 60 days.

It brings quoting, pricing, forecasting, and performance analytics into one easy-to-use platform, so you can protect every margin point without slowing down your sales team. 

Real-time cost feeds eliminate quoting errors

No more quoting off stale spreadsheets. Slabstack syncs with your dispatch systems like Command Alkon and Sysdyne to pull the latest material, freight, and fuel costs, so every quote reflects today’s numbers. This real-time visibility ensures that you're never underquoting due to outdated inputs, helping you stay competitive without compromising on profit.

Sales rep guardrails prevent underbidding

Set minimum margin thresholds and auto-flag risky bids. Reps stay empowered to move fast, without unknowingly quoting below profitability. These built-in protections maintain pricing discipline, prevent margin erosion, and build long-term pricing confidence across your team.

Dynamic quoting workflows boost speed and accuracy

Customize templates with built-in pricing logic and automatic approvals. Quotes go out faster, look cleaner, and require less back-and-forth. This removes bottlenecks in the quoting process and ensures consistency, helping your team spend more time closing deals and less time formatting quotes.

Win/loss analytics surface quote trends and rep performance

Track which quotes are converting, where you're losing, and why. Get visibility into performance by customer, region, or rep—so you can improve win rates over time. These insights let you fine-tune pricing strategies, coach sales reps more effectively, and prioritize the most profitable opportunities.

Easy integration with dispatch

Once approved, quotes flow directly into dispatch as tickets. This seamless handoff ensures the quote details move straight into dispatch without the need for re-entry or back-and-forth between teams. That means fewer mistakes, faster ticket generation, and better alignment between sales and delivery operations.

Forecasting tools that drive smarter pricing and planning

Slabstack’s forecasting dashboard breaks down quoting activity by region, product, and customer type, so you can adjust pricing, prep your plants, and align sales and ops before demand hits. This predictive view empowers you to make data-driven decisions, reducing the risk of overproduction or stockouts.

Here’s what John Malcolm, Vice President at Carew Concrete, has to say about using Slabstack:

“The live information flowing between Slabstack and Command works better than Command’s own MobileSales did. Slabstack even pulls data back from Command—something MobileSales never managed.” 

If you’re tired of quoting based on guesswork and seeing it cost you deals or erode your margins, it’s time to fix the internal processes behind your pricing.
Book a demo to see how Slabstack helps you win smarter, quote faster, and protect your margins.

Snapshot

Customer: Carew Concrete & Supply Co.

Location: Wisconsin, USA

Industry: Ready-mix concrete and aggregates

Footprint: 17 ready-mix plants, 9 quarries

Use Case: CRM + margin control, quoting accuracy, Command integration

Schedule a demo: Schedule a demo today

Before Slabstack, quoting at Carew Concrete felt like detective work. Sales reps would dig through old spreadsheets, searching for past bids with no way to confirm if pricing was still valid or accurate. On more than one occasion, they had to call customers back hours later to correct errors after realizing costs had changed.

With no centralized quoting system or visibility across reps, pricing discipline was inconsistent. One rep would quote a job at one margin, another might unknowingly undercut it. There were no guardrails, no live cost data, and no easy way to track performance. Their team was working in silos and spent a lot of time in manual admin work. 

Before Slabstack: Quoting without guardrails

No centralized quoting system
Carew’s sales team relied on spreadsheets and fragmented tools to manage quotes, with each rep maintaining their own version of “the process.” 

This lack of a unified system created inconsistencies in pricing, duplication of work, and higher chances of quoting errors. Without a central source of truth, it was nearly impossible to maintain accountability or track quoting activity across locations.

Loose quoting discipline
Without margin calculators or automated checks, quotes were often driven by gut feel. Reps would manually estimate pricing, sometimes under pressure to close deals—which led to inconsistent margins and reactive pricing. 

There was no way to enforce minimum thresholds, making underbidding common and eroding profitability.

Lack of visibility
Finding old quotes or understanding historical pricing patterns required digging through email chains or scattered files. Sales teams had no easy way to compare bids across territories or track win/loss performance. This lack of visibility slowed response time, led to missed opportunities and internal price undercutting.

