Top Trends in Contractor Technology Adoption for 2025 

New tech­nol­o­gy affects all indus­tries, includ­ing home improve­ment, so our team set to work to under­stand how tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion is chang­ing among con­trac­tors so that man­u­fac­tur­ers, retail­ers, and oth­er indus­try stake­hold­ers can appro­pri­ate­ly respond to evolv­ing mar­ket dynam­ics. Accord­ing to HIR­I’s recent Con­trac­tor Tech­nol­o­gy Adop­tion Report, many con­trac­tors and indus­try pro­fes­sion­als who are vig­or­ous about updat­ing their tech­nol­o­gy and adopt­ing new ones show a high lev­el of sat­is­fac­tion, report­ing greater oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies and cus­tomer satisfaction.However, the rate of tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion across the indus­try is not uni­form. Big­ger firms are more like­ly to adopt new tech­nolo­gies more fre­quent­ly, while small­er com­pa­nies lag behind. There are also dis­tinc­tions among dif­fer­ent types of pro­fes­sion­als and trades, 

What are the Top Tech Trends Among Pros?

The sec­toral dif­fer­ence in tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion among home improve­ment pro­fes­sion­als is impor­tant for prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers to track and uti­lize for strate­gic deci­sion-mak­ing. Here is a clos­er look at the vary­ing moti­va­tions and bar­ri­ers in tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion, as well as future inten­tions and planned invest­ments in 2025:

1. Mechanical and Landscaping Contractors Lead Tech Adoption

Over­all, about 70% of con­trac­tors and home improve­ment firms update their tech­nol­o­gy annu­al­ly or more fre­quent­ly. How­ev­er, there are some vari­a­tions among par­tic­u­lar groups of pro­fes­sion­als. Approx­i­mate­ly 42% of land­scap­ers update or adopt new tech­nolo­gies every six months or less; anoth­er 41% make tech updates on an annu­al basis. Mean­while, small­er firms and spe­cif­ic trades — like exte­ri­or pro­fes­sion­als — lag behind. Con­sid­er devel­op­ing tar­get­ed resources for these seg­ments, such as case stud­ies or cost-ben­e­fit analy­ses high­light­ing ROI for small­er-scale adop­tion. Help small­er firms under­stand the val­ue of invest­ment and tech­nol­o­gy, while also pro­vid­ing tai­lored solu­tions that sup­port their adoption.

2. Covid-19 Accelerated Adoption For Some

For the most part, the response to Covid-19 didn’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly change the rate at which con­trac­tors adopt or update tech­nolo­gies for their pro­fes­sion­al work. Rough­ly half of remod­el­ers, exte­ri­or pro­fes­sion­als, land­scap­ers, and fin­ish pro­fes­sion­als report­ed no change. The one excep­tion was indi­vid­u­als work­ing the mechan­i­cal trade. About 45% felt that Covid-19 influ­enced and accel­er­at­ed their deci­sion to adopt new technologies.

3. Mobile Apps are Most Popular Technology Used by Contractors

About 48% of con­trac­tors uti­lize mobile apps for on-site work. This is fol­lowed close­ly by sched­ul­ing and time-track­ing tools; esti­mat­ing and bid­ding soft­ware; and account­ing and invoic­ing soft­ware. These are used some­what con­sis­tent­ly by pro­fes­sion­als — regard­less of whether they’re high‑, moderate‑, or low-tech users. 

Inter­est­ing­ly enough, project man­age­ment soft­ware is the sec­ond-most used tech­nol­o­gy among high-tech users, with 56% report­ing its usage. But it’s only used by 14% of low-tech con­trac­tors and 29% of mod­er­ate-tech con­trac­tors. How­ev­er, its increased use among high-tech con­trac­tors could sig­nal the future poten­tial for main­stream adop­tion among cur­rent­ly mod­er­ate and low-tech firms, sim­i­lar to what we’ve seen with adop­tion of mobile apps and sched­ul­ing tools.

4. Efficiency and Competitive Growth are Key Drivers

Increas­ing oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy, stay­ing com­pet­i­tive, and increas­ing prof­itabil­i­ty are key moti­va­tors for tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion among con­trac­tors and oth­er home improve­ment pro­fes­sion­als — par­tic­u­lar­ly for high-tech users. The vast major­i­ty feel that tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion has giv­en their busi­ness a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage and are sat­is­fied with the tech­nolo­gies they’ve adopt­ed. Reduc­ing costs is less impor­tant to the high-tech user group, but that is the pri­ma­ry moti­va­tion for low-tech users. Mod­er­ate-tech users are most dri­ven toward tech­nol­o­gy to stay com­pet­i­tive and to reduce costs. More than two-thirds of con­trac­tors agree that ven­dor sup­port is very impor­tant in their deci­sion to adopt new technology.

