Business View - March 2015 53
The corporate tagline of “Built Around You” is a strong
selling point to each of the various segments, though,
because it offers the opportunity to customize.
Some ebb and flow in production rates in the various
markets occurs because the company follows top de-
veloper partners as they start up master plans in the
specific markets. If a developer has two new deals in
Austin, for example, there would then ideally be a sub-
sequent building spike.
But when lulls are evident
in some places, there’s typi-
cally a wave ongoing else-
where, he said.
“It’s our biggest opportunity,
but yet sometimes our big-
gest challenge – the cus-
tomization,” Tesch said. “We
sometimes joke, ‘Are we a
production custom builder
or are we a custom produc-
tion builder?’ With a lot of
our competition, there’s one
plan and it’s take it or leave
it.”
Technology has been a sig-
nificant driver for change
when it comes to the com-
pany’s infrastructure, most
notably thanks to a proprie-
tary sales management sys-
tem (MHI Online) that allows
managers to see what’s
happening in the field in real
time – which, he said, could
essentially allow MHI, after
a good sales day on a Satur-
day, to adjust its prices upward slightly by Sunday.
Previously, pricing decisions were made after far-flung
paperwork made its way into a central office.
“It would take several days for that information to
come up,” Tesch said.
“It allows our sales contracts to be written and amend-
ments to be done, as opposed to the old days when