Unreliable legacy tools
Carew had previously tried implementing Command’s mobile sales tool, but it fell short of expectations. The system was clunky, difficult to use, and lacked integration with core dispatch data. After months of effort, it still couldn’t deliver the visibility or control Carew needed, prompting them to search for a more purpose-built solution.

The solution: How Carew Concrete achieved >98% quote accuracy with Slabstack

After evaluating multiple vendors—including Salesforce, PriceBee, and a reimplementation of their previous tool—Carew Concrete unanimously chose Slabstack. 

Unlike horizontal CRMs or bolt-on tools, Slabstack was purpose-built for concrete and aggregate producers. It offered the deep Command integration, margin visibility, and quoting discipline they needed to scale with confidence.

Built-in margin controls
Slabstack introduced automated margin calculators directly into the quoting workflow. Sales reps could see real-time margin impact as they built a quote, with built-in guardrails to prevent underbidding. This brought clarity and consistency across the team and removed guesswork from pricing decisions.

Command integration out of the box
Unlike other tools that required workarounds or manual syncs, Slabstack came ready with a two-way integration into Command Dispatch. Quotes could be informed by live cost data and pushed seamlessly into dispatch workflows. It didn’t just improve accuracy—it enabled real-time collaboration between sales and operations.

Structured workflows for consistent bids
Carew adopted a more disciplined quoting approach by introducing a sales administrator role, supported by Slabstack’s approval flows. Every quote now follows a clear process with checks, templates, and audit trails. Reps still move fast but every bid is now aligned with the company’s pricing strategy.

Easy to use, quick to adopt
One of the biggest differentiators was how intuitive Slabstack was. Compared to their previous system, reps found it easy to navigate and start using right away. There was no steep learning curve, which meant faster adoption and less reliance on training or IT support.

The Outcome: Higher margins and smarter bidding

Just months after implementation, Carew began seeing measurable improvements across sales performance, margin capture, and team alignment. With better tools and real-time visibility, quoting became faster and more strategic. 

Margins improved significantly
With clear pricing guardrails and up-to-date material costs built into every quote, Carew’s team no longer had to guess or rely on outdated spreadsheets. Bids reflected true profitability from day one. This shift in discipline led to stronger financial performance across the business.

Increased quote accuracy from 50% to near 100%
Before Slabstack, quote accuracy hovered around the halfway mark. Today, the team bids with near-total confidence, knowing the numbers they send out are backed by clean data and reviewed workflows. That confidence made a visible difference in how projects are quoted, tracked, and closed.

Quoting faster, without cutting corners
Speed doesn’t come at the expense of accuracy. With Slabstack, Carew reduces turnaround time on bids while keeping every quote aligned to target margins. Sales reps no longer waste time hunting down pricing or fixing errors—they move faster, with less risk.

Transparency across the pipeline
Every stakeholder now has full visibility into who’s bidding what, and where. Slabstack made it easy to access historical quotes, compare pricing by region, and avoid internal competition or overlap. This alignment has improved consistency, reduced confusion, and helped strengthen customer relationships.

Beyond software: A growth partner for what’s next

Slabstack has helped reshape how Carew Concrete approaches sales, bringing structure, speed, and visibility to a process that once ran on guesswork. With real-time Command integration, centralized data, and a disciplined quoting engine, the team now bids smarter, wins more, and protects margin with every project.

But the impact goes beyond software. 

Through weekly touchpoints and a true partnership model, Slabstack continues to support Carew’s growth—refining workflows, solving problems quickly, and building features that match real-world needs. 

Ready to quote with more confidence and get >98% quote accuracy for your material supplier business? 

Book a demo with our team and see how Slabstack can help.

Author: Aymeric Halvarsson

Volatility in construction material prices: How can material suppliers future-proof their business?

Material costs in 2025 have increased by 3.4% since 2024.  But the real story is that monthly increases ranged from 3.24% in January to 1.5% in March. That might seem small, but it translates to roughly $1-$2 per cubic yard per month, with all this varying wildly at the local level.

It's part of a broader upward trend, a signal that prices are not calming, but creeping.

From diesel to cement, costs swing wildly based on geopolitical shocks, supply chain disruptions, and unpredictable demand spikes. For suppliers, this means constantly quoting in the dark, reacting late, and watching margins disappear.

In this blog, we break down what’s driving this turbulence, how it’s impacting suppliers on the ground, and what they’re doing to future-proof their pricing and quoting operations.

