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Lessons From the Corporate World: What We Learnt so Far in 2025
Owen Drury
August 13, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 18 minutes
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INDUSTRY INSIGHTS
Lessons From the Corporate World: What We Learnt so Far in 2025
Here's a sobering reality check: One Boston construction project requires workers to juggle 18 different software tools every single day.
But that's just the beginning. Across the industry, corporate giants are drowning in 200-300 applications, watching promising deals die in procurement hell, and discovering that everything they thought they knew about selling software to construction is wrong.
We sat down with the people actually making technology decisions at Skanska, Burns & McDonnell, CRB, Syska Hennessy, and Bulley. What they told us will change how you think about enterprise construction sales forever.
The message was unanimous: The enterprise construction market has evolved beyond recognition, and most startups are still fighting the last war.
TL;DR: Selling to Enterprise Construction in 2025
The game has changed and most startups are still playing by old rules. Here’s what actually works now:
Integration > Innovation – Enterprise buyers want tools that fit seamlessly into existing workflows, not shiny stand-alones. Interoperability is the #1 deal breaker.
Project-Based Pricing – Per-seat SaaS models don’t match construction’s project-driven reality. Experiment with hybrid or volume-based pricing.
Partnerships Win Deals – Long-term trust beats features, speed, or even ROI. Become the vendor they can’t afford to lose.
Reduce Cognitive Load – Tool overload kills adoption. Buyers are consolidating tech into fewer platforms and unified data environments.
Compliance is Table Stakes – SOC 2, GDPR, SSO integration — if you can’t meet enterprise security demands, you won’t get in the door.
Compete with, Not Against, Internal Teams – Many corporates now build in-house tools. The winners complement internal capabilities, not replace them.
Human-Centered Design – Solve people’s real workflow problems, not just “deploy tech.”
Bottom line: Enterprise construction tech sales in 2025 are about partnering deeply, integrating intelligently, and pricing realistically. Disruption happens from inside the relationship.
The Great Enterprise Deception
Every construction tech founder believes the same myth: bigger companies with bigger budgets should be easier targets.
The reality is brutally different.
Take Skanska's experience. With 27,000 employees across multiple continents, every single software decision becomes a compliance nightmare. GDPR requirements. SOC 2 certifications. Single sign-on integrations. What looks like a six-figure slam dunk becomes an 18-month procurement odyssey.
Skanska workers in high‑visibility jackets on a connected construction site. Credit: Skanska
But here's where it gets interesting. The companies winning these deals aren't the ones with the best technology. They're the ones who understand that enterprise construction buyers operate under completely different rules.
The decentralization trap: Large construction companies don't operate like normal enterprises. They run 11+ global practices, each with distinct technology needs. Users constantly switch between projects. Teams form and dissolve. The stable, predictable user base that SaaS models depend on simply doesn't exist.
The compliance reality: The construction tech market, valued at $7 billion in 2025 and projected to reach $30 trillion by 2035, reflects this complexity. Progressive corporate buyers are creating internal "sandboxes" specifically for startups that can't meet full enterprise requirements yet. They want to innovate, but security standards are non-negotiable.
The partnership proof: The vendors succeeding in this environment aren't selling software. They're selling six-year relationships. When one major corporation described its primary vendor relationship, it wasn't about features or pricing. It was about the vendor treating customer challenges as their own challenges, adapting roadmaps based on real feedback, and involving customers in development cycles.
The lesson hit us like a freight train: Enterprise construction sales aren't about having the best product. They're about becoming the kind of partner that enterprises can't afford to lose.
The Hidden Tax Everyone Pays
Every innovation leader we spoke with mentioned the same phrase: "tool proliferation."
But they weren't talking about software licenses. They were talking about something much more expensive.
Industry research reveals that construction businesses use a median of 11 different data environments. Companies report that training costs eat up 48% of their technology budgets, while operational complexity claims another 45%.
