Exactal recently appointed James Gibbs as their new Sales Manager for the UK and Ireland. Prior to working for Exactal, James worked in sales and account management roles. Irish building magazine spoke to James about his appointment, industry views, CostX, and Exactal’s plans.
Telling us why he chose to work at Exactal, James said “I was very impressed with the passion displayed by our Managing Director Steve Dousie. With that type of motivation and the product being as good as it is, the potential growth of the company was quite compelling. Also, I was keen to work for a market leader, and CostX is certainly on its way to being that.”
He has worked in sales and account management roles, and we asked him to give us some details. He said,” Previous to my role at Exactal I spent over four years working for Excitech who are a platinum partner of Autodesk and the largest UK reseller. I started there as an office based account manager and was eventually promoted into the field sales team. I managed a number of accounts across the construction space. This included architects, structural engineers, as well as clients and some manufacturers. It was here I learnt about BIM and its benefits, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time here.”
Describing Exactal’s product range and services, he said “Our flagship product is CostX, which is a measuring and estimating tool rolled into one. The product can be scaled down to maximise its cost-effectiveness to your business (i.e. 2D/3D and takeoff or estimating). We also offer full software training. This can be held onsite or online to offer customer flexibility. We also offer tailored consultancy days to maximise your productivity with CostX.”
We asked James to describe his duties as Sales Manager and his goals. “My role is to grow our customer base as well as manage some of our existing clients. Therefore I meet with new customers to discuss their requirements and current pain points and look at how CostX can solve some of these. I also look to meet with our existing customers to ensure that the implementation and take-up has been successful and help identify future requirements moving forward. My main goal here is to help establish CostX as the go-to software in quantity surveying and ensure that our customers are completely satisfied with using CostX within their practices.”
He is interested in the digitisation of the construction industry. “I think it is absolutely fascinating and long overdue. When you consider the manufacturing industry has been using digital prototyping for years to streamline production costs and build better products, it’s almost unthinkable that it’s taken the construction industry so long to move forward. Saying this, I think the interest and take-up has been good and providing the various software vendors/resellers/providers keep innovating their offerings and more importantly help to implement their software with customers, I think this will increase dramatically. Finally, I think it’s vital that clients are made aware of the benefits of a BIM workflow. After all, the biggest cost saving of working with BIM is within the building lifecycle rather than the design and build.”
Speaking of Exactal’s presence in Ireland, he said “I am looking to ensure that we have a regular presence in Ireland to ensure that our customers here are able to discuss their requirements with us and also see what CostX can do. I try to maximise my time on every visit by seeing as many customers over the days we are here. To that end I will be looking to visit again towards the end of February 2017. If any of your readers would like to get something arranged please get in touch!”
James is a follower of CitA’s work and hopes to attend their events in 2017. “Since attending the Irish BIM Innovation Awards, I have been looking into the brilliant work that CitA do and looking at how Exactal can be part of this moving forward. Bringing new technology into the construction market is absolutely vital and I hope we can support CitA into the future with this.”
James can be reached using the following contact information:
jgibbs@exactal.com / 01 901 4844 / +44 (0) 7495 194149
Exactal sponsored the Construction Category Award, which was won by JJ Rhatigan, at the 2016 Irish BIM Innovation Awards. You can read more about this in this issue in our Irish BIM Innovation Awards coverage.
This article first appeared in Irish building magazine. Click here to read the entire issue
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