Key takeaways

• Construction material prices are rising again in 2025, with volatility likely to return, making this a critical time for suppliers to prepare.
• Relying on static price sheets or delayed approvals leads to lost deals, eroded margins, and frustrated customers.
• Smart suppliers are adopting real-time pricing, quote escalation and expiry rules, and margin visibility to stay ahead.
• Platforms like Slabstack help automate these strategies, making quoting faster, more accurate, and more profitable.

What’s driving fluctuations in the price of construction materials?  

To understand why prices of construction materials can be so volatile, let’s look at past events that caused these fluctuations. 

In 2022, a confluence of post-Covid demand spikes, logistical bottlenecks, and geopolitical tensions—like the war in Ukraine—created a perfect storm. 

Demand for construction materials drove through the roof while suppliers scrambled to fill orders, triggering widespread shortages in cement, steel, and aggregates. In some incidents, suppliers had to import cement from countries like Turkey, and the cost of imported cement jumped 20% overnight due to war-related constraints. 

And these weren’t isolated incidents. 

In 2022-2023, the entire supply chain was also reacting to shocks like:

• Fuel price volatility affecting freight and diesel-heavy operations
• Shortages of aggregates and SCMs due to global shipping constraints
• Unpredictable demand from mega-projects and infrastructure stimulus

Fast forward to today, while material cost fluctuations have eased recently, this isn’t true calm—it’s a holding pattern. As one of our experts at Slabstack, Matt Jetmore observed:

"Prices have stabilized, and everybody's just stopped. Because while prices are not volatile right now, it's sort of the calm before the storm."

This pause masks uncertainty. 

New tariffs, interest rate shifts, and geopolitical tensions, especially around steel, copper, lumber, and SCMs, remain. 

In the first quarter of 2025, input prices began climbing again, rising at a 9.7% annualized rate. Even moderate tariff changes or policy updates can flip this equilibrium at any moment, hurting suppliers. 

How does construction material price volatility hurt suppliers? 

Volatile construction material prices don’t just cause short-term headaches: they erode profitability, delay projects, and damage customer relationships. Here’s how:

1. Fixed-bid jobs become profit traps

On paper, locking in prices might seem like a hedge against volatility. In practice, it often turns into a liability. 

Because construction projects can scale rapidly, and suppliers are expected to honor bids written months or weeks ago, even if cement or diesel costs have surged since then. Without dynamic pricing adjustments, your profit disappears as the gap between the quoted price and the actual cost comes straight out of your margins.

2. Outdated price lists lead to underquoting or losing deals

Many quoting workflows still rely on spreadsheets or last month’s price sheets. By the time those quotes go to customers, they’re already outdated.

Your sales teams end up in a lose-lose situation:

• Underquote and win the deal, only to realize too late that the margin is gone.
• Overquote using stale, inflated prices and lose to a competitor with fresher data.

Either way, trust erodes both internally and with customers.

3. Quote delays cause missed opportunities

Approval delays, often caused by back-and-forths to verify costs, can cause you to miss your window. Without real-time visibility into fluctuating material inputs, like fuel surcharges, freight costs, or mix designs, quotes get delayed.

And in fast-moving markets, time kills deals. A delay of even a day can mean materials go out of stock or prices shift again. Customers get frustrated and turn elsewhere.

4. Margin erosion is hard to spot until it’s too late

Without live tracking of cost inputs and margins, many suppliers don’t realize they’re bleeding profit until months or even years later, when the finance team does a post-mortem review.

Our experts highlight that even small price differences across multiple quotes can quietly compound into large-scale losses. And by then, there’s no opportunity to course correct.

5. Sales teams get stuck in manual loops

Sales reps often become their own data analysts—spending hours pulling prices from emails, double-checking costs with production teams, or updating internal sheets. It’s a huge drain on productivity.

Your reps end up spending more time double-checking numbers than actually selling. This manual work kills productivity, creates errors, and saps morale.

While your business doesn’t have control over the current price of construction materials​, what you can control is how prepared you are for the volatility when it does arrive. 

Here’s how smart suppliers protect themselves against market uncertainty. 

How are smart suppliers future-proofing themselves against market uncertainty? 

