R&D Report: Textura

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CFMA members may have wondered what happened to our fellow member Herb Brownett. Herb is now lead business development manager for Textura, a Chicago-based service provider that has developed a web-based payment portal for general contractors, owners, and subcontractors.

BCG recently visited with the new company, and learned more about this new service. Paid for on a per transaction basis, Textura’s service is designed for companies that want to streamline the draw request process, including document and lien waiver collection and subcontractor payments. It is currently stand-alone from a company’s accounting system, although interfaces have been developed. Textura’s development partners include a bank which is helping them process the ACH transactions and acting as a trust for the transactions and a security product that is helping them encrypt the digit signature.

A general contractor using the Textura portal would e-mail notices to their subs asking them to sign on to the site and enter payment requests for the current month. Once all payment requests are received and approved, the owner’s draw request is automatically prepared, with overrides of course, and forwarded with all necessary documents. Once they remit payment to the GC, the subs’ lien waivers are electronically collected and all subcontractor payments are automatically made via EFT or check.

Based in the Chicago area, Textura is privately held and is adequately capitalized; they have an impressive list of clients. The portal is a clean design with impressive functions. The product somewhat overlaps with the Subcontract Management application of the ERP, but it better streamlines document collection. BCG made a few usability recommendations during the company’s demo and discussed with the Textura developers the complexity of ERP interfaces; but in our final analysis, Textura has a service worthy of consideration, and in our view is a company to watch.