We are so excited to have been featured in a Microsoft customer case study about how they helped support our start-up operations!

Start-up construction firm Industrialized Construction Group (ICG) needed technology to support its five-person team and business operations from day one but had limited resources. ICG used Microsoft 365 to set up its entire operations, from budgeting in Excel to creating branded templates in Word and PowerPoint to managing emails in Outlook. Additionally, ICG used Power BI from day one to visualize data for its flagship product, Teams as a hybrid communication and file sharing hub with staff and customers, and Copilot to reduce writing time by more than half.
A construction industrial revolution
Industrialized Construction Group (ICG) is shaking up the construction industry by bringing a manufacturing mindset to transform the design and construction of buildings. The firm launched in early 2024 as an offshoot from an engineering firm. With seasoned veterans from the architecture, engineering, construction, and manufacturing industries, ICG helps developers, continuous build owners, and contractors transition from traditional construction methodologies to revolutionary industrialized construction processes. “Construction is at the precipice of its industrial revolution and it’s exciting to be a part of it,” says Nick Masci, Principal & Co-Founder at ICG. “This is what drove us to launch ICG.”
“We define ‘industrialized construction’ as the application of manufacturing methods and techniques to the built environment,” says Masci. Industrialized construction challenges the idea that construction should involve separate parts coming together, and instead proposes that a whole room or wall could arrive at a site prebuilt. Masci continues, “Rather than having every little thing delivered to the job site in a box, what if we could deliver an entire hospital wall with its attachments or whole bathroom pods with toilet paper holders and towel rack.” Its flagship product, the Industrialized Construction Maturity Assessment (ICMA)©, is an in-depth company and industry performance rating system to help companies elevate their performance of construction project partners and avoid project risks like labor shortages, delays, and more.
Finding the right solutions for a start-up
“Going from a large firm to a start-up has been extremely gratifying strategically, especially having the ability to create and manage a brand aligned with our vision,” says Melissa McEwen, Principal & Co-founder at ICG. “But from an operational perspective, it’s challenging to find appropriate solutions for all of our administrative needs without overloading ourselves with expenses and tools.” And what are those needs? From a client management perspective, it includes proposals, budgeting, invoices, delivering training and providing simulations. Or they could include business management tasks like marketing, internal communications, cash management, forecasting, and data analytics. The team needed a solution that could give them confidence in completing all the back-office functions required for the business, budget time correctly, and set targets for revenue and probability. And they needed it quickly, as ICG had clients in its first week of business and required invoicing, project management, and reporting tools.
Accessible and trusted technology
But starting a new firm didn’t mean abandoning trusted technology. The ICG team’s familiarity with Microsoft tools made Microsoft 365 for Business a smart choice. “We chose Microsoft 365 so we could all be in the same environment and leverage learning,” says Masci. “We can all work together in the same files and Teams posts, assign tasks, and split work easily.” Additionally, ICG uses Teams with their customers to manage the client experience and share information and files. From time of purchase, ICG had Microsoft 365 up and running in less than three hours.
Since ICG brought along customers from its previous firm, the company used Teams, Outlook, and OneDrive to transfer those customer files seamlessly. “Being able to port from one team’s environment to another cross-business was a game changer for us,” says Melissa McEwen, Principal & Co-founder at ICG. Once set up, ICG went full speed ahead with Microsoft tools. “It took us longer to pick our name than it did to get started with Microsoft 365,” says Sally Mizell, Principal & Co-founder. The company uses PowerPoint and Word to create templates for proposal letters and conference content, Excel for exporting data to PowerBI for advanced analytics, and Lists for managing the sales pipeline and exporting to Power BI. “Having everything in Microsoft 365 makes finding information fast and easy,” says Masci.
Reducing time constraints and increasing operational efficiency
ICG needed analytics and reporting tools to help clients see improvement trends and provide a basis for further investments. Excel and Power BI have been crucial for the Industrialized Construction Maturity Assessment (ICMA). Power BI helps ICG understand customer project health, track budgets against actual revenue, and see utilization rates. “Power BI allows us to see overall utilization as a company and understand where we have the capacity to grow,” says Mizell. It’s also how the company manages and shares insights from its Industrialized Construction Maturity industry database. The assessment offers data-driven insights into a construction company’s operational performance. It is both a benchmark and performance scorecard examining processes, behaviors, skills, and systems to deliver actionable intel needed to shift from traditional to industrialized construction. ICG provides benchmarking data, insights, and recommendations within the Power BI platform for a readable and visually engaging presentation. Power BI even allows for owners and developers to make comparisons with companies across the construction industry based on segment, region, type, and more.
With employees spread across the country, Teams has been essential for remote communication, acting as a central repository for files and an information hub. “The use of Teams as a real-time communication hub within our tenant and across our clients’ tenants increases our speed of delivery by 50% and helps us to model the visibility and transparency the construction industry needs,” says McEwen. The ICG team has taken full advantage of customizations in Teams by updating icons for Teams threads with icons related to the topic of conversation. For example, conversations with electricians use an electric plug logo to creatively, clearly, and quickly bring team members' attention to the right conversation and appropriate files.
Additionally, Power BI, Excel, and Planner have all helped get data into a consumable format to better understand cash flow, utilization of resources, and travel schedules. “As a startup that’s not ready to scale an enterprise accounting system or project management system, Microsoft products serve as a creative way to create a customer relationship management system,” says McEwen.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 has also played a huge role in streamlining writing tasks, from writing meeting recaps to writing emails to helping the team write standard copy for proposals. “Copilot does a great job of helping us stay productive and improving clarity and structure in our writing,” says Masci. Copilot can even help with company strategy by offering suggestions for what can come next when given prompts about the ICMA and a description of the business. “It’s really starting to think like us and give us a starting point that might help us develop our Maturity Assessment tool later,” says Masci. With Copilot, writing proposals takes 30 minutes, a huge improvement from the three hours it took before implementation. Additionally, finishing customer reports takes less time and fewer people, from three people and eight hours to two people and three hours.
Growing the firm with Microsoft tools
ICG is focused on scaling to meet its mission of leading the construction industry into a new era of excellence. It sees AI playing an important role across the client journey from sales to client services, alongside and within its current Microsoft suite. Copilot is already helping ICG create crucial internal and client-facing work in less time so the team can reach more customers than before. “Our work must scale to an audience and customer base that is 1,000 times larger than it is today,” says Masci. “We want the suite of Microsoft products to not only grow with us, but to also anticipate our needs.”
Find out more about ICG Build on LinkedIn.