The most resilient suppliers are shifting their mindset from reactive to proactive. That means:

• Monitoring market trends daily, not monthly
• Setting quote escalation and expiry rules to reduce risk
• Training sales teams to understand how fuel, freight, and blend costs affect pricing
• Creating internal pricing cadences with guardrails for margin protection

As Matt Jetmore puts it, 

“If I bake those price increases in and they don’t materialize, I look like a fool. But if I don’t—and they do—I’m upside down. That’s why I keep telling people: we can’t control the market, but we can stay on top of it and build that into our pricing.”

That’s why future-ready teams are turning to building material supplier software that allow forecasting, track real-time costs, and connect pricing logic directly into the quoting workflow. 
And that’s exactly what Slabstack helps you with. 

How Slabstack helps building material suppliers stay ahead of market uncertainty

Slabstack gives material suppliers the tools they need to respond with agility, no matter where prices go next. Here’s how:

• Live material pricing feeds: Get real-time updates on costs directly within the quoting workflow—no more manual lookups or surprises.

• Dynamic pricing: Automatically factor in fluctuations in diesel, freight, and mix designs to ensure every quote protects your margin.

• Forecasting and demand insights: Predict future sales volumes based on pipeline and historical data

• Margin analytics and quote visibility: Track profit performance in real time, not weeks later. Spot patterns, fix leaks, and optimize faster.

• Sales and dispatch integration: Sync your quotes with fulfillment data so that what you sell aligns with what you can deliver, at the right cost.

While price volatility might be out of your control, your quoting strategy isn’t. 

Whether prices swing up or down, the suppliers who thrive are those who stay agile, act fast, and protect every point of margin. Slabstack makes that possible.

Explore how Slabstack helps you future-proof your pricing and quoting, so you’re ready for whatever the market throws your way.

Author: Aymeric Halvarsson

For decades, Portland cement has been the backbone of concrete. But producing just one ton of cement releases roughly one ton of CO₂. That adds up fast: cement production accounts for nearly 8% of global CO₂ emissions each year.

As pressure to decarbonize grows, the industry is rethinking what goes into the mix.

From fly ash and slag to newer alternatives like calcined clays, supplementary cementitious materials and alternative cements are becoming crucial. 

This shift isn’t just about sustainability. It’s also reshaping how suppliers quote, communicate, and compete. In this blog, we’ll look at what’s driving the change, what materials are emerging, and how building material suppliers like you can stay ahead—and even lead this change—with the right tools in place.

What are supplementary cementitious materials and why are they important?

Supplementary Cementitious Materials include ingredients like fly ash, slag, silica fume, and others that partially (or completely) replace Portland cement in mixes. 

SCMs are important for two reasons: they reduce the overall carbon footprint of concrete, and they often improve performance characteristics like strength, workability, and durability.

By replacing a portion, or potentially all of Portland cement, these materials can dramatically reduce C02 emissions while maintaining and improving durability and performance. As the built environment grapples with the pressure to decarbonize, these materials are no longer optional—they are essential.  

SCMs are also a financial lever. When priced competitively, they can bring down material costs without sacrificing quality.

The shift in SCM and alternative cement material availability in recent years

Fly ash, a common SCM, is facing a reduction. Coal plant retirements have cut off a major supply stream of fly ash, and that’s sent suppliers looking elsewhere—namely, landfills. 

While recovering fly ash from old disposal sites is becoming more common, it’s not a perfect solution. It requires processing and comes with quality and availability concerns. 

At the same time, new SCMs and alternative cements are stepping into the spotlight:

• Ground glass pozzolan, Progressive Planet’s PozGlass 100G, developed by Progressive Planet, is gaining traction for its performance and scalability—offering a low-carbon, high-reactivity alternative that supports large-scale, localized SCM production.

• Natural pozzolans, including volcanic ash and pumice, are reentering the mix in areas with local supply.

• Recycled materials like rice husk ash and finely ground glass are being explored in pilot projects.

News of Microsoft agreeing to purchase over 600,000 tons of clean cement from Sublime Systems is an encouraging step in the right direction. 

However, a large barrier to the adoption of these materials is awareness and the ability of customers to request them for jobsites. 

Property developers, contractors, engineers, and architects are increasingly motivated to make the right choice, but often lack the most up-to-date knowledge to evaluate materials. 

