Book a Demo

Concrete producers deal with constant changes in costs of fuel, cement or freight. Managing these shifts while keeping quotes accurate is tough, especially when teams rely on spreadsheets or generic CRMs not built for materials pricing. 

These tools slow down responses, cause pricing errors, and make it hard to protect your margins.

In this blog, we’ll explain how construction pricing software helps concrete producers manage live costs, quote faster, and stay in sync with dispatch. We’ll also cover how you can adopt one successfully in your business, and the ROI of good software. 

Why generic CRMs and spreadsheets can’t handle concrete pricing

Before we get into what modern pricing software does differently, it’s important to understand why traditional tools fall short for concrete producers. 

Here’s where they break down. 

1. No live data integration

Every time cement or diesel prices change, someone in your team has to manually update the numbers (if they even do it). One missed edit can throw off every quote built that week. These delays show down your team, and eat into your profits because quotes often go out based on outdated data. 

2. Lack of dispatch visibility

Without seeing delivery schedules, sales reps can promise timelines that dispatch can’t fulfill. That disconnect leads to last-minute scrambling, rescheduling, and customer frustration.

3. No margin guardrails

When quotes are built manually, there’s no automated way to enforce margin floors. Reps may undercut each other trying to win deals, eroding profitability across projects.

Spreadsheets and horizontal CRMs require expensive customization to bridge these gaps, and even then, they rarely connect quoting and dispatch data seamlessly. 

So what’s the alternative? 

How can pricing and estimating software for concrete producers help

Switching to a software designed specifically for concrete producers simplifies and strengthens the entire quoting process. Instead of scattered spreadsheets and inconsistent data, your team works from a single connected platform where pricing, quoting, and dispatch stay in sync in real time.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Dynamic pricing for margin control

Pricing software gives concrete producers real-time updates on cost data from dispatch or ERP systems, including cement, supplementary materials, fuel, and freight. 

This means every quote reflects actual, current costs rather than outdated estimates.

For example, when fuel prices rise unexpectedly midweek, the system automatically refreshes the cost data across all quote templates. Sales reps don’t need to dig through spreadsheets or send emails to confirm prices. 

They can build a quote that already includes the updated figures. Managers can also define margin thresholds, so the software flags quotes that fall below acceptable profit levels.

Automated quoting workflows

Another way pricing software helps concrete producers is that it automates the quoting process. In traditional methods, your sales rep might first dig through documents to find actual costs. Then, they would spend time creating a quote. And finally, would wait for managers to approve the prices before sending them to the customer. 

The right software provides you with templates that make it easy to generate accurate quotes in minutes. Automated approval routing ensures any quote below the margin threshold gets flagged instantly, keeping everyone accountable without slowing down turnaround.

Two-way dispatch integration

A good pricing and quoting system also connects directly to your dispatch operations. When a quote is accepted, it automatically creates or updates a delivery ticket in the dispatch schedule. 

For instance, if a customer confirms a 200-yard pour for Friday morning, the system immediately reserves the trucks and batching capacity needed for that slot. Dispatchers can then see confirmed orders without re-entering information, reducing the risk of double-booking or missed loads.

This integration keeps sales and operations aligned.

Forecasting and sales intelligence 

This is often the most overlooked part of adopting a software designed specifically for your concrete production business. 

When you’re using spreadsheets or a horizontal CRM, you only get surface-level information about your business. You might have data, but someone in your team has to sit for hours to make sense of it. 

That leaves very little time to actually plan business growth or forecast industry trends. 

But with a specific, concrete software, you can gain visibility into your full sales pipeline. It allows you to see win/loss trends by customer or region, monitor quote-to-order ratios, and plan production with confidence. These insights help you anticipate demand instead of just reacting to it.

Ease of use and mobile access 

Concrete sales reps often meet contractors on-site, have to check pour schedules, or need to update quotes while traveling between jobs. 

Generic CRMs aren’t built for these conditions. They require multiple logins, slow syncing, or desktop-only access. Purpose-built pricing systems solve that by allowing reps to work seamlessly from tablets or phones, keeping them connected to dispatch, pricing, and approvals wherever they are.

With mobile access, they can pull up the latest prices, revise quantities, and send approvals immediately instead of waiting to return to the office. This reduces quoting delays and prevents lost opportunities when a customer is ready to move forward on the spot. 

