European construction is at a crossroads. Eurostat’s 2022 data revealed that a sizeable 43% of businesses in this sector had very low digital adoption. However, as shifts in global dynamics reshape the economic landscape, more construction companies are beginning to explore the potential of digitalization.

For software vendors aiming to establish a foothold in an industry where digital proficiency varies, this means striking a delicate balance: Offering robust technology solutions that are also intuitive and user-friendly.

Still, the real win can only happen when they onboard customers by accepting their data from multiple sources quickly and efficiently.

Next One Technology, a leading Swedish construction management platform, recognized the potential of fast customer onboarding in driving digitalization early on. To harness it, Product Manager Eric Lindberg led Next’s initiative to streamline data importing with cutting-edge technology. This is where nuvo could play a key role for both Next and its customers.

From a simple tool to a powerful ERP system for the construction industry

Founded in 2014, Next has evolved from a local cloud service tool into a comprehensive ERP system serving over 2,500 customers in construction. It aims to foster growth for tradespeople and construction businesses by helping them transition from analog tools to a cloud software platform for efficient project planning, execution, and collaboration.

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As Next sought to expand its customer base and tap into new markets, they realized that the slow customer onboarding process could impact business growth. In Eric’s words: “Our onboarding specialists were spending a lot of time manually inputting customer data into our system, all while the volume of technical support requests was steadily increasing.”

Drawing from his previous role as an onboarding specialist, Eric brings first-hand insights into onboarding customers. Through this experience, he has developed a deep understanding of how streamlining customer data onboarding can help the platform deliver value more quickly. The shift began with an in-depth investigation across teams.

Complex data imports and an in-house importer slowed down customer onboarding

Next went through a long journey of trial and error to bring complex customer data onto their platform. Initially, their data onboarding process relied on two pillars:

• A large Excel template: Each customer filled out this spreadsheet in their own way, so data quality varied with every upload.
• A strict in-house importer: This CSV data import tool only supported a specific file structure and couldn’t provide enough feedback for internal teams or customers to stay alert to errors during upload.

Price lists were a particularly challenging use case. As Eric explained: “The data was so diverse and regularly changing that our onboarding specialists kept stepping in to import it for users. For extra-large price lists, containing tens of thousands of articles, we also had developers split the data into separate files or even import it directly into the database. Still, despite all that effort and time, the imported data was messy and low-quality.”

With data imports delaying customer onboarding, Next quickly put them on the agenda. The team first looked into improving the in-house data import tool but soon arrived at an eye-opening conclusion: In the long run, maintaining the internal data importer would cost more development time and resources than implementing nuvo.

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Pivoting with nuvo’s cutting-edge data import solution: From hours to minutes

Recognizing the limitations of their in-house import tool, Next began exploring the offerings in the data onboarding technology market. The team focused on finding a solution with a user-friendly interface, which makes data imports effortless for users, regardless of their digital expertise level. They also sought flexibility to upload data files from across various sources, along with capabilities like error-flagging during upload, cross-dependency checks, and data validations to ensure the best possible data quality.

After evaluating several options, Next found that German-based nuvo perfectly aligned with their needs. nuvo stood out as the ideal choice for Next with its

• Flexible Data Importer SDK: Offering AI-powered column matching, automated data cleaning and validation functions, and the possibility to write custom code to meet specific requirements.
• Ease of implementation: nuvo facilitates a seamless implementation process, making it straightforward for teams to integrate into their existing workflows.
• GDPR compliance: nuvo's front-end data processing architecture safeguards sensitive data from passing through external servers, meaning the imported data is managed in the browser on the end-user side until the import completes.
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Next integrated nuvo within two sprints, focusing initially on price list management as their most challenging use case. As teams reported a remarkable shift from hours to minutes in data import time, positive feedback led to adding more use cases over a few more sprints. With success proven across teams, they eventually implemented nuvo across all platform instances where data imports were needed.

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With nuvo seamlessly integrated into Next’s digital ecosystem, the onboarding team boosts efficiency by eliminating manual data imports. At the same time, customers reduce reliance on technical support as errors are minimized, data validated on the go, and issues resolved swiftly.

Finally, the development team doesn’t need to build a dedicated importer for each use case or create API integrations with each data source. “As spreadsheets keep their dominance in construction, nuvo ensures our flexibility to import data in any format and structure moving forward,” Eric concluded.

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About Next One Technology 

Next One Technology is a leading provider of business and project management systems tailored for construction firms. Next has 2,500+ customers and SEK 200+ million of revenues. Next integrates all aspects of construction management into a unified platform that provides real-time control of projects from early stages to finish. Next has 130+ employees and serves customers primarily in the Nordics.