The Disconnect Between Sales And Construction Is Killing Your Margin

If you build production homes, you already know the real cost of running your business across disconnected systems, and it is expensive. A buyer picks an option in your sales tool, then someone re-keys it into your ERP. A plan changes. Purchasing ends up chasing a takeoff that no longer matches what's going up on the lot. Multiply that across every job in your pipeline, and budget drift, PO churn, and field rework eat into margin you can't recover.

That gap is what the new ECI MarkSystems and Higharc integration is built to close.

The problem, in plain terms

Your design and sales tools and your operations and pricing tools have never really talked to each other, so your teams end up doing the talking between them by hand. Plan and option changes get re-entered across estimating, purchasing, and job setup. Takeoffs go stale the moment a buyer changes an option, leading to over-ordering, shortages, or rush POs. Field crews build from drawings that don't reflect the latest configuration, leading to RFIs, workarounds, and rework. Design teams spend hours drafting plans that never leave estimating because nobody can see the cost impact in real time.

None of this comes from a people problem. It stems from a systems problem, and it's becoming increasingly costly to ignore. Builder confidence has stayed below the breakeven mark on the National Association of Home Builders' Housing Market Index every month since the start of 2025. Material costs are up about a third since 2020. Even small swings in mortgage rates can pull more than a million households in or out of the buyer pool overnight. In a market that moves like that, builders can't afford to base budgets and purchasing decisions built on stale information.

What the integration really does

Higharc and MarkSystems solve two halves of the same problem, and the new integration connects them directly.

Higharc is where plans, options, and configuration rules live. It generates homes as live 3D models rather than static plan sets, so every design decision produces a consistent, buildable home, complete with permit-ready drawings, lot-specific estimates, and an interactive sales experience that buyers can engage with.

MarkSystems is the operational backbone. It's where contracts become jobs, options become budgets, and plans become schedules, purchase orders, and real construction activity.

Right now, those two systems don't share a single source of truth. This integration gives them one.

Here's how it works in practice. Pricing gets set once in MarkSystems, and your pricing authority stays exactly the same. That pricing, covering base plans, elevations, options, and lot-level details, flows automatically into Higharc's configurator automatically, so buyers can price homes that already match your ERP. Buyers configure their home in Higharc's interactive 3D environment, choosing only from combinations that are actually buildable. The finished configuration flows back into MarkSystems as a priceout and a customer record, without anyone having to rekey anything. Your operations team then manages quotes, contracts, estimating, purchasing, scheduling, and accounting in MarkSystems, working from the same source of truth your sales team just used.

The short version: the home a buyer configures is the same home that gets priced, documented, and built. Nothing gets lost, changed, or retyped in between.

What this means for you

Fewer margin hits from late-stage changes. When plan and option updates flow automatically instead of being rebuilt by hand, budgets stop drifting from what's actually being built.

Purchasing that buys the right thing. Lot-specific takeoffs stay aligned to the real configuration, cutting down on over-ordering, shortages, and last-minute PO revisions.

Faster start readiness. Plans, takeoffs, and construction packages get ready sooner, which compresses the pre-start window and gets crews moving faster.

Design decisions made with real numbers. Design teams see live MarkSystems pricing as they draft in Higharc, so they can evaluate margin and feasibility before hours get sunk into a plan that never reaches construction.

A sales experience that doesn't create downstream risk. Buyers get a modern, interactive way to configure their home, and what they select is exactly what shows up in the operational system, with no gap between what's sold and what's built.

MarkSystems stays the pricing authority and system of record. Higharc stays the system of record for plans and configuration. The integration makes sure the two stop working in isolation.

Hear it from a builder who's living it

ECI and Higharc are covering all of this in an upcoming webinar, "Protect Margin by Eliminating Manual Handoffs," on Sept. 3, 2026, at 1 p.m. EST. It's free.

Matt Riley of New Home Inc. joins ECI's Residential Home Construction division and Higharc for a candid conversation about why connected product data has become a competitive necessity, how disconnected systems have affected his operations, and why his team is investing now.

Attendees will walk away with a clear picture of how manual handoffs quietly erode margin throughout the homebuilding process, what connected product data actually looks like in a working operational workflow, what the Higharc and MarkSystems integration delivers today rather than just what's on the roadmap, and where the connected builder workflow is headed next.