5. High Costs and Satisfaction with Status Quo Present Barriers to Technology Adoption

While many con­trac­tors rec­og­nize the ben­e­fits of adopt­ing and updat­ing new tech­nolo­gies, there are also notable bar­ri­ers for oth­ers. Pri­mar­i­ly, pro­fes­sion­als are deterred by what they per­ceive as the high costs of try­ing to keep up with the ever-evolv­ing world of tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions. Prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers may con­sid­er offer­ing free tri­als, afford­able pric­ing mod­els, and robust ven­dor sup­port to mit­i­gate cost con­cerns. Anoth­er rea­son why indus­try pro­fes­sion­als delay or opt not to adopt tech­nol­o­gy is sim­ply that they’re sat­is­fied with the sta­tus quo, or the cur­rent meth­ods they’re using on job sites, for sched­ul­ing and track­ing projects, and oth­er tasks. Lack of time to imple­ment and learn new prod­ucts, lim­it­ed tech­ni­cal exper­tise, and data secu­ri­ty are also concerns.

6. Barriers Differ Among Trades and Specialties

While cost tends to be a gen­er­al deter­rent across trades, the research also shows that bar­ri­ers dif­fer between spe­cif­ic trades and spe­cial­ties. For exam­ple, near­ly a third of land­scap­ers cite dis­rup­tion to their cur­rent busi­ness process­es as a bar­ri­er. For remod­el­ers, lack of time to imple­ment and learn new tech­nolo­gies is the sec­ond high­est bar­ri­er. Mechan­i­cal trades­peo­ple have the high­est rate of sat­is­fac­tion with their cur­rent meth­ods. It’s impor­tant for prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers to adopt spe­cial­ty-spe­cif­ic strate­gies when it comes to devel­op­ing and mar­ket­ing new tech­nolo­gies. For exam­ple, address­ing the dis­rup­tion con­cerns of land­scap­ers, or focus­ing on time-sav­ing tools for remodelers.

7. Peer Networks and Vendors Lead to Discovery of New Technologies

Peer and pro­fes­sion­al net­works, ven­dors and sup­pli­ers, and social media plat­forms are the pri­ma­ry chan­nels for indus­try pro­fes­sion­als when it comes to dis­cov­er­ing new tech­nolo­gies. Low-tech adopters are par­tic­u­lar­ly reliant on peer net­works. High-tech adopters pre­fer video tuto­ri­als for train­ing and sup­port. They also appre­ci­ate in-per­son work­shops and sem­i­nars and tech­ni­cal sup­port from ven­dors. Mean­while, in-per­son ses­sions are the most favored train­ing and sup­port method for low-tech adopters. As a man­u­fac­tur­er or sup­pli­er, it’s impor­tant to invest in acces­si­ble, engag­ing dis­cov­ery meth­ods, such as social cam­paigns, peer refer­rals, and ven­dor-led workshops.

8. Most Firms Plan to Adopt New Technology in 2025

Rough­ly 54% of con­trac­tors and firms plan to adopt new tech­nolo­gies in 2025. For com­pa­nies mak­ing $500,000 or more, this increas­es. The top pri­or­i­ties include mobile apps for on-site work and tools that lever­age Gen­er­a­tive AI. Project man­age­ment soft­ware and estimating/​bidding soft­ware also show pos­i­tive lev­els of inten­tion. Know­ing that a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of firms are open to adopt­ing new tech­nol­o­gy this year, it’s crit­i­cal that man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers pre­pare to offer the sup­port and moti­va­tion to help them see it through. One way to do this is by cre­at­ing train­ing for­mats that are tai­lored to user pref­er­ences, such as video tuto­ri­als for high-tech adopters and in-per­son ses­sions for low-tech users. Addi­tion­al­ly, strength­en your ven­dor sup­port sys­tems, ensur­ing acces­si­bil­i­ty to resources and con­sis­tent fol­low-up to build con­fi­dence in tech­nol­o­gy use.

Planning for Technology Adoption Among Contractors in 2025

There is plen­ty of inter­est among pro­fes­sion­al con­trac­tors and indus­try pro­fes­sion­als to adopt new tech­nolo­gies, or update their exist­ing sys­tems, in the com­ing year. How­ev­er, this is not with­out some notice­able bar­ri­ers and con­cerns. To get more insight into sec­toral dif­fer­ences and growth tra­jec­to­ries for 2025, down­load the full Con­trac­tor Tech­nol­o­gy Adop­tion Report, which is avail­able to mem­bers of the Home Improve­ment Research Insti­tute. Not yet a mem­ber? Then you’re miss­ing out on unlim­it­ed access to one mil­lion dol­lars worth of home improve­ment spe­cif­ic mar­ket research. Sim­ply sched­ule a con­sul­ta­tion to learn more.