They need to be educated on the impact of these SCM and lower carbon alternative cements, clarifying performance data and gaining confidence that these will meet building codes, ESG targets, and project requirements—all at the correct budget and timeline. 

Sales teams at building material producers can fill this gap, not only as vendors, but by putting this information at their fingertips. 

But can you really lead this change if you’re still using outdated systems like spreadsheets to keep track of data? Let’s find out how this change is complicating the quoting process even more, and what you can do about it. 

Why is this shift complicating quotes, and how can you stay ahead?

For suppliers, quoting has always been a mix of math, margin, and local knowledge. But as materials change, quoting is becoming even more dynamic—and risky.

Costs change faster than spreadsheets can keep up. Contractors may ask about mix performance and embodied carbon. A project spec might suddenly call for an EPD or specific SCM blend, and you need to explain the difference—not just in carbon, but in cure time and freight impact.

The quoting process now has more moving parts:

• Material costs vary by region and supplier
• Green mix specs change from job to job
• Customers want sustainability—but still expect tight timelines and pricing
• Margin risks increase when quoting tools don’t reflect real-time availability

That’s a lot to manage with outdated systems. But tools like Slabstack can help. 

How can suppliers prepare (and help others) for this shift?

Building material supplier software like Slabstack gives sales teams the tools to respond quickly to a changing mix landscape:

• Real-time cost feeds mean quotes reflect today’s prices, not last month’s.

• Suppliers can auto-pull material-specific quoting with SCMs and/or alternative cements.

• Margin rules and bundling help teams highlight greener options, without giving up profitability, and including EPDs if relevant. 

• Versioned quotes and fast revisions reduce delays when material availability or specs change.

• Insights by mix and region help suppliers stay ahead of trends, not just react to them.

As the incoming demand for these materials increases, it’s crucial for suppliers to build trust, provide transparency, and increase collaboration. 

Suppliers who prepare for this SCM shift now will lead the market tomorrow.  Learn more about how a specific building material supplier software like Slabstack can help. 

Or, book a quick demo to talk to our experts directly and see Slabstack in action.

Slabstack, a leading CRM and sales intelligence platform for concrete and heavy building material suppliers, today announced that Matthew Jetmore has joined the company as Vice President of Strategy.

Jetmore brings a unique blend of front-line production and enterprise-software expertise to Slabstack. After growing up in his family’s concrete and aggregates business—serving in sales, dispatch, and finance—he sharpened his technical skills at Accenture. Leadership roles followed at Integra Software, Prairie Materials (Votorantim Cimentos), and Lauren Concrete, where he overhauled quoting workflows, introduced price-optimization processes, and managed multi-site operations across the Americas. As an independent consultant, he recently helped producers lift profitability through data-driven sales practices.

“Matthew has lived every pain point our customers face—from chasing margins with spreadsheets to coaching field reps who ‘don’t do computers,’” said Aymeric Halvarsson, founder and CEO of Slabstack. “His rare combination of producer P&L ownership and deep software-implementation skills will accelerate our mission to put easy, profit-focused tools in the hands of every building materials sales team.”

Slabstack addresses a critical gap in the building materials sector: many sales teams rely on spreadsheets or outdated CRM and quoting tools that are slow, prone to human error, and overlook key opportunities for price optimization. Slabstack integrates with dispatch systems to provide real-time cost updates for faster, more accurate quotes and seamless, error-free conversion of quotes to dispatch projects. Built-in dynamic pricing and margin controls can boost the overall profitability of building materials by more than 50%.

“I’ve run plants, reorganized sales teams, and wished for a tool exactly like this for years,” Jetmore said. “Slabstack listens, iterates fast, and delivers measurable dollars per yard—not just dashboards. Joining this team lets me help all producers find the extra two or three bucks of margin that too often slip away.

Producers can always try to cut costs, but if they don’t have a solid handle on their pricing and margins, they’re navigating in the dark and constantly at risk of losing money. Slabstack is the solution to that problem.”

As Vice President of Strategy, Jetmore will champion implementation excellence by shortening time-to-value and driving full-team adoption. He will also help shape the product roadmap with the firsthand operational insight needed to sharpen quoting, backlog forecasting, and price-management features, and scale Slabstack’s industry impact by steering the platform’s expansion beyond ready mix into aggregates, asphalt, and other verticals hampered by fragmented sales tools.

