Meet our Customer Excellence Award Winner and our Everyday Hero Finalists

Over the years, we have heard about some of the incredible accomplishments that our customers have made both inside and outside of their businesses. This encouraged us to launch two awards programs to give them the recognition they well deserve: the Customer Excellence and the Everyday Hero awards.

The Customer Excellence Award began in 2020. Presented biennially to coincide with our Connect Conference, this acknowledgment salutes customers who have used ECI software to transform their business and drive growth.

The Everyday Hero Award is an annual event that focuses on how our customers serve their communities. Our customers are doing some truly amazing work that deserves to be showcased and awarded. It’s always difficult to narrow it down to three finalists when we have a collection of inspiring stories to choose from. This award is very dear to our hearts as “Embracing Community” is part of our team’s CORE values.

Today, we are excited to highlight this year’s recipients of these awards.

The ECI 2022 Customer Excellence Award

Winner: TK Constructors

While TK Constructors had been using our MarkSystems software since 2017, it had only scratched the surface of fully leveraging the software, until recently.

“Faced with all that 2020-21 had thrown our way, we came together and made our company stand tall while others faltered. With training, data building, and utilization of MarkSystems, we are now ready to ride the next wave,” said Amber Chew-Block, the Estimating Coordinator for TK Constructors. She went on to talk about how increasing their utilization of some of MarkSystems’ features helped them improve profitability despite housing-construction costs increasing. Running the pro forma report and using Cost Codes streamlined their purchase order process and field sales and earned them the 2022 Customer Excellence Award.

"The impact of using MarkSystems so far has been like a stone dropped into a still body of water," Amber said. "The changes we made began to ripple into all areas of our company. Now upper management can review reports that reflect in real-time what is happening in the field. We no longer wait to autopsy each home to see what was made after the fact. We are projecting and monitoring daily. Capturing and comparing costs month over month with selling prices gives us a firm understanding of margin erosion. In the last year, we have increased our gross profit margin by 5% and, on average, are profiting more than $13,000 per house than we did in 2019.”

To learn how MarkSystems helped TK Constructors ride out a difficult economic climate and win recognition for business transformation, please read their story.

The ECI 2022 Everyday Hero Award

“It is not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving,” said Mother Teresa. Her words perfectly capture this year’s finalists who all, in some way, provide the safety of shelter and share the belief that everyone deserves to be safe, fed, happy, and loved. Their urges to give back were sparked by taking part in a Habitat for Humanity build with founder Millard Fullar, learning that a child’s classmate’s family could not afford a television, and an “adopt a grandma” Christmas event.

We proudly present this year’s finalists for the Everyday Hero Award:

• Jeff Caldwell, Cardwell Do-it Best Home Center
  
  Jeff founded the People Helping People Network to use the resources he’s built over decades to focus on housing, hunger, health, and education initiatives in the United States and around the world. Jeff sums up his organization’s efforts simply, “It's about the restoration of dignity. It's not just a free lunch. It's where we provide a hand-up, not a handout.”
  
  Through the People Helping People network, Jeff brings wrap-around services to uplift communities in their most significant needs. In El Salvador, People Helping People set up a culinary school to teach people career training so they can help their communities. Through decades of hands-on work with needy families, Jeff’s faith has dramatically influenced his drive to help others. “I'm not a preacher,” he said. “My gift is not standing behind a pulpit. The best way I found to express my faith is not through talking but through my actions.”

• Forough Hosseini and Nellie Lupoli, ICI Homes
  
  This mother/daughter duo founded Homes Bring Hope and Food Brings Hope, in addition to supporting dozens of local charities. They use hard-earned connections to raise capital and cut through bureaucratic red tape to build houses for working-poor families. Fueled by a belief that only home ownership can bring a family out of poverty, their foundation Homes Bring Hope sells houses to first-time buyers below cost.
  
  Forough and Nellie have used their success to network with power brokers across Florida, creating a tapestry of people in high places to carry out the mission of giving back. “Our mother instilled in her children to find what they’re good at and bring it to the table,” Nellie says. “She inspired us to leave our community better than we found it.” But Forough, when asked what a hero is, replies, “I just don’t want children going to bed hungry. That’s not being a hero. That’s being a human.“

• Chris Shee, MasterCraft Builders Group
  
  Chris is a father figure to many young children in some of Northeast Florida’s poorest communities, through his work with Seamark Ranch. Chris gave Seamark Ranch his full support and technical expertise in designing, obtaining permits, and constructing a new boys’ home and a girls’ home at Seamark Ranch, providing the organization with two new 6,000 sq ft homes at a savings of over $500,000.
  
  “Hope is a four-letter word and can seem generic, but it’s about thinking positively about the future, especially when you’ve been beaten down your whole life and are only eight years old. I have learned to give uncomfortably,” Chris said. “If it’s not something that makes me uncomfortable, I’m not giving enough. That’s when I feel the wealthiest; Seamark Ranch taught me that.”

This was just a snapshot into the inspirational stories that these three Everyday Hero finalists have to share. Watch their videos to hear it all.

Please join us in congratulating, TK Constructors, Jeff Cardwell, Forough Hosseini, Nellie Lupoli, and Chris Shee for jobs well done! We are so humbled to call them customers and honored to work with them and all our other customers who are making an impact in what they do.