The future of construction looks at digitalization

Digitalization, circular economy, sustainability. These are needs and objectives that apply to all productive sectors, without exception, and will serve to optimize processes, preserve resources, improve everyone's work

The construction sector is no exception, perhaps one of the most 'traditionalist', linked to obsolete technologies.

The push for modernization, however, also comes from the construction supply chain, to eliminate a specific bottleneck, the one created in the relationship between manufacturers of construction materials and building retailers.

In addition, the fluctuation in the prices of materials and the consequent price increases that have poured rain down on building distribution have created that perhaps decisive push in trying to solve the problem of the language between distribution and production, as never before in any historical era before this one.

Federcomated, the National Federation of Cement, Bricks and Building Construction Materials Dealers, Sercomated, a company that provides services to distributors of building materials, and some important stakeholders in construction production and distribution now consider the digital transition of their sector to be postponed.

“We need a tool that allows operators to communicate with that speed and precision that the sector, and especially the largest and most structured companies, cannot do without to avoid losing additional precious points of marginality,” says Luca Berardo, president of Sercomated.

The synergy between Edilporto, Archiseller and Sercomated has made it possible to develop DPrice, a supply chain project that consists of a common standard for the digitization of price lists of construction materials and a platform through which manufacturers can share them in real time with retailers.

DPrice is an electronic track, shared in an inclusive way with distributors and building manufacturers, it is a 'no data entry' system that makes all the data homogeneous and guarantees the correctness and completeness of the data.

Each manufacturer converts their price list into the standard format and chooses to join the sharing system, validating their price list and making it available to retailers, through the platform. Retailers, enabled at different levels, can download the manufacturers' lists

By standardizing the price lists and centralizing their census, manufacturers and retailers will save time, have homogeneity of data, greater certainty of their reliability, will implement economies of scale thanks to the reduction of administrative sales costs, they will drastically reduce errors by avoiding subsequent corrections.

Retailers can download the price list in csv or purchase it in their client, always having the updated version available and, for the first time, with the prices validated by the manufacturers, so immediately certain and effective.

In summary, DPrice provides a common language between production and distribution for the exchange of data and information, it is a standard for the market, which can be consulted by retailers to search and compare products with reference not only to price but also to all other characteristics. And that's not all: once up and running, the route will be enriched with information uploaded as a corollary of the

DPrice is today an indispensable tool for the competitiveness of companies in the construction sector.