🕵️ Competitor intel — Fieldflo demo to Makki (2026-09-08)

Source: Fathom recording "MAKKI // FIELDFLO", 43 min, dated Sep 8 2026. https://fathom.video/share/xnqL-oqucj4sEyVRiS9yfjkQ-vkUkp6C Full transcript pulled to workspace-eazylife\_fathom_dump.txt (39k chars). Everything below is quoted or directly derived from that transcript — nothing inferred beyond what was said.

⚠️ Client-confidential. This concerns Makki's buying process and a real quote. It stays in the EazyLife/Makki walled workspace. Do not copy the numbers into the Obsidian vault (vault rule: deliverable status only, never client financials).

Who was on the call

Fieldflo cold-called the office. The owner took it because "we've been trying to look for a program to use… we have tried a couple programs that just… we found hard for our workers and our managers to use on site."

THE PRICE (the headline)

• ~$15,000 per year, for under 15 users, including the QuickBooks Online integration.
• User count = supervisors/foremen/PMs/office admins only. Daily labourers are NOT billed — they verify time and safety by text without ever logging in.
• The owner's counts: ~10 project managers, ~80 employees, and he'd want it "across five companies that we have."
• Optional add-on: $4 per employee per month for 600+ Got Safety training videos with auto-quiz and auto-certificate.

Where the deal actually stands

• The owner, verbatim: "It seems like a perfect fit for us, to be completely honest with you… there's nothing I could think of that we would need added."
• Budget is already approved. "They have approved to spend money on a new [system] because our current system is holding us back."
• Next step: the owner pitches it to the VP, then a second full demo with the whole team, likely Friday (their standing team-meeting day).
• Fieldflo is sending: orientation/training materials + this recording, and a fixed SMS test.

What Fieldflo actually is

Nine-year-old vertical SaaS built specifically for demolition and asbestos/hazmat abatement contractors. Claims: hundreds of abatement/demo contractors, Northstar (~40 offices) as a client, used by "eight of the top 10 on the ENR list", "over 20,000 supervisors log in a day."

Positioning line they lead with: "there is actually a solution tailored specifically for our line of work… we're kind of the niche in the construction world and been overlooked by technology."

The feature surface they demoed

1. Dashboards — live "today's active projects" as foremen clock crews in; bid-vs-actual per cost code in real time; certs nearing expiry; overtime alerts at 32 hrs; T&M and change orders.
2. Role & permission gating — per-employee, per-tab. Demoed giving the accountant payroll-only access. "What you're able to see is not necessarily what your supervisor is able to see."
3. QuickBooks Online integration — pulls employees and projects across, avoids duplicate entry. CSV import as fallback.
4. Certificate management — the piece the owner reacted hardest to. Every employee gets a QR code for their hard hat; an inspector scans it and sees active certs on the spot. Renewals archive the old cert forever. The owner: "I haven't seen anybody else incorporate that into their program."
5. Field app — foreman hits "Start Day", the right dailies auto-appear (timesheet, JHA/pre-job safety, inspections, containment logs). Speech-to-text in any language. Each labourer gets a text to verify their hours and confirm they understood the safety meeting.
6. Cert enforcement at the timesheet — if a worker without the right cert is added to a crew, the supervisor is warned and the office is emailed.
7. Safety & incident system — near-miss/stop-work/injury reporting, full claim walkthrough, OSHA reports, inspections with assignable corrective actions that stay on a board until fixed.
8. Equipment/inventory — QR codes on assets, scan-to-inspect without logging in, rental call-off reminders, loadout lists, project inventory report.
9. Project book — scope, permits with expiry alerts, mandatory certs per project, cost codes, waste/hauler/landfill tracking, closeout reports.
10. CRM + proposal builder — job walks, proposals sent from the platform, won/lost tracking. Plus a brand-new takeoff & estimating module for abatement.
11. Scheduling/dispatch — Gantt charts, per-employee schedules texted out.
12. Payroll approval — weekly totals per employee/project/cost code, multi-approver sign-off trail, spreadsheet out to the accountant.

Their weaknesses (observed on the call, not guessed)

1. No trial. No demo login. the owner asked directly; Dan said no — "if we just gave you a blank platform, there'd be no data in there." You cannot touch it before you sign. This is the single biggest opening.
2. Their live demo broke. the owner never got the SMS flow to work — "when I click it, it keeps saying I'm not connected to the app and the link is not valid." It stayed broken for the rest of the call.
3. It's a rented product, not theirs. Generic platform, their logo dropped on it. Feature requests go into a suggestion box: "submit a feature and idea."
4. Upsells already surfacing in the first demo (training videos, estimating module).
5. Human-dependent onboarding — "the only time Fieldflo fails is if you don't answer our calls or show up to the trainings."
6. Zero AI. In 43 minutes, not one agent, not one thing that does work on its own. It is a very good system of record. Someone still has to do all the work inside it.

Where they're strong and we're not (be honest)

• Nine years of compliance depth in this exact trade. Cert QR codes, containment logs, JHA libraries, OSHA reporting, waste manifests. We have none of that.
• Real reference logos at scale.
• The field-app side is genuinely built for the crew — talk into it, any language, take pictures.
• Their whole pitch answers the same "role-gated, only the right people see the right thing" need that is The owner's #1 ask — and QuickBooks Online, which is The owner's actual accounting stack.

What this means for EazyLife

1. We now have a real price anchor for the first time. A demolition/abatement contractor of Makki's size will pay $15k/year for software with no AI in it. That is the number to price against — and it is the answer to the pricing blank on slide 13 that has been open all week.
2. Makki is actively buying right now, with approved budget. Whatever we do for the owner needs to be in front of the decision-makers before the Friday VP demo, or the slot gets filled for a year.
3. Don't fight them on compliance features. We would lose. Fight on the axis they have nothing on: their product is a place to type things in; ours does the work. Fieldflo gives you better paperwork. A hive chases the invoices, prices the job, and reconciles the costs.
4. Steal the two demo moves that landed: the hard-hat QR code (the owner's "wow" moment) and showing role-gating live by toggling one person's access on screen.
5. Beat them on the thing they refused: they will not let you touch it before you sign. The owner can already click through his own portal. That is a live advantage we should be leaning on hard.

✅ ANSWERED 2026-09-08 by Omar — "the owner is the owner"

The person on that call is our own client. the owner took a cold call from a competitor, sat through a 43-minute demo, and said "it seems like a perfect fit for us… nothing I could think of that we would need added." He reports to a VP and a full team demo is penciled for Friday.

What that changes:

• This is no longer market research. It is our client shopping, right now, with approved budget, for the exact problem we are building for him.
• The Friday demo is a live deadline, not a hypothetical.
• His "perfect fit" line is a spec, not a threat — he just told us, out loud and in detail, every feature that would make him sign. That is a free requirements document.
• He never mentioned our portal on the call. Either it is not front of mind, or he does not connect it to this need. Both are fixable, and both are Omar's to raise, not ours (RULE #1 — we do not contact the client).