By centralizing pricing, quoting, and logistics, this kind of system keeps the entire sales operation running smoothly.

We’ll discuss more about the ROI of adopting the right software for concrete producers, but first, let’s understand the best practices to adopt such software. 

Best practices for successful CRM adoption for concrete producers 

Even the best software can fall flat without the right rollout plan. Many producers face challenges like resistance to change or incomplete training when shifting away from spreadsheets or their current systems. 

Here’s how to make the transition smooth and effective for your team: 

  1. Start with one pilot region or product line: Begin adoption with a smaller team before expanding across all plants. Use the pilot to refine workflows, find integration issues early, and train internal advocates who can guide others. Track specific results, such as faster configuration of quotes or better accuracy, to measure success and make clear improvements.
  2. Tie adoption to everyday tasks. Integrate quoting, approvals, and price updates directly into the CRM so it becomes part of the daily workflow. When the system becomes an essential tool for job performance, adoption grows naturally. Link it to common routines such as quote submissions or cost adjustments so your team can experience the time savings firsthand.
  3. Secure leadership buy-in: Managers in your team need to lead by example and use the system in their daily work. When they talk about real results and review progress in regular meetings, teams notice and follow. Over time, steady leadership and open communication help teams stay aligned and make the system part of their normal routine.
  4. Highlight early ROI: Showcase quick wins like faster quote turnaround and fewer manual errors to build momentum internally. Sharing measurable outcomes from early users helps generate excitement and makes a strong case for further investment. Encourage peer learning by having those early adopters share best practices across departments. 

Speaking of ROI, let’s understand how much money and time you can actually save by adopting the right construction pricing software as a concrete producer. 

The ROI of the right pricing software for concrete producers

Concrete producers who digitize pricing and quoting typically see tangible gains within months.

On average, teams report:

Those improvements directly impact profitability, allowing producers to bid confidently, win more jobs, and maintain healthy margins even in volatile markets.

But the key is to choose the right software if you want to see these results. 

Why concrete producers choose Slabstack

Slabstack is the best software for concrete producers as it combines all the tools you need to quote accurately and manage margins in one connected platform.

And now we are also working to provide mobile app access to keep field reps connected while on-site. This will help them update quotes, check dispatch schedules, and send approvals from their phones or tablets. 

Together, these tools help you quote faster, protect margins, and deliver with greater reliability. Many suppliers using Slabstack see a full return on their investment within 60 days of going live and improve their quoting accuracy to near 100%. 

Book a call with our team to see how you can see similar results too!  

Explore more insights and guides from our experts

1. 3 Biggest Impacts of Automation in the Construction Material Supplier Industry [2025]

2. 5 Skills Every Concrete Sales Rep Needs to Win More Deals 

3. Why Chasing Volume Hurts Ready Mix Concrete Profit Margins

If you run a concrete, aggregates, or asphalt supply business, you already know the quoting process isn’t as simple as punching numbers into a spreadsheet. 

Volatile material costs, tight margins, and the need to coordinate across dispatch, sales, and operations make the operations far more complex than what generic tools can handle.

Still, too many producers rely on generic CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot, or bolt-on tools. These systems promise visibility but often end up creating workarounds and driving up admin overhead.

If you’ve already faced these issues with a generic CRM and are looking for the right tool, or simply want to switch from manual systems to a more organized one, this is the right blog for you.

Here are 7 questions to help you evaluate whether a CRM is truly built for your business. Let’s start with the most pressing one: does it handle live costs? 

Question 1: Does it handle live material costs and dynamic pricing?

One of the most important questions to consider before investing in a CRM for construction materials is whether it can handle live material costs and dynamic pricing. 

Because prices of cement, asphalt, aggregates, fuel, and SCMs change almost daily. And if your reps are still using last week’s prices to give out quotes, you might end up losing margins on a job that seemed profitable at first. 

Similarly, dynamic pricing enables you to adjust your prices in real-time based on changing input costs, market conditions, and defined profit guardrails. 

In practice, this looks like:

To expect these features from a generic CRM requires a lot of customization, integrations, and maintenance from your side. You might end up spending more on these adjustments than on the software itself.

A better way is to use a specific CRM like Slabstack, which is built specifically for concrete, aggregates, and asphalt producers. With live material costs and dynamic pricing features, Slabstack helps producers get the latest prices and send out quotes more confidently. 

