The Roof You've Never Seen: How One Configurator Replaced the Measuring Tape

Solar panels look simple until you try to buy them. Is my roof even suitable? How many panels do I need? When does this pay for itself? For most buyers, the answer used to involve a stranger with a measuring tape and a few weeks of waiting.

We sat down with Tormis, Project Manager at Wabric, who led the build of Solarstone's product configurator, to talk through how his team solved that problem, and what changed once the sales process stopped depending on a site visit.

The project started, like a lot of good ones do, as a complaint about time. "Our main objective for this project was to enhance the efficiency of the sales team," Tormis says. "Solarstone approached us with a concern about the sluggish pace of their sales process. Their salesmen dedicated a considerable amount of work time to gathering precise measurements from clients, and customers often lacked the expertise to provide detailed information themselves."

The fix wasn't a new piece of technology so much as a realization about the technology that already existed. "We knew that the essential information already existed in different databases, customer data in national databases and Solarstone's product data in their internal system," Tormis explains. "This realization meant that all calculations could be automated." Wire those databases together, and the solar configurator practically designed itself.

Type in an address, see your roof

Using the configurator starts with something almost anticlimactic: a customer types in their building address. What comes back is not anticlimactic at all. "The user visits the Solarstone configurator page and inputs their building address. Then they get an aerial view of their house and the dimensions of the roof," Tormis says. "Since the portal is connected to different databases, information exchange happens automatically."

Behind that one input field, lidar data supplies the roof's size, orientation, and slope, the Maa-amet geoportal renders the aerial visual, and Solarstone's own panel specifications get folded in to calculate price and expected output. "These are the kinds of data that a customer would typically struggle to gather on their own," Tormis notes. None of it needs a technician on a ladder.

From there, the customer takes over. The configurator generates the roof's individual surfaces and suggests suitable panels for each one, and the customer places and rearranges them at will, watching the price and projected output update as they go. "We also have information on the intensity of sunlight in a given location, thanks to data from the European Union," Tormis says. "The customer can calculate the power and quantity of their solar panels, determining the productivity of the panels each month."

The real-time price isn't just a display number, it's meant to teach. "It's crucial that, while playing with the calculator, the customer gains an understanding of the profitability of their investment and how it changes in different situations," Tormis says. The price updates as the configuration does, so the customer always sees a current, indicative figure rather than working from a stale estimate.

When they're satisfied, they submit the configuration, and it lands with Solarstone's sales team already complete. "A properly formatted inquiry reaches the sales department of Solarstone," Tormis says. "Now, a Solarstone salesperson only needs to review the data briefly and provide clarifications to the customer if necessary."

Seeing is deciding

The visual piece isn't decoration. In Tormis's view, it's most of what makes the tool work commercially. "When a customer sees the product they are considering, their confidence in making the purchase increases, expectations become more realistic, and ultimately, satisfaction with the outcome is higher."

It also collapses a process that used to stretch across months. "If previously customers spent a lot of time on Google searching, comparing, and calculating, we now facilitate their decision-making by simplifying and clarifying the calculation process," Tormis says. "The customer gains a comprehensive overview of the product's price, profitability, and appearance incredibly quickly. What used to take months now happens in just a few minutes."

What actually changed

Ask Tormis what actually improved, and he reaches for the operational answer before the sales one. "We see a reduction in errors, incorrectly ordered products, and returns," he says. "This is because the configurator minimizes misunderstandings between the customer and the sales department. The customer doesn't need to search for their data, it is automatically retrieved from the databases."

The sales answer follows close behind. "As the customer gets a very precise visualization, sales volume increases," Tormis says. "The customer simply feels more secure when the process has been transparent and visualized for them, allowing them to independently see how different choices affect the product's appearance and functionality."

Solarstone has since pushed the same idea further upstream, feeding the same product data into parametric BIM models so their panels can be specified directly into architects' building designs, long before a tender is ever issued. The full arc of that, and what it did for Solarstone's sales team day to day, is in the Solarstone case study.

Multiple teams, one roof

Ask Tormis about the hardest part of the project, and he doesn't point to the technology. "Typically, we encounter a good idea that needs a bit of polishing, and this time was no different," he says. "In the case of Solarstone, it was a project that demanded a novel approach. However, research and development always consume a considerable amount of resources."

The harder problem was coordination, not code. "Our task is to work with the client to figure out the best way to solve the business problem," Tormis says. "Collaborating with the client, we established the project requirements, but the core idea remained the same. Essentially, we provided a product owner service."

That meant managing several teams pulling in the same direction at once. "The project involved numerous stakeholders, our development and UI/UX team, Proekspert AS working on the same project, the client's team with various ideas," Tormis says. "Additionally, we had to communicate with different databases and establish effective communication bridges between all parties."

Keeping that many moving pieces aligned took discipline. "In such a large team and project, it's easy to get bogged down in details, but when developing an application, we mustn't forget the big picture and understand the user journey from start to finish," Tormis says. "While every puzzle piece is crucial, the emphasis lies in how they come together to form a cohesive whole."

Tormis's advice to anyone building one of these

Asked what he'd tell another manufacturer weighing whether to build something similar, Tormis doesn't hedge. "I believe it's only a matter of time before such products become the norm among construction supply sellers," he says. "It makes sense to start sooner rather than later. In competitive conditions, customers typically choose a provider who is the simplest, clearest, and most transparent for them."

His caution is about scoping, not timing. "When ordering a project, it's essential to consider that the clearer the goal, the better the end product. It's worth establishing all business requirements upfront and being open to various scenarios for solving the project. Ultimately, our job is to find the most efficient output for a specific company."

The pattern underneath all of it isn't solar-specific. Any product where geometry drives the sale, roofing, facades, prefab modules, runs into the same measuring-tape problem eventually. It's a familiar one for roof and facade manufacturers in particular.