If you’re tired of being time-poor and pricing quotes and chasing invoices over your dinner, then Nexley’s AI back-office function might be the answer.
Lorenzo Bandawe, co-founder and CTO, gives the lowdown on Nexley.
CM Digital: What problem does your technology solve and how does it do it?
Lorenzo Bandawe: Most building work in the UK is done by small firms: sole traders, subcontractors and contractors with a handful of people. For them, the work that wins and pays for jobs happens after the day on site. Someone has to read the tender pack, measure the drawings, price it up, write the quote, send the invoice and chase the money. A big contractor has estimators and an office team for that. A small firm has the owner, at the kitchen table, at nine at night.
That’s where money gets lost. Tenders go unpriced because there’s no time. Prices go out in a rush and miss something on a revised drawing. Or the job gets done, and the invoice goes out a week late.
Nexley does that office work through WhatsApp, which most tradespeople already have open all day. A builder sends a voice note from the van, a photo or a whole drawing pack, and Nexley drafts the quote, invoice or take-off, priced on the firm’s own rates rather than a generic price list. Nothing goes to a customer until the builder has checked it and said yes.
When the customer accepts, Nexley updates the books (Xero, QuickBooks or Sage) and the job software (ServiceM8, Fergus or Commusoft). When the job’s finished, it drafts the invoice that day and chases it if it isn’t paid.
The builder still makes every decision. They just stop spending their evenings typing the same job into four different places.
Who’s tested or is already using your tech, and what are the results?
We launched this spring. More than 30 UK businesses have used Nexley so far; most are trade and construction firms: roofers, electricians, heating engineers, carpenters and builders.
Aidan Gorman runs RoofCrafter. In his words: “I produce entire cash flows and tenders just from voice notes. It pulls my own cost data.” Ollie Cable, another customer, says that when a customer messages him, Nexley replies, books them in for when he’s free and gets the invoice sorted in Xero.
The result we can measure most exactly is a records move for a heating firm that was switching job software, from Tradify to ServiceM8. Most firms put that off for years because of everything trapped in the old system. Nexley moved the lot: 2,756 customers, 8,166 past jobs going back to 2022, 14,370 photos, certificates and documents, and 515 service reminders.
We moved a small batch first and went through it line by line with their office until they told us, “that’s exactly what we wanted”. Then the rest went in, and every record was checked back against the old system: 208,682 checks, none failed. It took about two and a half weeks.
Tell us about your senior management team’s background
There are two of us. Kade Dillon, founder and director, spent more than 15 years in construction before starting Nexley. He watched small firms turn down tenders they could have won, simply because nobody had time to price them, and get paid late because the paperwork always came last. Nexley is the back office he wanted those firms to have.
I’m a co-founder and the CTO, and I built the software for Nexley.ai. I look after all the magic that happens behind the scenes, taking the complicated stuff and making it simple to use, so all a builder sees is a quick reply on WhatsApp.
So, one of us knows the trade and one knows the software. That’s really the whole idea: software built around how a builder actually works, not the other way round.
Are you looking for funding?
Not actively, but we’re open to talking to investors who know the construction industry.
