See all work

Builders First Source

15 minutes to 15 seconds—the reinvention of BFS

Builders First Source, Inc. is a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and is the largest supplier of building products, prefabricated components and value-added services in the US.

 

Project introduction

They are the USA’s premier manufacturer and supplier of building materials and services for professional home builders and remodelers. They partnered with Mutual Mobile to create MyBFSBuilder—a proprietary web application for users to order supplies. 

Challenge

Create an intuitive web application

The app would come with its own inventory management, shipping and delivery, and invoicing systems. Before this, their in-house team built an app that used Microsoft Access to generate quotes. These were shared with the builder on an Excel spreadsheet.

Salespeople had to be present in the office all day to field requests and check inventory for writing quotes. Communication went back and forth—taking up a lot of time. All the data lived on an Access server and only had a single back-up. Slow, inefficient, risk-prone, and unscalable were some of the complaints the earlier platform faced.

But the updated system—to be built by Mutual Mobile—would be scalable and much more robust. We designed it from scratch to smoothly integrate every single app feature and package everything in a sleek UI that never felt like an effort to use.

Approach

Accessible web portal

  • December 2019 saw the first build of MyBFSBuilder leave our stable. It brought a marked improvement to the speed at which quotes were managed.
  • Salespeople could now login from anywhere since the app had zero co-dependencies.
  • Hosted on Azure, the app used React to stay accessible across multiple platforms.
  • It also allowed multiple users to log in without dragging the app’s performance down.
  • Azure’s SQL server automatically backed data up every day—eliminating the need for manual intervention and the scope for manual errors
“Mutual Mobile's team was outstanding. They clearly communicated expectations and met their obligations. As decision points arose, they did a great job ensuring we stayed within the original scope regarding budget and timeline.” - Ryan Williams, Director of Pricing, Builders First Source.
 

Outcome

15 minutes to 15 seconds

MyBFSBuilder saved employee time, sped up a previously slow inefficient process, increased job productivity and employee, contractor & customer satisfaction. In fact, it cut down processing times from 15 minutes to 15 seconds: A reduction of 98%! It helped solidify Builders FirstSource industry-leading status. 

Contact us for a truly transformative experience.

Intuitive web applications have the potential to change your business, and we are the best developers for the job. Contact Us.