Choosing a CRM for your aggregates business is one of the most important business decisions you’ll make. The right choice can increase your profits significantly, while the wrong one can waste time and effort. 

Read this blog to see why relying on generic software isn’t the best idea and the top 5 features you should look for when choosing aggregates industry software. 

The limits of spreadsheets and horizontal CRMs for aggregate producers

At first glance, spreadsheets and general CRMs seem like manageable tools. They’re familiar, flexible, and cheap to start with. 

But as soon as your quoting volume grows, they start to break down. Let’s look at why.

Aggregate suppliers lose margins by relying on spreadsheets because they can’t handle live pricing. Freight, diesel, and material costs change constantly, but spreadsheets don’t update automatically.

Your team ends up quoting off outdated numbers, cutting into profit without realizing it. And because these tools aren’t built for aggregates, even small errors like rounding mistakes or missed surcharges can cost thousands.

On the other hand, horizontal CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot offer great contact tracking, but they don’t understand how aggregate producers work. 

They lack integrations with dispatch, don’t enforce margin floors, and can’t calculate per-ton pricing. To make them work, you often pay for custom configurations and manual workflows that slow down your sales instead of speeding it up.

Neither spreadsheets nor horizontal CRMs are built for how your business operates. They force your team to work harder to stay accurate. 

That’s where an aggregates industry software comes in. 

5 things to look for in an aggregates CRM

Aggregates producers need a system that reflects how they actually sell: by material, by ton, and by delivery zone. Here are 5 essential features that you should consider when choosing software.

Live pricing and margin protection

Aggregates producers quote in one of the most price-sensitive markets out there. A few cents per ton can make or break profitability. That’s why your CRM should pull live cost feeds of freight, diesel, and material directly into every quote.

When the data is live, every rep works from the same numbers, protecting your margins and reducing the risk of underbidding.

Look for systems that can enforce margin floors, automatically flag low-profit quotes, and apply dynamic pricing rules that update as costs shift.

With this cost intelligence, your team can quote faster and more accurately while maintaining the profitability you’ve worked hard to build.

Two-way integration with dispatch and ERP systems

Every quote should connect seamlessly to your dispatch system. This ensures your sales commitments align with real production capacity and delivery schedules, reducing the risk of overbooking or missed loads. 

Without integration, reps risk selling work your plants can’t fulfill or losing track of what’s actually been delivered.

A purpose-built aggregates CRM integrates directly with systems like Command Alkon or Sysdyne, syncing quotes, orders, and delivery data automatically. That means no more double entry, fewer mistakes, and complete visibility from quote to ticket.

With this level of connectivity, your sales and operations teams can finally work from the same live information, reducing confusion and improving customer response times.

Quoting workflows built for aggregates

This is one of the most important features to look at when choosing a CRM. 

That’s because aggregates quoting isn’t one-size-fits-all. You’re managing different materials, tonnage, delivery zones, and pricing structures. Your CRM should handle all of it with ease. Otherwise, what is the point of even investing in one? 

Look for platforms that allow you to build quotes by product, region, and customer type, using pre-set templates. The right CRM should also offer real-time approval workflows to ensure that any quote below target margins is reviewed before it’s sent, without slowing down your team.

This kind of control helps your reps respond faster while keeping pricing accurate and compliant with company policies. 

Business intelligence and forecasting

The right CRM will help you with quoting accurately, but will also give you the data you need to make better business decisions. While generic CRMs can help you provide some of that raw data, you still need to spend hours every week to make use of it. 

With a specific CRM for aggregates producers:

• You get pre-built dashboards that visualize key metrics like win/loss rates, average margins by region, and quote-to-order conversion.
  
• Forecasting tools project upcoming demand based on quote volume, helping you plan production, adjust inventory, and anticipate slowdowns before they hit.

With this level of visibility, management gains insights that drive smarter decisions across the business.

Ease of use and adoption

All the features we’ve discussed so far are important. But what if integrating such software takes 6 months of your time and your team dislikes using it? Would you still invest in it? 

