Why did you choose Building Radar?

We were looking for an innovative partner for lead generation, with whom we could break new ground in the field of digitization. At the same time, as a traditional company, it was also essential for us to take our existing and proven processes into account. The Building Radar team had the perfect solution in form of a combination of both aspects: our current processes were integrated into their system, but at the same time our distribution automation was optimized.

Vitra is known for working closely with architects in the premium segment. An important purchase argument for us, therefore, was the possibility to always receive up-to-date information about the architects. We want to track the construction activity of our more than 500 core architects to stay informed whenever they are involved in a new construction project in the premium space. Architects are usually the first point of call for Vitra as they are instrumental to the client’s decisions. For this reason, it is essential for our success to know about their work as early as possible. Thanks to Building Radar, we can now experience up to three years before the start of the construction of new projects.

At the same time, however, we are always looking for new architect partners. Building Radar has given us the ability to create architect lists for marketing based on specific filter criteria such as the number of active projects or building categories. We had come to know (almost) all architects in the high-end sector. Nevertheless, we have become aware of over 200 new architects. We can now invite them to the fair in Cologne or to guided tours through our VitraHaus. At the same time, while we have updated our old list – we have identified more than 80 architects who are actually no longer active but are still receiving advertisements from us.

We have been using the platform for almost three years now. The conclusion: Building Radar is an integral part of Vitra’s day-to-day sales.

How do you work with the Building Radar Platform at Vitra?

Of course, Vitra likes to work with architects, with whom we have already gathered good experience. For each of our customers, we have created a search profile for Building Radar to keep them up-to-date. This can be further specified by size, construction phase, or location. Every search profile is created by us within 2 minutes and adjusted if necessary. This helps us not to miss any interesting construction projects anymore. Previously, we had to use different platforms to enable large-scale geographic coverage. Thanks to Building Radar, we now have projects on just a single platform worldwide.

What benefits have you experienced from working with Building Radar?

Building Radar helped us with:

(1) not to miss any project in our region anymore.
(2) making it easier to handle specific requests (e.g. to provide an overview of the Fortune 500 companies’ construction projects).
(3) better allocate our marketing budget of € 5 million using Building Radar Analytics.

Which further steps will you take to improve your sales process?

In February 2018 Building Radar introduced the new Article Search. Since then, we have received completely automated notifications about new construction projects from various local newspapers and specialist magazines. The exciting thing is: Where previously our research team had to go through various local newspapers consuming manual labor to come across new projects, we now save up to four hours a day of precious time and can focus on the lead qualification instead.
In the past, we visited various construction sites ourselves to see how it progresses and to learn more about the architect. These rides have now disappeared, as Building Radar has come up with an automated solution that keeps us up to date. This is certainly a unique selling point of Building Radar!
In addition, we learn even faster from projects, long before the details become widely known. We will use this competitive advantage even more in the future. After all, we want to expand our market position continuously. At the same time, Building Radar will actively support us in the future as well.