Foremen need visual catalogs, mobile-first ordering, and systems that work with work gloves.
Most procurement software gets designed in a conference room. Clean desks. Desktop computers. Stable wifi. Nobody is wearing work gloves. Nobody is standing in the mud trying to order conduit while a delivery truck idles and a crew waits for direction.
That disconnect shows up in the software tools electrical contractors get stuck with. Systems built for purchasing departments. Workflows optimized for people who sit at desks all day. Part number catalogs that assume everyone has a laptop and 20 minutes to search through SKU lists.
Foremen don't work that way. They need materials ordered fast, ordered correctly, and ordered without stopping job site work to navigate software that wasn't designed for them.
Electrical foremen manage crews across multiple job sites. They work from trucks, trailers, and scaffolding. Their office is wherever they happen to be standing when a problem hits. When they need to order materials, they're on a phone or tablet, often with spotty cell coverage, sometimes wearing work gloves.
According to research from Contractor Foreman, nearly 60% of construction contractors face cash flow problems tied to material issues. Materials comprise 64.4% of project costs, the highest percentage on record. Getting ordering right isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between hitting margin targets and losing money.
But most software treats field ordering as an afterthought. Desktop-first interfaces that don't work on mobile. Text-based catalogs with no images. Search functions that require exact manufacturer part numbers. None of that matches job site reality.
Foremen need to order materials faster than it takes to make a phone call. If the software requires five screens of navigation, three approval workflows, and manual entry of job codes, it's already failed.
Michael Sadler, Pre Construction Manager at B&D Industries, described the transformation: "On our side to order the materials it's as easy as hitting a button and clicking submit and it's done. It takes a quarter of the time, if that."
Speed prevents the fallback to phone calls. When software is clunky, field teams work around it, even avoid it. They call the purchasing department. They text a list to the office. Every workaround reintroduces the communication errors the system was supposed to eliminate.
Paul Iorio, GM of Procurement Services at O'Connell Electric, knows what happens when ordering stays informal: "It's not written on the back of a napkin or on a cardboard box. It's not taken on a screenshot from a telephone. It's not through an email."
Fast ordering also means fewer emergency supply house runs. According to ProjectManager.com research, poor material forecasting and timing lead to premium pricing for rush orders and crews idling while waiting for deliveries.
Part numbers mean nothing on a job site. A foreman standing next to a junction box doesn't think "I need a 4-square box, 2-1/8 inches deep, with 1/2-inch knockouts." They think "I need one of these."
Text-based catalogs built around manufacturer SKUs create a translation problem. The foreman knows what the part looks like. They might know the nickname electricians use for it. But they don't know the exact alphanumeric code a distributor uses.
Christopher Seagrist, Prefab Coordinator at Morrow Meadows, explained how visual search solves this: "You can be pretty vague. You can put in slang terms that the field uses and it knows slang terms and it brings up images of items based off of what you're trying to look for."
This "slang mapping" eliminates the translation layer. A foreman types "four square box" and the system surfaces the right products with images. No phone calls. No back-and-forth with purchasing. No wrong materials showing up because of a SKU typo.
Jessica Nascusa, Senior Purchasing Agent at Morrow Meadows, described the old way: "The biggest challenge was the communication between the field, the vendors and getting the correct materials sometimes. You know it's kind of like playing telephone. There's a translation issue of they want a certain part, if you don't have those exact numbers, it's sometimes hard to remember everything to give to the vendor, and they're thinking of a different part."
Software "optimized for mobile" often means a desktop interface squeezed onto a phone screen. That's not mobile-first. That's desktop software that technically works on a phone but remains painful to use.
Mobile-first means the entire experience gets designed for a phone or tablet from the start. Touch-friendly buttons. Simple navigation. Camera integration. Offline functionality so spotty cell coverage doesn't block ordering.
Steven Druin, SVP of Technology at Interstates Electric, described rolling out new ordering tools to 230 job site supervisors: "We brought on our team in the field approximately 230 job site supervisors and we had quick adoption from that team in the field that went from filling out a PDF form to using the order entry forms inside of Remarcable."
Quick adoption happens when the interface feels familiar. Field teams don't want three days of classroom training. They want to open the app, understand it immediately, and get back to work.