Building material supplier software: What to look for in a high-ROI CRM (2025 guide)

Author: Aymeric Halvarsson

Running a heavy building materials supplier business is already complex. You’re juggling live costs, delivery schedules, approvals, and sales—often across multiple plants.

That’s why we created this guide to help evaluate what a supplier-specific CRM should really offer, how to choose one that fits your operation, and what kind of ROI you should expect, based on real-world results.

Why spreadsheets & horizontal CRMs fall short for building material suppliers?

Before we dive into what your CRM should have, let’s understand the common pitfalls of spreadsheets and generic CRM tools.

Spreadsheets are error-prone

A simple Excel file can turn into a maze of linked tabs, hidden formulas, and conflicting versions over time.

One misplaced reference or an unwitting edit can corrupt your entire quoting engine—often discovered only after a customer spots a typo or calls about an outrageous price. Plus, there is always a risk of human error when your team is manually putting in all the information.

Generic CRMs miss material-specific quoting

Generic platforms like Salesforce might excel at contact tracking or opportunity forecasting, but they lack heavy-materials intelligence, which is extremely important in this industry.

They don’t understand mix IDs or fuel surcharges, and they can’t automatically pull the right delivery zones. That means your sales team ends up doing manual work to make the system fit—copying static prices, adding line items by hand, and managing margin calculations in spreadsheets.

No real-time cost visibility

When cement, diesel, or additives jump in price, your spreadsheet stays static until someone updates it—if at all. A generic CRM may pull billing rates, but a true building-materials system keeps a tab of live material costs, so every quote reflects what the current prices are.

Margin leaks and sales teams undercutting each other

Without automated guardrails, reps can unintentionally quote below your target profit to win business. In spreadsheets, you have to remember to copy a “target margin” cell, and in horizontal CRMs, you must build custom validation rules.

Both approaches lead to inconsistent enforcement, surprise write-downs, and worse, eroded customer trust.

Then there is also the issue of a lack of visibility across your sales organization.

When reps rely on spreadsheets or generic CRMs, they can’t determine what the minimum order value should be. That often leads to underbidding—not just against competitors, but also against each other. One rep cuts $5/ton to win a deal, and another hears about it and cuts even more. This drives prices down and hurts your profits.

Time wasted on manual work

Reps should be selling, not juggling multiple windows to find data. Every minute spent on admin work like copying quotes from Excel to email, chasing approvals, or fixing errors is revenue lost. 

Your business needs a unified system that ties quoting, dispatch, and invoicing together—so your team can work on what they do best, getting new customers. 

But what exact features should you expect from a building materials CRM? Let’s find out.

Top 5 features to look out for in a CRM for building material suppliers

1. Live cost feeds & dynamic pricing

A purpose-built CRM connects directly to your plant’s cost database or dispatch system, like Command Alkon and Sysdyne, to pull up-to-the-minute material prices of cement slurry, asphalt binder, aggregate grades, along with fuel rates and additives.

When your sales reps are working from the same live pricing data, it adds visibility across the organization, and you eliminate internal underbidding. Everyone sees the same costs, works from the same numbers, and protects your margins.

2. Business intelligence

Beyond quoting, you need visibility into how your business is actually performing. A CRM for material suppliers offers dashboards that display win-loss rates by mix design, average margin per region, and quote-to-order cycle time.

Their analytics module breaks down revenue drivers like hit-rate improvements, reduced credit holds, and faster quote turnaround.

3. Two-way dispatch & ERP integration

One of the most important features of a true building-materials CRM is that it doesn’t live in isolation. It pushes accepted quotes back into your dispatch system as tickets, and pulls actual delivered volumes, weights, and job statuses back into sales.

This bi-directional flow keeps your dispatchers and accounting teams synchronized without manual data entry. It connects from Command Alkon and Sysdyne, lets you launch orders directly from the CRM, track driver ETA, and close the loop on billing in real time.

4. Margin floors & approval workflows

Your profit targets shouldn’t be an afterthought. Through a good CRM, you set minimum acceptable margin bands—by material, by plant, or by customer segment—and any quote falling below those thresholds automatically routes to a sales administrator or manager.

