Meet the Pro

Caleb Porche is the owner of Elevate Design Build in Louisville, Kentucky, offering clients a turnkey remodeling experience with in-house interior design, custom cabinetry, and all construction work under one roof. As a design-build firm that opened during the pandemic, they faced unique challenges operating remotely while trying to deliver exceptional results.

The Problem

Like many design-build firms, Elevate Design Build was juggling multiple software platforms to manage their projects—and it was creating chaos. Caleb describes the main challenge they couldn't solve:

"The problem we were having before we discovered Materio was keeping all of our information for jobs in different locations and not having one streamlined source for all of our information. Client communication was really great on some platforms, contractor communication was really great on other platforms. Internal communication was not great on any of them."

This fragmentation created real operational headaches.

"Because we opened during the pandemic and we were doing everything remotely, we experienced a lot of frustration and headaches in having things in multiple locations because we weren't all together in the office,"

Even after returning to an office setting, the old disjointed systems continued to create stress and inefficiency. The construction side was particularly challenging:

"We were printing off job books, and every time something had to be updated, one of us is running back to the office, printing it, taking it back to the job site... The electrician needs this. It's not in the binder. We're driving back to the shop, printing something else off, driving it back out to site."

With Materio as a Partner

The transformation began when Caleb's team embraced Materio's capabilities.

"Having all of those frustrations relieved and those stresses relieved of having to look for multiple things in multiple different places has been just an absolute game changer for us and has been a stress relief in a major, major way."

The Floor Plan Mapping™ revolutionized their job site management:

"Most of our subcontractors and trade partners, particularly in the mechanical trades, most of them have an iPad that they carry with them. So just being able to show a QR code to them on my iPad, or even just print it on the wall of the job, and it brings them directly to say the plumber gets a link that goes directly to the plumbing section with all the specifications."

Even their repeat clients noticed the difference. Caleb shares:

"We had a repeat client that had used our previous software and they did not like it at all, would not log into it, wouldn't interact with it at all. And then switching over to Materio... they logged in, and they were like, 'This is incredible. This is so much more user friendly.'"

The Transformation

The efficiency gains have been remarkable.

"It's shortened my time on site. It's lessened the amount of time that I need to spend. If I can't be on site, they can call me, and we can pull up Materio on both of our ends and have a discussion about the questions that they might have."

The design process accelerated too:

"Getting decisions from homeowners is much quicker because they get an email saying, 'Hey, there's this new option available, or there's an updated set of plans, or there's a new rendering for you to look at.'"

For some clients, they've eliminated showroom visits entirely:

"We've been working with some clients that don't want to go to a supply house and look at faucets, for instance. They just say, 'We trust you, show us a couple of options in Materio, and we'll select from there.'"

Success

The results speak for themselves. Materio has become like "a third employee" for their small team.

"It's taken us from printing off job books... to now just a simple QR code. Scan it. The guys on site have the information that they need and it saves us a ton of driving around town, a ton of my time."

Financially, the impact has been significant:

"Materio not only offered us a monthly cost savings just in the cost of the actual software... it brought three programs into one for us. That instantly saved us some money there, but even the cost of the software itself was less than what we were paying for one of the softwares that we were previously using."

The time savings translate directly to profitability:

"Time is money in this industry. So saving time means saving money. And one of the biggest ways that we lose time is in miscommunication and searching for things, searching for answers that are already there."

Perhaps most impressively, Materio enabled them to work with clients they never even met in person:

"We did a job for a couple out of Chicago, and I met them the day we handed them the keys back at the end of the project for the first time... because of the scale of the projects that we do, most of our homeowners move out during the duration of the project. So Materio has been a huge tool in helping us be able to have just the peace of mind from a client perspective."

Today, Elevate Design Build has

"streamlined our process with Materio by keeping everything in one place. It's eliminated the need for two or three other different softwares that we previously were using and it's streamlined our communication both internally, externally, with our subcontractors and our vendors, but also with our homeowners as well... We couldn't be happier with the product."