What are we trying to do and why?
The survey industry is very specialized, large, and can be somewhat slow to change. Survey technology is rapidly advancing, and there is often a gap between customers knowledge, perceived requirements and actual need. Every surveyors' business would improve from being able to concentrate less on marketing and more on execution. A single destination to match customers with surveyors would help both. Even better if there was a way to better organize the customer project requirements in a way that makes it easier for surveyors to price and manage the projects once won, while simultaneously giving the customer a better experience and end product. An easier process and improved outcomes for the end customers will stimulate an increase in the overall industry.
We are trying to create a series of marketplaces to eventually encompass all aspects of the industry:
- General Survey Market: (Customers to Surveyors) - DONE
- Subcontractors Market: (Surveyors to Surveyors) - DONE
- Used Equipment Market: (buy and sell used survey equipment) - DONE
- Data Marketplace: (Surveyors to both Surveyors and Customers - buy and sell company owned survey data, from raw collection data to finished reports) - January / February
- New Equipment Market: (Surveyors to Equipment Manufacturers) - Q1
- Survey Job Board: (Survey companies to practitioners) - Q2
Combine this with a newsletter & webinars about the industry, and hopefully it will make all participants jobs easier and help to increase the overall size of the industry.
Who are we?
Last year, our team got together with the intention of creating exactly this kind of platform. We envisioned a hub for the survey community - hence the name. Our small team is comprised of friends from the survey industry and computer science consultants. SurveyHub is a blend of the two disciplines.
How do we make money from this if it is a free service?
The survey industry is very fragmented, even though it is reasonably large. The New Equipment Marketplace will aggregate the customers for all the manufacturers that sell to the surveyors. We aim to charge the manufacturers a reasonable subscription to be able to have a new, focused, marketing channel and be able to answer the requests from the surveyors. All the other services will be completely free to use, with no subscriptions transaction fees.
Once we have a robust enough market, we also will have data that will be very useful to the industry at large, without compromising anyone's individual data. Ever want to know what technology type or survey type requests are growing fastest in Idaho? Interested in what requirements are actually used by asset owners in Germany for utility mapping? Data reports offered at a reasonable price to the surveyors could be invaluable for strategic planning.
What's next?
We are just starting out. Any marketplace is only useful if there are enough users. The faster we get adoption, the faster we can build out the rest of the platform. Several of our features came from direct requests from users. Let us know what else you want and we will put it in the development pipeline.
-The SurveyHub Team
