MDX Excavating Finds SharpeSoft Makes the Cut

The Story

Founded in 1994 by William Dedden, MDX Incorporated is an excavation and siteworks focused construction company offering extensive services to the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky areas. Championing a culture of safety and integrity, MDX Incorporated has established itself as a trusted provider for its general contractor, commercial and industrial owner, developer, and government agency partners.

Current head of the company and primary estimator, Eric Dedden, spoke with SharpeSoft about MDX’s experience.

P.O. Box 313 Milford, OH 45150

The Challenge

While comfortable operating in the niche established for themselves thanks to MDX’s hard work and loyal customer base, Eric Dedden had his eyes on increasing his company’s productivity to the next step. To do that, a step back was required in order to properly address his most overworked resource: himself.

“I’m 44 now, and I’ve been working construction since I was 18 and out of college. I worked my way through college locally, and then we got some digitizing software that helped us figure quantities and do cuts and fill. I did it the old fashioned way by doing a hand takeoff. Eventually, we got some better software for doing takeoffs, but never had any accompanying sister software to help me out with estimating.”

As the sole estimator at the time, Eric recognized that the current state of affairs couldn’t hold if MDX was to achieve forward momentum. The ability to be able to rely on an easy-to-use system, which could further be taught to any potential new hires, was paramount. For that, he turned to SharpeSoft.

Previous Solutions

With no prior experience with dedicated estimating software, the brunt of Eric’s efforts went to deciding which solution would work most appropriately for MDX.

“I was looking at several different pieces of software. Bid2Win, SharpeSoft.Those two were the top two that we were looking at. For years we were looking at Bid2Win. But honestly, for the money they were trying to charge us, compared to the stuff that SharpeSoft offered, you guys were similar in pricing and features. But I didn’t get the good butterfly feeling that I got when I talked to your team about your software and your support. So we decided to go with SharpeSoft because of the research that we did, the cost savings, and the benefits were just better. Bid2Win has a few features that you guys don’t have, and vice versa, but in the end I felt that the better software was bought and being used by us now. We have a lot of different people that we come across saying you should go with this or that software. I did my own research, and I figured since I’m going to be the one using it first anyways, who cares what anyone else’s opinion is left or right. It’s a matter of if I can do it and figure it out, then I can help train the next person we hire.”

Not only does SharpeSoft offer a flexible training regimen based on the needs of a user’s company, we are confident that our pricing structure is one of the most competitive on the market today. However, a quality product means nothing if the team behind it doesn’t care about maintaining that quality, which is why SharpeSoft is committed to serving with excellence.

Getting in Contact

“There is a local company who uses you guys. I talked to a few people over at Nelson Stark, which is one of the biggest site guys in Cincinnati. They had mentioned SharpeSoft, and that helped teeter us towards using you.”

While SharpeSoft has been honored to receive the Top Performer Award from SourceForge several times in a row, word of mouth from trusted associates is still the premiere method for business decision making, and one we love to hear about!

Interaction with SharpeSoft

“Andy and Johnathan were really good to work with. During the learning process after training, when I had a question or when I was getting frustrated, Johnathan or Andy would respond in a reasonable amount of time.”

“I actually got to know Johnathan a little bit more on a personal level. He would help me out, telling me what I needed to do or offering to walk through it together on a call. And to me, that went a long way, which is another reason why I’m glad I made the decision that I did. I wasn’t just left flapping in the wind, I was able to talk to Johnathan or Andy and get an answer in a reasonable amount of time. Sometimes I’d even be right in the middle of something, and I’d send a message to the support team, and within less than an hour usually I’d get an answer. Everyone has been very accommodating to get me up and running.”

“One thing was whenever I wanted to add a new bid item it would go to the bottom of the page when I wanted it to go to the top, so Johnathan showed me how to do that. Then he showed me a trick with the toggle, how you can copy and paste an old bid to a new bid and tweak it to save time.”

“I would also just say that I hope you guys continue to grow and make things easier for me as we move on with technical improvements and whatnot. As you guys make my life easier and us more productive, then I can maybe help with questions or things that I’d like to see added or changed.”

SharpeSoft believes in the construction industry as more than just the exchange of money for a service, but a mutual exchange of professionalism. The Estimator was built by estimators, for estimators; a fact that can only remain true so long as we meet the changing demands of the men and women in the field. SharpeSoft is happy to say it has users like MDX!

How has SharpeSoft Helped

“It's helped me probably speed up my time spent on estimates by at least 30 or 40% in the few months since we've started using Estimator. Back in August we started using your software, it's November now, and I've used it on ten projects. Out of the ten projects I think we've got contracts on two with one floating. But I'd say out of 10 jobs, I've got half of them. Whether they were awarded to me or not, the contracts were ours, and I'd say that SharpeSoft helped us out with that. It definitely helps speed up the process that I used to do.”

“When you get somebody like myself who's in here doing it all the time, since I've actually gone out and installed it in the field, that's kind of like the perfect estimator, right? Somebody that's done the work, gotten their boots dirty, and knows how much the guys in the field can do. But you have to get that knowledge into a database like yours. There's also a lot of things I didn't account for when I was bidding. Whether we ate it or didn't figure it out, now I can go back and say we have this many manhours figured, I have this much material figured, etc. We did that to a point, but not as scientifically as SharpeSoft does. So now I can go back and say that I've got 30,000 dollars in labor. Before I'd kind of guess a little bit, but now it's more of a scientific number based on equipment hours and labor hours and raw material. SharpeSoft lets us dissect those costs and show them to the job holders. Before, I did the best that I could to get this work, but I couldn't easily go back into a program like the Estimator and pull it out.”

Would you Recommend SharpeSoft

“Absolutely. I would especially recommend Johnathan and Andy to work with. I would also like to specifically shout out Simeon on the sales side of things, he definitely played a big part in us deciding to move forward with SharpeSoft.”