We are a data service provider. In other words, we capture data for 3rd party companies. We enjoy using DD however, it has one major flaw. Our customers can’t access the data without buying a subscription.
Therefore, we rely on exporting data and for them to, in turn, hopefully import it into their systems. This creates a massive stumbling block when trying to convert them to aerial solutions and seems to us, to be counter productive.
We need a system where our customers can access the tools that we can through our business account. Even if there were to be a charge per map - similar to GCP’s fee.
Others such as propeller offer this as standard. In the UK, Pix4D seems to be the partner of choice with most operators we speak with not using DD. One of the most commonly stated reasons is the lack of access for their customers.
Our clients don’t want the DD flight tools but they do want to be able to inspect the building, see the stockpile, view the video in the account, make annotations etc.
This question has been asked before. If DD intends to gain a competitive edge, this would certainly be a great starting point.
If you are doing a substantial amount of work the Enterprise functionality is beyond worth it. That is if you need Editors/Analysts outside of your company. Otherwise just share the Links.
Business plan. Will probably do in excess of 100 site visits this year. DD told us that we could not give editor/analyst access outside the company and that they would have to buy their own account. Therefore the minimum each client has to pay is £2,700 for the year for one licence. All have refused stating that this would be one of the most costly softwares they use.
@Bjorn Hi Bjorn, what data are you intending to share with with your clients? There are a few different sharing models available but would first like to better understand your need. Thanks
Needs between clients vary. Our clients include new build housebuilders, tier one construction firms, surveyors, civil engineers, grounds work contractors, project management firms etc.
What we need is analyst only access for our customers at a justifiable price. Therefore the option to conduct side by side comparisons, inspect and annotate in both 2d & 3D, select their own files for extraction, insert overlays as well as view videos we have uploaded.
As matters stand, the product is great if you have an in house UAV function but is very limited if you are an external provider such as us.
Back in the dot com boom, I worked for a company called Monster.com. They made the same mistake of building their system round the end client and overlooking external recruiters. With all their huge investment, they lost the market. Others stepped in and scooped up the industry that Monster had built.
Pro plan is too basic and doesn’t include side by side comparisons, 3d inspections or annotations. No point us having the business plan and our customers only getting a fraction of the access :).
Hopefully DD will recognise the potential growth if operators such as us get other companies using the DD software on a regular basis so that it become part of their workflow.
Correct, but how many users actually need all that functionality? And what kind of interaction do you have? If you are simply flying and handing them a website then good for you, but that would not fly on our projects and with many of our external clients. It may be because there are allot of things that we can do and provide the client that very few are capable of so we get pretty deep into it with them. In my opinion if your are doing large construction projects you should have a representative in the BIM meetings.
We definitely need a more flexible plan schedule! They have catered to Enterprise users like us and there is a ton of customers just sitting out there waiting for the right configuration. Where the rubber meets the road is that DroneDeploy’s entire package is far beyond what anyone else has as far as full functionality. As we work through the current bugs the end product is going to be a full life cycle of drone data use and project management. Not just processing and dumping. There’s one other company out there that I won’t name that is trying to go this direction that blocked themselves in other ways and honestly the product is FAR from user-friendly when it comes to consumers.
In our case, we are working with multiple departments including production, commercial, technical and sales. Each needs different functionality but I would see little value in making completely separate account types based on their individual departments - particularly as transparency and collaboration are 2 of the major selling points of using UAV’s. We are the primary supplier to the UK’s largest/2nd largest housebuilder and they have asked us to devise a custom plan which includes concept to completion data. The crazy thing is that they are just going to get the data ‘dumped’ in extracted files and have zero access to DD.
One of the reason we use DD is because of it’s easy to use interface.
Also worth highlighting how few construction companies, in the UK, are deploying their own UAV’s. Over 90% will be contracted out to companies such as ourselves. Hence, the feature request above. The potential is huge but our hands are tied as long as we cant actually give our clients the tools to interact with the data without them buying packages which they currently regard as over priced. Most construction firms and their leadership have very little understanding of drones therefore it’s a real battle to get them to buy the software package when they don’t understand the features and benefits.
Given that most work is contracted out to companies such as us, DD are limiting their target audience to the less than 10% of the active UK market.
Wow, that is a really bad situation if the majority of your experience is that it is drone services providers doing the work. I wonder what DroneDeploy’s figures are on DSP’s vs Enterprise and SMB inhouse users. The majority of the construction companies that are our size ($100m) or larger have inhouse drone and BIM departments.
My VDC team services Survey, GPS Machine Control, Estimating, Project Management/Coordination, different levels of field supervision, Facilities Management and Marketing inhouse. We started doing external drone services about a year ago and currently have about 20 clients across Land Development, Home Builders, Survey/GIS and Commercial Construction.
There is allot of work out there and some of the things we offer can be hard to explain because very few have experienced it so we usually do a complimentary flight and UI training for each new client. It’s really hard to show them the more complex features on a Pro account. We use that instead of our account for consultations so that we don’t over-promise.
I’m going to be the guest speaker at the upcoming annual conference for the RICS (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) on the very topic of using drones to conduct land surveys and building inspections in November.
It’s expected to be attended by 300 UK professionals within the industry. The largest challenge we have is presenting the entire solution. The majority of these companies wont have utilised drones and it’s likely that those that have, have instructed DSP’s to do the work.
This is the first time they have allocated a 30 minute presentation from the UAV industry. However, it’s going to be tough identifying which software we present as none, so far, really tick all the boxes for relationship that includes a DSP, surveyor and additional stakeholders such as investors or property owners…
Congrats on the speaking position! Represent well!
I agree totally. Being a Surveyor, GPS Technician, 3D Modeler, Drone Pilot and Construction Technologies Specialist I see the entire gamut of data and solutions that people are using and in my opinion there never will be a single solution that does everything. The simple reason is because drone data is agnostic to industry. It is the same data for construction that it is for agriculture that it is for business marketing. Each of those industries may have something that they focus on that the others don’t, but at the end of the day they have more in common than they don’t.
I would be willing to bet that the closest we are going to come is via AutoDesk or Trimble. Unfortunately though this is when the part of the world that has the money to spend on these premier solutions leaves the rest of the community just as is happening with DroneDeploy Enterprise. For those that can calculate an ROI on the Enterprise plan there is much closer to a single solution than what you think and we are working on many things in the background that close that gap every day.
One recommendation that I would make for you are your clients is to look into Bluebeam. It is built for the Survey and AEC industries and is premier for displaying drone data. The analyzing and markup capabilities are far beyond anything that anyone else has in that simple of a PDF form.
Key points are the much higher-level annotations, more accurate overlays and the ability to scale plan sheets for use of measurements. What it does not do is volumetrics, which can easily be done in a DroneDeploy Pro account (or other solution). Revu Standard is $350/seat and annual maintenance is $99/yr if you want it. For larger companies that I promise you are going to take hold of Revu and expand it’s use you can move to concurrent licensing.
Is their anyway DD can make a subscription just for the client? at a low end cost point? or free?
In PIX 4D when you share a file the consumer can use all the tools… THAT IS WHAT WE NEED, and PLEASE