Section 2: Can it integrate directly with your dispatch system?

Another very specific issue that producers face is that they have to manually enter information from their existing tools into dispatch systems like Command Alkon or Sysdyne. So your team ends up spending their time filling data from one system to another, and even then, there are chances of human error. 

A CRM for construction materials like Slabstack allows live inputs from dispatch systems like Command Alkon and Sysdyne to feed directly into the quoting workflow and vice versa. 

Here’s how one of our customers, Carew Concrete, described this feature:

Section 3: Does it protect margins with guardrails?

The next question you should ask is if the CRM protects your margins with guardrails. 

In our industry, it's easy to think that the more jobs you get, the higher your profits will be. So to win more deals, reps usually end up underquoting prices and undercutting quotes because they lack visibility into the true costs of materials.

But even if a generic CRM helps with giving you visibility, your reps would still need to get approval for every quote from the manager. So it doesn’t really improve the workflow or reduce time. 

Meanwhile, in a specific software for construction material producers, you can set up guardrails. This allows only the quotes that fall below the set threshold to get flagged, helping your team quote faster, while also ensuring that your team isn’t undercutting the prices. 

Section 4: Is it built for construction materials (vertical) or generic (horizontal)?

As we briefly mentioned before, if you use a generic CRM, you’d need to spend a lot of additional resources to make it work for your business. We have seen companies 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.

Whereas a vertical CRM like Slabstack comes with built-in features your business needs, without having to invest additional resources. This includes: dispatch system integration, live material pricing, dynamic quoting, and margin control tools to protect profitability.

Section 5: Does it offer forecasting and sales intelligence?

If you really want to improve your margins and profitability, you need more than just visibility into data. You need a CRM that can analyze that data and help you make smarter decisions. 

That’s another feature to look for when choosing a building material supplier software. 

Because forecasting turns quotes into early demand signals that help producers anticipate workload, adjust pricing strategies, and plan plant or fleet capacity ahead of time. And while you can still do these things manually, the right CRM can deliver these insights automatically without requiring separate reports, manual data pulls, or expensive add-on modules. 

This way, forecasting becomes part of your daily operations, not an extra burden.

Section 6: Will your sales reps actually use it?

You can look for all the CRM features that look good on paper, but if your team doesn’t use them, they are of no use. Even worse, if your team has to spend hours every week just to make the CRM usable or integrate it into their existing workflows, you might end up wasting more time than even manual systems. 

Therefore, another important question to ask is if the CRM fits into your workflow. Is it modern, intuitive, and customizable? Can your team use it from day 1 without requiring multiple hours of training or customization? 

Once this is clear, the next question is what it all comes down to. 

Section 7: What’s the ROI timeline?

Let’s be real: You’d only invest in a CRM if it can get you the ROI you want, in the timeframe you need. With generic CRMs, it can take up to 12 to 18 months to see the first signs of return. And even then, you’ll have to spend time and resources on customization and heavy consulting.

On the other hand, many suppliers see a full return on their investment within 60 days of going live and improve their quoting accuracy to near 100% with Slabstack. 

Let’s understand how this happens in more detail below. 

Why Slabstack is the right CRM for material suppliers

All 7 questions that we listed above point to one reality: most generic CRMs or bolt-ons can’t meet the needs of heavy building material suppliers. They’d require heavy customizations, additional resources, and even then, you’d have to wait up to 18 months to see the ROI. 

That’s why Slabstack is the #1 sales and business management platform for concrete, aggregates, and asphalt producers.

Our platform unifies quoting, offers dynamic pricing, forecasting, and margin protection in one purpose-built system. You also get: 

From day one, it helps your team 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. 

Have any other questions you need answered before choosing? Get in touch with our team, and we’d be happy to answer all of them.

Explore more insights and guides from our experts

1. Can supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) or alternative cement unlock cheaper, greener mixes nationwide?

2. Building Materials Sales Training: 5 steps to coach your sales team on profit vs volume

3. How to Handle Construction Material Price Volatility as Suppliers (2025)

4. Cost Management for Construction Material Suppliers: How Hidden Costs May Be Eroding Your Margins

5. Skills Every Concrete Sales Rep Needs to Win More Deals

6. Configuring Manufacturing Quotes: How Faster Quoting Helps Construction Suppliers Close More Deals

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:

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. 

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:

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.