This enforces discipline without slowing down day-to-day quoting: reps can still produce drafts in minutes, but no one sends a price sheet that leads to loss.

5. Forecasting & demand visibility

A supplier-focused CRM doesn’t just track what’s been quoted—it also helps you forecast what’s coming.

With visibility into current quoting activity, seasonal patterns, and historical win rates, you can plan inventory, adjust pricing, and prepare your plants for demand. These insights will help your team stay proactive instead of reactive.

And beyond forecasting, these systems break down key revenue drivers like hit-rate improvements, fewer credit holds, and faster quote turnaround, so you can understand exactly where your margin gains are coming from.

Now let’s take a closer look at how a good CRM provides value for money from day one.

Evaluating ROI: Why building material supply software outperforms spreadsheets and generic tools

A purpose-built CRM might seem like a big investment at first, especially if you’ve been using spreadsheets or patching together a generic CRM. But when you measure the return, the right system pays for itself in just a few weeks. Here’s how: 

Faster time to value

Manual quoting workflows cost your team hours every week. Between chasing prices, cleaning up quote errors, and re-entering data across tools, you’re losing time that should be spent selling.

A supplier-specific CRM streamlines this immediately—quotes go out faster, cleaner, and with fewer errors from day one.

Better margin capture

When quoting is left to spreadsheets or general CRMs, there's no control over margin targets. Sales reps might undercut pricing without realizing it.

A strong CRM sets guardrails in the quoting workflow, flagging low-margin bids before they go out and enforcing review when needed. Combined with automated cost feeds, this protects every quote from price changes in fuel, cement, or asphalt.

Higher close rates

Quoting isn’t just about sending numbers, it’s also about follow-up, accuracy, and timing. A supplier CRM tracks every quote in one place, with reminders and version history that help reps stay on top of every deal. This means fewer forgotten leads, cleaner handoffs, and more signed contracts.

Lower total cost of ownership

Horizontal CRMs often attract companies with a low sticker price—then surprise them with the cost of customization, integrations, and training.

A CRM made for building material suppliers comes ready with the workflows you need: dispatch integration, margin reporting, and workflow approvals. That means less time spent building from scratch and more time delivering results.

Real ROI example: What a good building material supplier software can deliver

Let’s look at how this plays out in the real world. Carew Concrete & Supply Co., a family-owned supplier operating 17 plants and 9 quarries, was relying on spreadsheets and a patchwork CRM that didn’t fit the way their team worked. This resulted in quoting errors, stalled deals, and declining margins.

After switching to an industry-specific CRM like Slabstack:

• Quote accuracy jumped from 50% to 98%
• Significantly improved gross margin across their operations
• Quote volume and hit rate increased, allowing their team to cover more projects without needing more reps

As John Malcolm, VP of Carew, put it:

“We’re bidding every project available to us now, and it’s easy to verify that in real time. Our consistency in the marketplace has improved tremendously.”

These gains didn’t take years to appear—they showed up in the first few months of implementation. When the software matches how your business operates, the payoff is quick and measurable.

In contrast, horizontal CRMs often require heavy customization, and that costs tens of thousands up front, plus ongoing consulting fees. Spreadsheets, while free, become unmanageable as you scale: the minute you have multiple plants, dozens of mix IDs, and tight deadlines, manual systems collapse and margins slip.

Now that you know the real ROI of a CRM for building material suppliers, how do you choose between the options you might have shortlisted? Here are a few things to keep in mind while choosing.

Shortlisting software for your business: Top 3 tips

Here are the top three ways to choose the right CRM for your business.

1. Build a simple scorecard
   Create a one-page grid listing your top three candidates. Rate each on core criteria: heavy-materials feature match, ease of use, integration readiness with the dispatch system, total cost, and vendor support. Updating this live during demos will keep you objective.
2. Test with real quotes
   Schedule 30-minute demos using your own scenarios—a 200 yd³ concrete pour, a 150-ton asphalt overlay. Watch how quickly each system pulls live costs, bundles materials, and issues a final quote. If it takes more than a few minutes, ask why.
3. Talk to peers
   Call two to three producers of similar size. Ask about implementation speed, training quality, and first-year ROI. You’ll uncover red flags faster than any sales pitch. Producers will tell you whether a platform scales across three plants—or stalls after one.

