It has been an award-winning year for Payapps, firstly winning the international Good Design Award in the Digital Design Category in recognition of our outstanding holistic design approach and innovation and then, just two months later, winning Construction Computing’s national Cloud Technology of the Year Award. Here, the judges were looking for a solution that captured the essence of Cloud, and advanced the benefits of centrally hosted software applications.
But the real highlight of 2022 for Neal Hooks, Payapps’ Head of UK and Ireland, is Payapps’ new alliances.
“Our partnership strategy has continued to allow us to build a global footprint for the brand,” explains Neal. “These collaborations have underlined our credibility and the integrity of our solution. Our partnerships with Autodesk and Eque2 were real highlights for me.”
The strategic alliance with Autodesk enables both Autodesk and Payapps to offer their respective customers real-time accounting and faster payment cycles during the construction process. Autodesk Construction Cloud customers can benefit from automating a very spreadsheet-driven workflow to reduce payment cycle time and eliminate potential errors, while Payapps customers can benefit from real-time accounting provided by Autodesk. What’s more, Autodesk and Payapps are working together to identify additional integrations that will benefit their common customer base in achieving better outcomes.
Payapps’ partnership with Eque2, who provide a range of fully-integrated cloud solutions to manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a construction project, provides Eque2’s contracting and subcontracting customers with an opportunity to add Payapps’ solution to manage applications for payment, further increasing the functionality of its software.
As a result of our strong partnerships, innovative software and fantastic reputation, Payapps is winning new business at a fast rate. For example more than 40% of the top 30 MEP contractors now use Payapps for managing applications for payment. Globally, there has been a 20% increase in new customers during 2022 and an even higher increase for UKI, with over 41,000 users now relying on Payapps to submit and certify applications for payment worth a total of over £6 billion.
This year also saw Payapps achieve even faster customer set-up – for example within just 3 months of signing-up, one new customer has received 157 applications for payment through Payapps across20 projects. Payapps also achieved its best new customer satisfaction survey results: 98.4% customer satisfaction from 8,033 new conversations. “We are winning new business as a result of our work with main contractors and the onboarding process for their subcontractors,” explains Neal. “The larger subcontractors are quick to realise that the Payapps solution could, in turn, also benefit their own supply chain. We are winning a great deal of new business because subcontractors are impressed with our solution and can see the efficiencies that it brings.”
As a result of our new business wins and ambitious growth plans, Payapps has grown its global team by 21% between 2021 and 2022. Across UK and Ireland, we have brought in many new staff members as well as promoting internally, which is key to Payapps’ HR strategy: enhance people’s knowledge within the business, up skill them and provide them opportunities for personal and career growth.
We have been working hard to support the sector and bring people together again through various events, webinars, and industry roundtables. For instance, Payapps’ first live event following the pandemic was a speaking slot at Digital Construction Week. “It was great to be back talking to people face-to-face and meeting customers and industry professionals,” recalls Neal.
Matt Rawlinson, Senior Commercial Manager at BW, presented alongside Anthony Puma, Senior Business Development Manager at Payapps. Neal said: “It’s good to give our customers the opportunity to share the stage with us; working together leads to better outcomes for our partners, customers, and the industry as a whole. We are looking forward to attending even more live events next year.”
This year Payapps hosted a successful Land Rover Event for commercial and finance teams in construction. The day included networking, lunch, talks from industry experts and some fun off-roading in a fleet of iconic Land Rovers. We’re looking to host similar events in 2023 thanks to the positive feedback received.
Payapps recognise that the global economy has seen some of the most disruptive times in history and as a result recently launched its ‘From Surviving to Thriving’ initiative to explore how the sector managed through the pandemic, the lessons learned and what the strategy could before future success. We also produced a ‘survival guide’ that looks at four strategic areas businesses can focus on to help facilitate thriving in a post-pandemic environment.
“Material shortages, labour shortages and increasing costs are causing margins to shrink,” explains Neal. “Keeping an eye on your cash flow and increasing efficiencies will continue to be critical as there may be more challenges to come in 2023 as prices continue to rise and a possible recession bites.
“We are seeing the strains of these challenges in an increase in ‘smash and grab’ adjudications which is a real negative for the industry. These adjudications damage supply chain relations and cause disruption. They are often as a result of payment processing oversights, which can be easily avoided,” points out Neal. The April ‘How to Avoid Smash & Grab Adjudication’ webinar hosted by Payapps with invited industry specialists proved popular amongst construction industry professionals, with more than 300 registering for the webinar.
Despite the uncertainty around a recession, Neal believes construction is resilient. “It was solid through the pandemic and has continued to move forward while other industries slowed considerably. The industry has dealt with a recession before so it is not an unknown, however we are seeing construction firms adopt digital processes on a scale never seen before, arguably to withstand any downturn, streamlining tasks to ensure cost efficiencies and competitive advantage.”
“We are seeing roles like digital transformation managers emerge that didn’t exist before. Even smaller companies are coming to us with five-year digital strategies – this demonstrates clearly to me where the industry is heading. It needs to continue to be resilient and adaptable to thrive in 2023 and beyond.”