The best CRM is the one that’s quick to adopt and the one your team actually uses. 

Aggregates operations move quickly, and your system should match that pace. Look for platforms with a clean, intuitive interface, mobile accessibility, and minimal training requirements.

User-friendly software reduces onboarding time and ensures your entire team uses it without friction.

Questions to ask before choosing your CRM

While we’ve discussed the top 5 features you should look for in an aggregates software, here are some other questions to keep in mind while considering your options. 

• Does it connect directly with your dispatch software?
  This ensures your quotes reflect real delivery capacity and scheduling.
  
• Can it enforce pricing logic and margin thresholds?
  Systems with built-in pricing rules help protect profit and consistency.
  
• Is it designed for aggregate quoting, not just generic sales tracking?
  Look for tools that understand tons, zones, and material mixes.
  
• How easily can your team see ROI once implemented?
  You should be able to measure time saved and margin improvement quickly.
  
• Can it scale with your growth and integrate with other tools you use? The CRM you choose should support expansion without creating data silos.

Producers using such software see results fast. 

Their quotes go out in minutes. Sales and operations teams share the same real-time data, reducing miscommunication. And managers track margin performance and customer trends in one place easily. 

Read on to see how Slabstack provides all the features we’ve discussed in this blog. 

Slabstack: Software purpose-built for aggregates producers and suppliers 

Slabstack, the #1 CRM for aggregates producers and suppliers, brings together everything you need to quote, manage, and win work profitably:

• Live pricing and margin visibility that updates automatically with every quote.
  
• Two-way dispatch integration with Command Alkon, Sysdyne, and other leading systems.
  
• Dynamic quoting workflows that protect profits while keeping sales fast.
  
• Predictive analytics that turn your sales data into actionable insights.

With Slabstack, aggregates producers move beyond manual quoting and disconnected systems. They gain a platform that unites their data, simplifies their workflows, and gives them confidence in every quote they send.

See how Slabstack connects your quoting, dispatch, and CRM in one system. Book a walkthrough.

You invest in a CRM because it promises to make your life easier. It is supposed to make your sales team faster, smarter, and more profitable. But chances are you’re still dealing with margin leaks, quoting delays, and frustrated sales reps.

As a concrete, aggregates, or asphalt producer, you can’t rely on spreadsheets, generic CRMs, or bolt-ons from your dispatch system. They may promise a lot of features, but those features don’t make sense if your team is still spending hours on manual work, and your business is losing margin. 

And in an industry where pennies per cubic yard can make or break your margins, the wrong CRM isn’t just inconvenient, it’s expensive.

In this blog, we’ll cover 5 warnings that your current CRM is holding you back, what it really costs you, and what to look for in a system that actually fits the building materials business.

Let’s start with the most important sign: lack of visibility. 

Sign #1: Your reps lack real-time cost visibility

The first and most clear sign is that your reps don’t have visibility into prices. Cement, diesel, and additive prices can shift weekly, or even daily, and a static spreadsheet or generic CRM won’t catch these changes in time.

Without this live cost visibility, your reps either underquote, where you lose margin on every cubic yard, or overquote, where you lose the deal to a competitor with fresher numbers. 

A CRM purpose-built for building material suppliers should pull live costs directly from dispatch, ensuring every quote reflects the latest input prices. With real-time data, reps can quote with confidence, managers can protect profit, and customers get accurate pricing from the start.

Another way lack of visibility affects your profits is when your team starts undercutting itself. Let’s understand this in more detail below. 

Sign #2: Internal underbidding is hurting profits

When reps can’t see each other’s quotes, they unknowingly undercut one another. This creates a race to the bottom, where the only thing that drops faster than your prices is your profit margin. Worse, customers quickly notice the inconsistencies in your pricing and start questioning your reliability.

Your CRM should automatically prevent this. 

A vertical CRM for producers gives sales teams shared visibility into active quotes and enforces margin guardrails. Instead of slashing prices to win business, reps can focus on building relationships and delivering value, while protecting the margins that keep your plants running.

But even with visibility, inefficiencies creep in if workflows are slow and clunky. That’s where the next warning sign shows up.

Sign #3: You’re stuck with slow, manual workflows

If your team spends hours each week double-checking spreadsheets, re-entering data into dispatch, or waiting on manual approvals, then your CRM isn’t doing its job.

Every delay in quoting eats away at your chances of winning the job, and in this business, the first accurate quote usually wins. Additionally, manual workflows don’t just waste time. They increase the risk of errors, inconsistent pricing, and missed opportunities. 

A purpose-built CRM helps you by automating approvals, eliminating duplicate data entry, and connecting seamlessly with dispatch, so your reps can generate fast, accurate quotes that protect your margins.

With the right CRM, you can give your team time back to actually focus on selling, developing their skills, and winning more jobs, instead of just entering and reentering numbers on a spreadsheet. 

But speed alone isn’t enough; you also need to understand why you’re winning and losing deals in the first place.

Sign #4: You can’t track why you’re winning or losing deals

If you enter all your sales data into scattered spreadsheets and it isn’t tied to outcomes, your team is guessing why deals are won or lost. Without visibility into patterns, like which regions are consistently underperforming or which mix designs are always underquoted, you can’t adapt your strategy. 

And without a strategy, how would you know if you’re meeting your business goals?

Again, most genetic CRMs stop at activity tracking. They might tell you how many calls were made, but not how the quotes in those calls impacted your profit. And even if your team wants to win more deals, they’ll have to spend hours trying to analyze data. 

A supplier-specific CRM connects sales activity directly to margin outcomes. Dashboards should show win rates, margin trends, and rep performance, turning raw data into actionable insights.

When every deal becomes a learning opportunity, your sales strategy improves with every quote. And those insights are critical for the next challenge: forecasting.

Sign #5: Your forecasting is guesswork

Forecasting in construction materials goes beyond estimating revenue. It also guides how you plan plant capacity, schedule deliveries, and set pricing strategy. But if your CRM doesn’t capture demand signals from quotes, your forecasts just become guesses. 

The right CRM ties forecasting directly to quoting activity, giving you a real-time view of what’s coming down the pipeline. With this visibility, you can anticipate demand, adjust pricing, and prepare inventory before issues hit. That kind of foresight can be the difference between a profitable quarter and a painful one.

Ultimately, these five signs point to one problem: less profit for your business. 

You can either look for bolt-on tools to fix these issues, spend hours trying to coach your sales team to use manual systems the right way. Or, you can invest in a specific CRM designed for concrete, aggregates, and asphalt producers. 

How Slabstack fixes the gaps your current CRM can’t

These five warning signs highlight a bigger issue: most CRMs simply weren’t designed for the day‑to‑day realities of concrete and materials supply. They force reps to work with stale numbers, leave managers without insight into why deals succeed or fail, and push leaders to make decisions with incomplete information.

Slabstack was built specifically for these issues and solves these challenges through:

• Real-time pricing: Pulling live material, fuel, and freight costs directly into every quote.
  
• Margin guardrails: Enforcing price floors and preventing internal underbidding.

• Integrated workflows: Connecting seamlessly with dispatch for fast, error-free quoting and order conversion.
  
• Actionable dashboards: Turning sales activity into insights on margins, win rates, and rep performance.
  
• Quote-based forecasting: Giving leaders an accurate view of demand to plan capacity and pricing strategy.

With Slabstack, quoting and sales run on accurate data and clear guardrails, so instead of losing margin, every deal is set up to protect profitability. All the while reducing the time your team spends on manual workflows. 

If the 5 signs we listed here felt familiar, book a call with our experts. We’ll guide you on how a purpose-built CRM can eliminate these issues and protect your margins. 

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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:

• Pulling real-time cost feeds for materials like cement, aggregates, SCMs, and fuel.
• Applying consistent markups and margin floors so every quote meets your profit targets.
• Auto-adjusting prices when input costs shift, without slowing down the quoting process.
  

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: 

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

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

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.