A smarter way forward for building materials suppliers

The ideal software solution for heavy material suppliers combines predictable pricing with industry-built features:

• Unlimited users, so your entire sales, ops, and accounting teams can collaborate
• Live cost integration, dynamic pricing, and margin guardrails
• Bi-directional dispatch sync and robust analytics

That’s exactly how Slabstack is built. From day one, it helps suppliers quote faster, protect margins, and eliminate the hidden costs that come with spreadsheets or generic CRMs. You don’t pay extra for users, implementation surprises, or endless customization—just a clear system that delivers ROI where it matters: quoting speed, margin accuracy, and closed deals.

Want to see how Slabstack can protect your profits and drive more sales for your business?

Request your personalized demo here and start capturing more margin, without more admin.

¹ https://insideainews.com/2017/05/05/hidden-costs-bad-data/

“I don’t think Preferred Materials would be as successful as we are today if we didn’t have Slabstack. I haven’t come across another CRM that has even come close to it.”
— Juan Quintana, Vice President of Sales, Preferred Materials

A Fast-Growing Producer with a Big Challenge

Preferred Materials LLC is a relatively new player in the Texas concrete market — but its growth has been nothing short of remarkable. In just five years, the company has become one of the fastest-growing producers serving the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

With rapid growth came new challenges. The sales team was relying on basic spreadsheets to track opportunities, manage customer relationships, and prepare quotes. This approach created:

• Inefficient sales processes — Manual tracking made it hard to forecast and keep tabs on the pipeline.
  
• Lack of real-time data — Pricing and margins varied between plants, but there was no easy way to access up-to-date numbers for accurate quotes.
  
• Limited system integration — No connection between sales tools and the dispatch system meant re-entering data and risking errors.
  

Preferred Materials needed a CRM for concrete producers that could keep up with the pace of business, integrate seamlessly with dispatch, and provide better visibility for leadership.

Finding the Right Fit

The team initially considered Salesforce because it integrated with their accounting systems. But the dealbreaker? No easy way to connect it with their dispatch software — a must-have in the ready-mix industry.

After researching industry-specific solutions, they discovered Slabstack. Purpose-built for heavy building materials producers, Slabstack combined CRM, sales intelligence, and dispatch integration in one platform.

“They’ve never looked back,” says Juan Quintana.

How Slabstack Changed the Game

Slabstack’s implementation marked a major shift from manual, disconnected workflows to a unified, data-driven sales process. Here’s what changed:

1. Streamlined Sales Processes

Material prices and weights change daily, and keeping that data accurate across quotes was a time-consuming challenge. With Slabstack’s two-way dispatch integration, real-time pricing flows into the CRM so sales reps can generate accurate quotes instantly. Once approved, orders push back into dispatch — no duplicate entry required.

2. Data-Driven Decision Making

With four plants across Texas, each with different margins, routing orders profitably was critical. Slabstack’s analytics give the sales team a clear view of profitability by location, enabling them to send deliveries from the most cost-effective plant — boosting margins on every job.

3. Sales Performance Visibility

Slabstack’s dashboards, maps, and charts show how each salesperson is performing daily. Leadership can monitor active bids, win/loss ratios, and pipeline targets from a laptop or mobile device — no matter where they are.

The Results

The impact of adopting Slabstack was immediate and measurable:

• Additional margin gains from better price and delivery optimization
  
• Faster, more accurate quotes driven by real-time pricing
  
• Improved forecasting with clear, visual analytics
  
• Greater operational efficiency by eliminating duplicate data entry
  

As Juan Quintana sums it up:

“I don’t think Preferred Materials would be as successful as we are today if we didn’t have Slabstack.”

Positioning for the Future

Preferred Materials’ adoption of Slabstack didn’t just solve today’s challenges — it set the foundation for long-term success. By modernizing sales processes, integrating systems, and delivering real-time insights, the company is better equipped to compete in a fast-moving market.

For other ready-mix producers, the message is clear: if you’re still running sales from spreadsheets, it’s time to explore a CRM for concrete producers that’s built for your business.

Slabstack, a leading CRM and sales intelligence platform for construction material producers, today announced the appointment of Christian Battaglia as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO).