Textura Corporation (Deerfield, IL, USA)  filed its S-1 with the SEC on April 5th this year.

Textura is a provider of on-demand business collaboration software solutions to the commercial construction industry. Textura’s solutions focus on facilitating collaboration between owners/developers, general contractors and subcontractors. The solutions aim to increase efficiency, enable better risk management and provide improved visibility and control of construction activities, supporting several mission-critical business processes at various stages of the construction project lifecycle.

The company is believed to be a leading example of a new generation of on-demand software solutions focused on enablement of business-to-business collaborative processes. Such solutions are by design on-demand, as they require neutral third parties to act as the platform for collaboration by multiple parties and to facilitate the exchange of data and documents.

A global $7 Trillion market

Textura addresses a large and growing market. The construction industry was an approximately $1 trillion industry in North America in 2012 and was more than $7 trillion globally in 2010, according to the most recent data available from the United States Census Bureau and “Global Construction 2020,” a study produced by Global Construction Perspectives. The construction industry also represents an important component of developed economies. It continues to be impacted in certain markets across the globe by slow economic recovery from the global financial crisis, oversupply of occupiable space, and the limited availability of credit. However, Textura believes the business outlook for the industry is strong, driven by demographics, economic growth and aging infrastructure, as well as by changing preferences and new technologies being applied to buildings and structures, which include an increased focus on environmental considerations and lower costs of operation and ownership. Textura believes the construction industry represents a large and growing market for technology solutions of all types, and is especially attractive for our solutions and growth as a result of being underpenetrated by those technology solutions that enable construction companies to collaborate with each other to operate more effectively.

A project driven revenue model

Textura market and sell their solutions to  clients through a number of different sales channels, tailored to reflect the solution and the clients they are selling to. Textura generally seek to establish an enterprise relationship with owners/developers and general contractors for their use of our solutions, particularly in the case of our CPM, PQM and GradeBeam offerings. The company has found that this requires an in-person, relationship-driven, consultative approach with a high degree of solution and domain expertise on the part of our employees. Certain of other Textura solutions in contrast are well suited to be used on a single project and do not require enterprise-wide deployment. The Submittal Exchange and Greengrade solutions in particular are primarily sold on a project-by-project basis, largely to existing customers with a high level of repeat business. In addition, sales of GradeBeam, PQM, and PlanSwift to the subcontractor community are generally transactional and reflect the lower cost and complexity of these solutions and the organizations to which they are sold. To address these markets Textura operate direct sales groups that market to, contact and support prospective clients remotely, primarily using email, webinars, telephone and other appropriate methods. Textura also have a number of distributor and reseller relationships for their PlanSwift solution in international markets.

Textura is focused on growing the business by pursuing the significant market opportunity for on-demand software collaboration solutions in the construction industry. They plan to grow the revenue by adding new clients and helping  existing clients increase the number of projects and volume of construction activity managed on their solutions. They also plan to expand the client base to include geographic regions and client segments beyond those which they currently serve.

There is without any doubt a huge optimization and productivity potential in the commercial construction industry. Although we are by no means domain experts, we all face from time to time the issues related to miscommunication in construction projects where more parties have to collaborate to deliver on specs, quality, budget and time. That very seldom happens and the cost of corrections and remediations are enormous.

There is a substantial need in the market for companies like Textura.

Source: Textura Corporation Form S-1