Why AORMS built a supplier directory instead of another CRM field

Most office software treats a material supplier the same way it treats any other contact — a name, a phone number, maybe a tag. That's fine for a Rolodex. It's not enough when a project's finish schedule depends on knowing which supplier actually stocks a specific tile, in the right city, at a price that's on record rather than remembered from the last site visit six months ago.

ConnectDeX exists because "who supplies this" shouldn't be a phone call away from someone's memory.

A real catalogue, not a contact card

A Company on ConnectDeX — a material or interior-finish supplier — maintains an actual product catalogue: named products, categories, SKUs, MRP, spec sheets, and test results where they matter. That catalogue is searchable by any architecture practice on the platform, nearest-first by city and state, not buried in a PDF someone emailed you in 2024.

The difference isn't cosmetic. A vendor field tells you a name exists. A catalogue entry tells you the product exists, what it costs, and whether a supplier near your site actually carries it — the three things you're actually trying to find out.

Verified, not self-declared

A Company doesn't just sign up and start listing products. Getting onto ConnectDeX runs through a real review: an application, a platform admin's manual verification of the business details, and a flat onboarding fee before the profile goes live. That's a deliberate gate — a directory full of unverified listings is worse than no directory at all, because it costs a practice trust the first time a "supplier" turns out not to be one.

Separate from a studio's own login, on purpose

A Company account is a genuinely separate identity from an architecture practice's own AORMS Identity — not a role you toggle, a different login entirely. That's a real tradeoff, made deliberately: a supplier's business has nothing to do with a studio's own staff roster, its clients, or its project files, and conflating the two would mean a supplier account sitting inside the same identity as a firm's confidential project data. Keeping them apart isn't extra friction for its own sake — it's the same instinct that keeps a firm's accountant's login separate from a client's own portal access.

Where this goes

A practice specifying a finish shouldn't have to leave the platform to find out who actually makes it, and a supplier shouldn't need a separate sales pipeline just to be discoverable by the practices already using AORMS for everything else. That's the whole premise — put the catalogue where the specification decision is actually being made, not in a separate tab nobody opens until procurement.

Supply materials or interior finishes? Apply to become a ConnectDeX Partner →