Mobile-first also means working with work gloves. Buttons need to be large enough to tap with a gloved finger. Text needs to be readable in bright sunlight. Voice input and barcode scanning reduce typing.
Good field ordering systems don't just process requests. They anticipate what foremen need. When a foreman orders two-inch conduit, the system should prompt for two-inch connectors, couplings, and straps.
Steven Druin described this at Interstates: "If they're ordering 2 inch pipe it's gonna automatically offer them 2 inch connectors and 2 inch hangers and all these assorted accessories that go along with that 2 inch pipe. Getting their order entered quicker and more accurately so that they get the right material on site at the right time."
This prevents the "forgot the fittings" problem. A foreman places an order for pipe, materials show up, and the crew discovers they don't have the connectors to install it. Proactive prompts catch that before it happens.
Jay Kelly, Regional Manager at Interstates, highlighted the value of order history: "It also keeps the history so they can go back and see. They don't have to find something two or 3 times, it's right at their fingertips."
According to Procore's guidance on construction material management, aligning deliveries with project schedules prevents both early arrivals that create storage costs and late arrivals that idle crews.
Many distributors want contractors to use their proprietary ordering portals. That approach falls apart when a contractor works with five different suppliers. Now the foreman has to learn five different systems. Order history gets scattered across platforms that don't talk to each other.
Direct supplier integration solves this by bringing all suppliers into one contractor-controlled system. The foreman places orders in a single interface. The system routes those orders to the appropriate suppliers via API or EDI connections.
Jessica Nascusa described the old multi-portal problem: "A lot of distributors want you to use their portal and place your orders through their portal, and then you go to another distributor, a different portal. You're now trying to learn two, three systems."
Unified ordering through direct integration increases purchasing capacity without adding headcount. Guarantee Electrical runs 120 to 135 purchase orders per day with just two purchasers because they're not manually logging into different systems and re-entering data.
According to Bar Electric's experience with integrated procurement platforms, they shortened their material ordering process by 90% and achieved "huge savings" across operations.
The real measure of field ordering software isn't features. It's adoption. Do foremen actually use the system, or do they route around it by calling the office?
One electrical contractor described the adoption moment: "Rolling out software for the guys in the field is a big deal. It's usually a challenge if they have to learn something new. It's not easy. But this, we put it in their hands and they were like, 'Oh, I like this. I can, you mean I can just do this?' And they just started pushing buttons and fell in love with it."
Low training requirements drive adoption. Michael Sadler at B&D Industries noted the field-level learning curve: "We've had issues where we couldn't run a report, we'll send an email over to the help guys and within an hour they're telling us where to look or how to do it. Having Rudy run through the programs with us, as a foreman he's almost at the same level as a manager in Remarcable."
The ability to get foremen to manager-level proficiency signals intuitive design.
When procurement software actually works for foremen, the results show up in crew productivity. Collins Electrical reduced procurement time from two to three hours down to 10 minutes per transaction. Interstates Electric saved 14,000 to 15,000 hours over two years by streamlining material ordering and prefab workflows. B&D Industries cut hard labeling time from two to three days down to half a day.
Guarantee Electrical processes 120 to 135 purchase orders daily with just two purchasers. That volume would require four or five people using manual workflows.
Field satisfaction matters beyond productivity. When foremen have tools that work, they stay longer. Construction already struggles with skilled labor shortages. Losing good foremen because procurement software makes their job miserable is an unforced error.
Foremen need procurement software built for job sites, not conference rooms. Visual catalogs with slang search so they can find parts without knowing SKUs. Mobile-first interfaces that work with work gloves and spotty cell coverage. Fast workflows that take minutes instead of hours. Proactive features that anticipate what's needed. Unified supplier integration instead of multiple vendor portals.
Remarcable was built by foremen, purchasers, and project managers who lived the material ordering problem firsthand. The platform handles visual ordering across 500,000+ products, mobile-first workflows, and direct integration with 450+ suppliers. Field teams get consumer-grade simplicity. Purchasing departments get capacity without adding headcount.
Learn more about field ordering capabilities or request a demo to see how electrical contractors are cutting procurement time from hours to minutes.
