Externships with TripleTen: Permits.com

When looking for a job, you need a strong resume and a portfolio that will impress your potential employer. But where do you find projects if you’re still learning the ropes? TripleTen has the perfect answer – externships.

Externships are similar to internships. They mimic tasks of real-life companies or provide actual assignments from them. As a coding bootcamp student, you can join a team to create an actual website or mobile app. And here’s why you should definitely go for it.

Previously, we’ve covered TripleTen externship case studies with Arqlite, Allcorrect Games, and Prepare4VC.

Today we will learn how TripleTen’s data analytics students have helped Permits.com, a construction permit expediting service, define their core customer type and optimize the targeted ad spend.

Customer

Permits.com is an online permit expediting service for residential and light commercial construction builders. The company allows contractors to obtain sign, solar, and construction-related building permits in over 19,000 towns across the United States. 

There is a pile of documents that contractors must have up-to-date in order to obtain a building permit swiftly. Permits.com helps them comply by gaining access to cloud software. This removes the stress and anxiety for their clients and contributes to the construction sector in the U.S.

Task

The client had a database of sales data which they wanted to gain insights from. “The focus was to determine what types of construction the contractors request the most,” shares Ray Antonino, Permits.com’s CEO. “[We also wanted to know] what other information we could get from the transactional history to focus the energies and the ads spend.” 

The company was looking to optimize its ad spend and focus on a certain client persona to perform better.

“We had a hypothesis that a certain type of contractor, for some reason, got a lot more permits than others,” added Ray Antonino. “So we wanted to test that.”

Process

The TripleTen team received a vast dataset on transactional history. The objective was to present visuals to reflect the research on the customers and suggest targeted ads based on the types of permits requested. 

Nine TripleTen students were assigned to the task and all had to work independently and present their own findings.

Challenges

Our students had the opportunity to receive, clean, and process big data from an actual company. Due to the absence of certain fields in the real data set, selecting an appropriate analysis method required standardization and careful consideration. 

Moreover, this experience allowed students to encounter the task of fulfilling a request from a real customer, so, they had to convey the requested information in a manner that is understandable to the non-analyst.

Outcomes

“It helped us identify that niche customer,” admitted Ray Antonino. “What’s more, it unlocked three states that we didn’t think of geographically. We didn’t think it was that important until we saw the visual provided by the students, which became an eye-opener.”

Permits.com were not only able to see proof of their hypothesis about the top-performing customer type but also focus their targeted ads on this cohort and raise revenue. The company's CEO stated that the visual dashboards created by TripleTen students were ultimately useful for him to discuss with investors because there were nine methods to convey the results that he could utilize for different investors. 

There were a couple of visuals that were incredible, stating where we needed to put our attention and focus. As a team, we could say with complete conviction, we know who the right customer is to spend our energy on. But I was equally excited that I could then add that to my investor updates and get that sent out. And it just really spoke volumes to the work that the students did! Ray Antonio, CEO

As you can see, externships are a great field to tackle your recently obtained knowledge in. It’s an excellent opportunity to showcase your talents and bring real value to businesses, which will also help you feel more confident during a job interview and when you start working in tech.

Enroll in a TripleTen bootcamp to be fully prepared for your new exciting tech career in just a few months!