James Nolan, U.S. Market Director, Spotable - November 2026
Roofing is a conservative industry and for good reason. Contractors have spent years building processes that work. When a new technology comes along and asks them to change those processes, the natural reaction is often, “Why should I change something that already works?”
I get it. I’ve spent much of my career selling technology to industrial and contractor businesses and I’ve seen how hard it can be to get people to change a process they’ve used for years.
But there’s another way to look at it. What if we could keep the process and just get rid of some of the work? One of my inspirations when I think about technology and process improvement is Elon Musk. His approach is pretty simple: question every step, delete what you can, simplify what remains and then automate it. He’s also talked about adding things back after they’ve been deleted. If you never have to add something back, maybe you weren’t aggressive enough about deleting things in the first place.
I like that idea because “delete the steps” doesn’t mean the work itself shouldn’t happen. It means questioning whether every step is necessary and whether a person needs to perform every part of it. If a process has 10 steps and technology can handle steps three, five and seven, why are we still asking someone to perform all 10?
That doesn’t mean replacing people. It means giving them more time to do the parts of the job where their experience and judgment matter.
Ask why something is done a certain way and you’ll often hear: “That’s just how we do it.”
Sometimes there’s a good reason. A process may protect quality, reduce risk or make sure something doesn’t get missed. Those steps shouldn’t be eliminated just for the sake of efficiency.
But other steps exist because nobody has stopped to question them. Think about how many people and systems can touch a roofing project before the work ever begins: a lead comes in. Someone qualifies it. Information is collected. Someone visits the property or orders measurements. An estimator reviews the information. Materials are selected. A proposal is created. The salesperson explains it to the homeowner. Information may then need to be entered into another system. Every one of those steps may have a purpose. But some of them probably don’t need to happen the same way they did five or 10 years ago. And when something changes along the way, some of that work may have to be done again. That’s where I think there’s an opportunity.
Years ago, I designed and built software for the concrete subcontracting industry. A lot of the work relied on paper, phone calls and disconnected processes to manage orders and resources.
I wasn’t trying to turn concrete contractors into technology companies. I was trying to understand the process and figure out which parts actually needed a person and which could be handled by software.
That experience stuck with me. Technology doesn’t always need to add a capability. Sometimes its biggest value is removing the work required to accomplish something that still needs to get done.
Roofing has plenty of opportunities to apply the same thinking. For example, consider the importance of measurements. It helps the contractor estimate the project, order materials and plan the work. But it’s only one piece of information.
If a salesperson can get more information about a property before talking to the homeowner, that can change the conversation. If they can visualize the property and understand more about what they’re looking at before they meet the customer, they can spend less time gathering information and more time selling the project.
The point isn’t to eliminate the estimator, salesperson or project manager. Their experience is still the key part of the process. It’s about giving them better information sooner, without requiring someone to manually collect and organize it every time.
The same thing applies after the estimate. If information has already been captured, it shouldn’t have to be entered again just because it needs to move to another system. If a salesperson needs information someone else already has, there shouldn’t always have to be an email or phone call in the middle.
And it goes all the way to the quote. If the information needed to build a quote already exists, getting that quote to the customer shouldn’t have to take another day simply because people are moving information around. That’s the kind of work I’m talking about deleting.
The best technology may be the technology the contractor barely notices. We tend to think about technology as another destination: a new app, dashboard, login or system someone needs to learn. That can actually make a business less efficient.
A salesperson shouldn’t have to become a technology expert to get the information they need. An estimator shouldn’t have to learn five systems to move a job forward. And a contractor shouldn’t have to redesign the business every time a useful tool comes along.
Technology should take work away from people, not give them another job. And before buying something new, look at what you already have. Your current software may already be able to eliminate some of the inefficiencies you find. You may simply be doing things the “old” way in parts of your workflow because that’s how you’ve always done them.
I’ve seen companies buy software to automate a process that was unnecessarily complicated in the first place. They ended up doing the wrong thing faster. That’s backwards.
Question the process. Delete what you can. Simplify what’s left. Then automate.
You don’t need to rethink your entire business. Pick one process that happens over and over. Maybe it’s getting a measurement, building an estimate, creating a proposal or moving information from one system to another. Write down the steps. Then start deleting. Some steps will make perfect sense. Keep them. Others may exist simply because that’s the way you’ve always done it. Those are the ones worth looking at. Every hour a salesperson spends chasing information, re-entering data or waiting for someone else is an hour they aren’t talking to a customer. The same is true for estimators, project managers and office staff. If technology can take some of that work away, then give that time back to the people. Use it to sell, follow up, talk to customers and solve problems. Do the things that actually require experience and judgment.
You don’t need to transform the entire business. Start by removing a few annoying steps from a process your team does every day. Then see what happens.
This isn’t really an argument about buying more technology. It’s an argument for looking at the work you’re already doing a little differently. The next time you look at a process in your business, don’t start by asking what new technology you should buy. Start by looking at the process itself. What can go away? What can be
simplified? What can your existing software already handle? And where does technology make sense? You might find that you don’t need a new system at all. You might just need to stop doing something the old way. And if you do find a step that technology can handle, let it.
I’ve spent a lot of time around technology over the years. The companies that get the most out of it aren’t necessarily the ones with the most software. They’re the ones that figure out how to make their people spend less time on work that doesn’t really need them. That’s what “delete the steps” means to me. Don’t delete the work. Delete the unnecessary work.
James Nolan is the U.S. Market Director at Spotable, leading the company’s U.S. market expansion. He comes from a construction background and spent close to a decade selling AI-driven technology into industrial and blue-collar businesses. Today he works with roofing and restoration contractors across the country, helping them bring faster, more accurate property measurement into the way they already work.