The Pulse of Schell Brothers: the Software at the Heart of the Home Builder's Business

If happiness is the heart of Schell Brothers’ culture, then Heartbeat, the company’s proprietary software platform, is its pulse.

As it exists today, Heartbeat is a multifunctional, collaborative, integrable, and scalable program used by homebuyers, trade partners, and every department and division at Schell. 

It’s a calendar, an internal social media channel, a communications tool, a file and data manager, and a means of influencing and reviewing performance and progress companywide—and those are just the broad strokes. 

In short, Heartbeat is the go-to for everything that’s going on, and it will never be complete as long as senior web application developer Jeremy Bell and director of innovation Lance Manlove are asked (or inspired) to refine and enhance its capabilities.

In fact, Heartbeat started as a problem-solver. Jeremy, an Air Force veteran who grew up with a love (and skill) for coding, was helping Schell’s finance department streamline its paper-heavy process into a digital system. 

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Meanwhile, Lance, a former design engineer for a NASA contractor and then-head of Schell’s custom home program, was spending his free time working on software to improve the homebuying experience. 

Eventually, the two pitched their ideas for creating similar efficiencies across the company to CEO Chris Schell, a fellow programming nerd who understood the system’s premise and potential. “The main thing I told them was to pretend like we’re a 20- or 30-division company,” Chris says. “I’ve seen companies program themselves into a corner because they didn’t consider future growth.” Good thinking, as Schell Brothers has since opened divisions in Richmond, Va., and Nashville, Tenn.

The platform lets Schell efficiently and reliably manage the complexities of the homebuying and home building journey. Case in point (among many others): A team of warranty coordinators, under the direction of Dan Matta, field and traffic service requests exclusively through Heartbeat, which is the only option for homeowners to directly file their queries. 

“It used to be that we’d write things on paper, go out to meet the owners, and then go back to the office to call people and schedule the work,” Dan says. “On Heartbeat, the team monitors and updates requests and sends alerts to whoever needs them in real time.” 

And if you think having just one option for clients to lodge a complaint runs counter to Schell’s happy customer culture, you don’t know Heartbeat. Issues are documented in the owner’s own words, often with a photo or two, and are logged into a system that tracks the complaint’s progress until it’s resolved with full transparency. Try that with a scrap of paper. “It’s been a game-changer for warranty,” Dan says. 

For homebuyers—each with a unique account that tracks every step of their journey and logs personal impressions and preferences for future reference—the platform serves to inform and preempt questions and concerns that may otherwise delay or curtail construction … or worse, erode happiness. 

“As a first-time homebuyer, I was so nosy, wanting to drive by the jobsite every day,” says Brittany Arias, a Schell Brothers homeowner who now serves as a voluntary brand ambassador for the company. “It was super exciting to get updates and see photos of the process.”

But as robust as it is, the Heartbeat of today is neither perfect nor complete. “We’ve barely scratched the surface of what this thing can do,” Chris says.