Meet the Pro

Caleb Porche owns Elevate Design+Build in Louisville, Kentucky—a turnkey remodeling company offering in-house interior design, custom cabinetry, and all construction work. With stunning projects and a talented team, Elevate was creating beautiful spaces for clients. But behind the scenes, they faced a challenge that threatened their growth and efficiency.

The Problem

Before discovering Materio, Elevate struggled with disjointed information management that created frustration for everyone involved:

"The problem we were having was keeping all of our information for jobs in different locations and not having one streamlined source or location for all of our information," Caleb explains.

This fragmentation created significant operational challenges:

"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. And being able to have everything in one place on one screen was not an option for anything that we had experienced."

For a company managing complex renovation projects, this information disconnection was causing real problems. As a business that opened during the pandemic with remote work, they had cobbled together multiple platforms that kept things disjointed even after they returned to the office.

With Materio as a Partner

When Elevate discovered Materio, they found more than just a software platform—they found a partner that understood the unique challenges of design-build firms.

The Materio platform offered something different: a single, visual system where floor plans, selections, approvals, communication, and financials could all live together.

Elevate's plan was simple: consolidate everything in one place using a visual system that keeps everyone on the same page—from internal team members to trade partners to clients.

The implementation involved:

1. Uploading floor plans as the visual foundation for all project information

2. Creating a unified system for selections and approvals

3. Enabling contextual communication directly on plans and products

4. Connecting financial information for real-time tracking

The Transformation

The adoption of Materio transformed operations at Elevate Design+Build:

"We have streamlined our process with Materio by keeping everything in one place. It's eliminated the need for 2 or 3 different softwares that we were previously using and it's streamlined our communication both internally, externally with our subcontractors and our vendors, but also with our homeowners as well."

Specifically, Materio solved numerous critical pain points:

Better client experience: "Several of our repeat clients have commented how much more user-friendly the platform is compared to the previous program we were using... 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.'"

Streamlined trade partner communication: "From the construction side, the interactive plan thing is super helpful. Most of our subcontractors and trade partners, particularly in the mechanical trades, most of them have an iPad that they carry with them, and so just being able to show a QR code to them... it brings them directly to, say, the plumber gets a link that goes directly to the plumbing section with all the specifications."

Reduced on-site supervision time: "It shortened my time on site. It's lessened the amount of time that I need to spend, and then, 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."

Real-time cost tracking: "We have our guys on site upload receipts through Materio as expenses, which keeps our estimated versus actual up to date in real-time, and also saves our bookkeeper a ton of effort."

Eliminated endless trips back to the office: "It's taken us from 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... now it's just a simple QR code. Scan it. The guys on site have the information that they need."

Smoother selection process: "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,' and then commenting on those saves a lot of time and emailing back and forth."

Success

Today, Elevate Design+Build operates with a new level of efficiency and professionalism. The benefits to the company go beyond just time savings:

Financial benefits: "Materio not only offered us a monthly cost savings just in the cost of the actual software... because it brought 3 programs into one for us. That instantly saved us some money there as well, 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."

Time savings equals financial improvement: "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. Materio has brought all of that into one, and it's saving us from a just dollars and cents perspective, but also saving us a lot of time as well."

The platform has become so integral to their operations that Caleb describes it as "like a third employee." With Materio handling the organizational heavy lifting, Elevate can focus on what they do best: creating beautiful spaces and delivering exceptional client experiences.

For homeowners working with Elevate, the transformation is clear—a more transparent process, faster decisions, and ultimately a smoother path to the space of their dreams.

"It's just made life so much easier, made the build process so much easier, as well as the design and selection process. We couldn't be happier with the product."