Key takeaways
What property managers can take from Emiel’s approach to vendors
- Vendor spending is huge, and the process is often dated. Emiel estimates the industry spends close to $600 billion a year in North America on service vendors, yet much of it still runs on email, spreadsheets, and word of mouth.
- Keep one source of truth for approved vendors. Collecting and verifying insurance, WCB, and safety documents in one place, and monitoring them over time, means you know right away when a vendor falls out of compliance.
- Get fresh pricing now and then. In one VendorPM pilot, bids came in about 20% below budget, saving almost $20,000 per tender.
- Write clearer scopes of work. Vague RFPs create back-and-forth, so VendorPM uses AI to add detail and answer the questions vendors are most likely to ask.
- Build with the end user. VendorPM interviews dozens of property managers before every feature, and Emiel tells founders to ask users what single problem frustrates them most.
About the guest
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Emiel Bril
Co-Founder and CEO, VendorPM
Emiel co-founded VendorPM, a vendor management, compliance, and procurement platform for property management, at the end of 2019. He started a window cleaning business with his best friend at 14 in Toronto and grew it into a company serving property managers across residential and commercial buildings before launching VendorPM.
Episode summary
In this episode
Jared Sarbit talks with Emiel Bril, co-founder and CEO of VendorPM. Emiel and his best friend started knocking on doors selling window cleaning at 14, grew the business through university, and began serving property managers across every asset class. That experience showed them how much the industry spends on vendors and how much room there was to improve the process.
Emiel explains how VendorPM brings vendor onboarding, compliance, RFPs and RFQs, and a vendor marketplace into one login. He shares why the company grew first in residential, how more than $30 million in funding has helped it move faster, how its AI tools make bids clearer, and the results property managers have seen.
He also talks about where vendor management is headed, why the best tools need to connect to each other, and his advice for founders building in proptech.
Chapters
- 0:00Episode preview
- 1:35Introducing Emiel Bril
- 1:52What VendorPM does and why
- 4:25From a teenage window cleaning business
- 6:46Simplifying vendor management and compliance
- 9:14One login for sourcing, procurement, and compliance
- 10:33Residential vs commercial growth
- 11:45Raising more than $30 million
- 13:30Using AI to write clearer RFPs
- 15:09Feedback from managers and vendors
- 18:01Why VendorPM has grown so fast
- 21:31What’s next for the platform
- 23:23The future of vendor management
- 27:12Advice for proptech founders
- 28:22Seeing your work in the skyline
- 30:09Book recommendations
Jump to a chapter (16)
- 0:00Episode preview
- 1:35Introducing Emiel Bril
- 1:52What VendorPM does and why
- 4:25From a teenage window cleaning business
- 6:46Simplifying vendor management and compliance
- 9:14One login for sourcing, procurement, and compliance
- 10:33Residential vs commercial growth
- 11:45Raising more than $30 million
- 13:30Using AI to write clearer RFPs
- 15:09Feedback from managers and vendors
- 18:01Why VendorPM has grown so fast
- 21:31What’s next for the platform
- 23:23The future of vendor management
- 27:12Advice for proptech founders
- 28:22Seeing your work in the skyline
- 30:09Book recommendations
From the conversation
Transcript excerpts
I find that people typically care more about why you do something than what you do.
Emiel BrilPlay from 2:00
Every single feature we build no matter how big or small… we’re interviewing dozens of property managers.
Emiel BrilPlay from 0:31
…ask your users the simple question of like what is the single most frustrating or challenging thing you face now day-to-day.
Emiel BrilPlay from 1:10
Comparing janitorial bids?
We’ll walk your building with you and send a written cleaning scope and price. Free, no obligation.
Read the conversation
Full episode transcript
Show transcript
Paste the edited transcript here.
FAQ
Vendor management questions
What is VendorPM?
VendorPM is vendor management, compliance, and procurement software built for property management. Management companies use it to onboard and approve vendors, track compliance, run RFPs and RFQs, and find new vendors in a marketplace that Emiel Bril says has more than 60,000 vendors.
How does VendorPM help service vendors?
Vendors can keep their compliance documents in one place instead of signing up for a different system for each client. The marketplace also helps them find new property management clients, and clearer RFPs reduce back-and-forth with managers.
What results have property managers seen with VendorPM?
Emiel says one large management company’s pilot saw bids come in about 20% below budget, saving almost $20,000 per tender. Site-level managers also report getting a couple of hours a week back.
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