When Mike Dershowitz was investigating solar for his home, he was dismayed at the underdeveloped sales tools used by the salespeople with which he had talked at home shows. Dershowitz saw an opportunity to start a company and help the solar industry, so he co-founded ModSolar in 2011 with Kevin Ilsen.
“I wanted to bring more sophisticated sales tools to the solar industry, and by doing so, not only help grow a business, but grow the consumer use of solar overall by making it easier to sell,” Dershowitz says.
The Philadelphia-based company provides software-and-technology solutions for solar providers through a cloud-based proposal generation system. With ModSolar’s patent-pending panel layout technology that uses satellite imagery to configure an installation, providers can generate proposals and contracts quickly and easily, as well as render panels on an image of a client’s roof.
In addition, the platform includes:
- Customer-relations management (CRM) integration
- Financing options
- Energy usage and payback to instantly analyze a customer’s return on investment
- Lead qualification with lists of solar-ready homes and qualified owners
“We have focused on streamlining the user interface to such a degree that a ready-to-email proposal can be completed, usually in well under five minutes, while the customer is still on the phone,” Dershowitz says.
All of these features contribute to ModSolar’s continued success as a software platform. Dershowitz estimates between 5% and 10% of all U.S. solar proposals are generated with ModSolar.
“But our impact goes beyond that,” Dershowitz says. “It is so easy to do proposals with our software that our users end up generating proposals earlier in the sales cycle, and generating more of them, leading to more sales than they would have gotten without the software. And the ability to do quick proposal generation, along with automatic contract generation once the proposal is accepted, leads to far less paperwork burden back in the office. That’s the beginning of the solution to the soft-cost problem that has kept solar prices high.”
Recently, ModSolar partnered with Enphase Energy to further increase the platform’s efficiency and accuracy. The partnership allows the software development company to incorporate the microinverter manufacturer’s energy production calculations into their platform, which will show the production boost available to Enphase customers. Dershowitz says his company has been working closely with Enphase to ensure the software’s production and payback calculations properly reflect the efficiency contribution made by the microinverters. “Partnerships are important for an open platform like ours, and you can expect to see more of them in the future,” Dershowitz says.
In the future, ModSolar has its sights set on international expansion, and the company is already making headway with its upcoming expansion into Germany, Australia and the United Kingdom. The software will be offered in multiple languages and feature options for different currencies, address formats and metric and imperial measurements.
Dershowitz says the company chose those markets because there is a robust group of solar installers and the sales process is similar to what is encountered in the United States.
“Both Germany and the United Kingdom currently operate under a Feed-In-Tariff system and are committed to the advancement of renewables,” Dershowitz says. “In Australia, we hope to be able to make solar much more attractive for companies and individuals in a country that shares many of the complexities we face in the U.S. solar market.” SPW
By: Michelle DiFrangia, Special To SPW