Foundations

Bex Core

AI, email, and insanely flexible document parsing—the engine that runs Bex.
Every Bex module sits on the same foundation: an email-first interface, intelligent document parsing, the best AI for a given task, and an audit trail that lives in your inbox.

Bex's primary user interface is email rather than yet another web portal. People send work to Bex by forwarding documents to it (like bex@yourdomain.com). From there, each module has its own specifics, but they all involve human-like conversations in order to update data or progress through a workflow. Bex's responses include whatever artifacts the recipient needs: a PDF, an Excel workbook, a Word document, a Spanish translation, or a link to an incumbent system like Procore.

Working with Bex feels like working with a human… a tireless human who is awake at all hours.

Having email as the primary interface makes life simple for IT teams (just provision an inbox and you're all but done). The only remaining steps are to work with us to configure security lists (called ACLs) and install any needed connectors to third-party systems (such as ProjectSight or Procore).

There are no passwords to manage, and among other things, this means when an employee leaves, as soon as they lose access to their email, they lose access to Bex. The few web dashboards Bex hosts (and the Bex Walks app) are protected by secure one-time passwords (OTPs) sent via email. Again, when the employee leaves, your IT team needs to do nothing to remove them from Bex.

Unlike almost all software-as-a-service systems, Bex doesn't need to hold onto your proprietary data for very long. By default, we delete Bex's copy of your data after 30 days (configurable for each module). The email interface means we don't have to worry about data loss—disaster recovery is as simple as re-reading email and processing it again. In the very rare event that data goes missing, as long as you don't delete the source email yourselves, Bex can easily recover.

Process diagram showing how Bex Punch turns a forwarded observation report into classified, assigned items in your system of record, then notifies subcontractors.
The core process for most modules: Bex receives emails with attached PDFs or other docs. It extracts relevant data then uses AI fuzzy matching to align data to your exact project names, assignees, distribution lists, etc. It then routes records and notifications to the people specified by your business rules, automatically—even people outside your organization such as contractors, as appropriate. Bex acts like a computer in that messy inputs become structured outputs, but acts like a person by holding conversations like any employee.

Business documents are messy, and Bex handles that variety with the flexibility and intelligence that only the latest LLMs can provide. Data in PDFs or other documents is extracted by AI, both text and images when needed. Additionally, Bex Walks transcribes audio and finds objects and activities in photos, using expertise in the construction domain and its vocabulary. We can even fine-tune the intelligence to meet your needs, from tone of voice to custom data formats to specific business logic.

Bex is not a one-model wrapper. We choose the best AI model and provider for each task. And you don't have to keep up with the latest advances in LLMs, or how to instruct them. Your dedicated Harmonic Mean customer success manager does it for you, working with our engineers.

Spanish is of course the second most important language used in commercial construction in the United States, so we built in translations from the start. Bex will respond in Spanish when a user writes in it; Bex Punch writes observation descriptions in emails, PDFs, and downstream systems in both languages.

Because every Bex action is conducted over email, your existing email infrastructure becomes a tamper-resistant audit trail by default. Every document Bex receives, every approval request it sends, every correction someone makes, and every conversation it has—it's all sitting in your Microsoft Exchange or Google Workspace, easily searched even by people outside of IT.

  • Email-first: no portals, no deployment, no apps, no password management.
  • High-powered AI: the best-fit LLM for each purpose, no expertise needed.
  • Natively multi-lingual: Bex makes sure the message gets across.
  • Built-in audit trail in your existing email system.
  • Short data retention period— just 30 days by default.

Related reading