Here's the number that should terrify every startup: Construction leaders estimate they could save 10.5 hours per week by moving to unified data environments.
Think about that. Ten and a half hours. Every week. For every manager, project lead, and field supervisor in the organization.
Engineers and architects in discussion on a construction site
The cognitive load crisis: Field teams aren't rejecting new technology because they hate innovation. They're rejecting it because they're already drowning. Fifteen different logins. Eleven different interfaces. Dozens of different workflows that don't talk to each other.
One executive told us their biggest technology win wasn't implementing a revolutionary new tool. It was eliminating three redundant systems and watching productivity skyrocket.
The filtering revolution: The smartest corporate buyers have stopped evaluating individual tools. Instead, they've created systematic filtering frameworks. Everything from smart buildings to eco innovation to AI must fit into seven specific buckets. Everything else gets eliminated early, regardless of how innovative it might be.
This isn't technology evaluation. This is a survival strategy.
The integration imperative: Leading corporations have learned to ask one question before any technology conversation: "How does this fit with what we already have?"
Startups that can't answer that question don't get past the first meeting. As one project technology manager told us:
"Interoperability is number one. We want to be able to have access to data."
The Pricing Revolution
Here’s a controversial truth bomb from one of our participants that should shape every startup's pricing strategy:
"SaaS models don't reflect how we're structured as an industry."
The problem runs deeper than most founders realize. Construction operates on projects, not departments. Teams assemble for specific builds, then dissolve. The unit of transaction is the project, not the annual contract.
Yet most construction tech companies still default to per-seat pricing designed for stable office environments.
The transformation story: When robotic welding programs delivered 10x efficiency improvements, the path to ROI required project-based budgeting that aligned with how construction companies actually allocate resources. Traditional SaaS pricing would have killed the deal before it started.
The evolution moment: The shift from user-based to volume-based pricing happened because one major platform had the courage to challenge industry conventions. Despite massive customer resistance initially, it transformed how the entire industry thinks about technology pricing.
Now construction companies can work software costs into their rates. As a scheduling platform executive explained:
"As a GC, we can estimate certain things into our labor rates and other ways to package it up and justify paying for that tool."
The models that people prefer?
Unfortunately.. There isn’t one! It’s up to you to figure out what works best for your customer.
In reality, it takes tons of experimentation to get pricing right. We hear from companies all the time that spend years and years experimenting with different models. Pick one and be consistent… if your product is good enough, the pricing conversation should be easy enough.
The Partnership Revolution
The most successful vendors have figured out something that completely inverts traditional sales wisdom.
Relationships don't just matter more than features. They matter more than pricing, implementation timelines, and even ROI.
Here's why: Construction is still fundamentally a relationship business. When a major project goes wrong, nobody gets fired for choosing the vendor with the best partnership track record. They get fired for choosing the vendor that disappears when problems arise.
The capability insight: Leading corporations are building innovation coaching networks with monthly training sessions about curiosity, creativity, and even photo serendipity exercises. This isn't about buying software. It's about building internal capabilities that compound over time.
The roadmap integration: The vendors that survive and thrive are the ones treating customer success as a shared responsibility. They adapt product roadmaps based on customer feedback. They include customers in beta testing cycles. They measure their success by customer outcomes, not just software metrics.
The collaboration reality: Recent market analysis shows that companies overcoming adoption barriers can access a customer base larger than most other industries, with the global construction market expected to reach over $20 trillion by 2035. Corporate buyers don't evaluate vendors. They evaluate potential partners.
The companies getting this right don't just sell technology. They become strategic advisors, innovation collaborators, and long-term allies in digital transformation.
The Build vs Buy Shift
A surprising trend emerged from our conversations that might worry (or excite….!) software companies. Major corporations are increasingly building internal solutions rather than buying from vendors.
The capability surge: Some innovation offices now include 500+ people focused on emerging technology. They have, effectively, a company within a company. A software company within a construction company. Crazy to even think about.
When existing solutions don't fit integrated workflows, they're choosing internal development.
The control factor: Leading corporations operate under the principle that innovation is their competitive differentiator. Their three-pronged approach, external investments, internal R&D, and corporate ideation, allows them to control their technological destiny rather than depend on vendor roadmaps.
Inside-out innovation: Corporations building bespoke tech hubs rather than buying off the shelf.
Manjor of these companies build their own AI chatbots within their corporate cloud environment, ensuring data never leaves its network while connecting to internal applications. Why buy when you can build exactly what you need?
The startup opportunity: This trend doesn't eliminate opportunities for startups. It changes the game entirely.
The companies finding success are those that complement internal capabilities rather than compete with them. They provide specialized expertise that would be expensive to build internally. They solve problems that are important but not differentiating enough to justify internal development.
The new value proposition: Instead of selling generic solutions, successful startups are becoming specialized capability providers for specific industry problems. And perhaps even considering how forward deployed engineers fit into their strategy.
A Human-Centered Design Revolution?
Perhaps the most counterintuitive insight came from innovation leaders who've moved between industries: successful construction tech isn't about pushing technology. It's about solving human problems.
The design thinking framework: Leading corporate innovation programs use a structured approach focusing on three overlapping circles: technology trends, industry trends, and corporate objectives. The magic happens where all three intersect.
The evaluation sophistication: Companies with software development backgrounds in their evaluation teams have become much tougher on startups. They can see through the marketing facade to understand the actual technical capabilities. They know which features are genuinely difficult to build versus which are just clever positioning.
The integration obsession: The most successful implementations focus relentlessly on how new tools fit existing workflows. One pharmaceutical construction company built their entire technology strategy around end-to-end integration from design through turnover, recognizing that the most time and money is spent in the construction phases.
As one technology leader explained,
"We like to look at it as all one data thread. We're always keeping in mind the end, turnover, constructability, and all those things, so that the solutions that benefit design also connect and better benefit construction as well."
The partnership test: When vendors can adapt their product roadmaps based on customer feedback while maintaining scalable business models, they pass the partnership test. When they resist feedback or try to force-fit solutions, they fail.
What This Actually Means
The enterprise construction market in 2025 isn't about disruption. It's about intelligent integration, consolidation and partnering.
44 percent of companies plan to increase AI investment in 2025, but this investment is happening within existing frameworks, not through wholesale replacement.
For founders: Compliance isn't a nice-to-have. SOC 2 certification and GDPR compliance are table stakes. Build "sandbox" compatibility that allows enterprises to test your solution within their security frameworks.
For sales teams: Stop selling features. Start selling partnerships. Invest in hiring team members with construction industry credibility. Develop case studies that focus on integration success and long-term partnership outcomes.
For product teams: Design for enterprise workflows from day one. API-first architecture. Robust integration capabilities. Flexibility that accommodates different business unit requirements within the same organization.
For pricing strategy: Move beyond traditional SaaS models toward hybrid approaches that respect construction's project-based reality while providing predictable revenue streams.
The transformation truth: Construction's digital evolution is happening through partnership-driven integration, not vendor-driven disruption. Companies that understand this distinction are building the relationships that will define the next decade.
Corporate buyers have made their priorities clear: partners over vendors, integration over proliferation, pricing models that match reality over subscription fantasies.
The opportunities are always there... But capturing them requires building differently than traditional playbooks suggest.
More in-depth conversations with innovation leaders here👇👇👇
WEEKLY MUSINGS
Content Strategy, AI Spend, Robotics
Who says 'made-up stories' don't pay?
AI spend is skyrocketing in construction
No one is talking about this, but this is the bull case for AI and economic growth.
AI spend is up 60x in construction. 35x in manufacturing on @tryramp.
Faster planning and smarter automation will transform these strategic industries. This is what drives US economic + labor
— Ara Kharazian (@arakharazian)
8:42 PM • Jul 29, 2025
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