The $50 Billion Warranty Problem Isn’t About Claims - It’s About Products Failing Repeatedly
For roofing manufacturers, warranty costs are not just a line item - they are a structural drain on margins.
Across manufacturing, warranty expenses consume 0.5% to 7% of annual revenue, exceeding $50 billion globally each year. In the U.S. alone, more than $23 billion is spent processing warranty claims.
Yet despite decades of investment in ERP, CRM, and service platforms, warranty costs continue to rise.
Why?
Because most warranty systems are built to manage claims, not products.
They track paperwork efficiently - but they fail to surface what actually matters:
which roofing products are failing, where, why, and under what conditions.
The Real Cost Driver: Undetected Batch and Environmental Failures
In roofing, failures are rarely random.
They are driven by:
- Specific production batches
- Material or supplier deviations
- Installation variables
- Climate and environmental exposure (heat, humidity, wind uplift, UV)
Yet in traditional warranty systems, these signals remain buried in free-text claims and service notes.
We see this repeatedly in the field: a particular membrane batch begins failing in high-humidity regions. Contractors notice the pattern within weeks. But in a claims-centric system, that insight takes 6 to 9 months to reach quality or engineering teams.
By then, tens of thousands of additional units have already been installed.
This is not a workflow problem.
It’s an intelligence gap.
The ROI Reality Check for Roofing Manufacturers
Roofing manufacturers that shift from claims-centric systems to product-centric warranty intelligence consistently see:
- 30–40% reduction in total warranty spend
- 22% improvement in supplier recovery and cost allocation
- Real-time defect detection, replacing the legacy 6–12 month data lag
The strategy is simple but powerful: stop paying for failures you could have prevented.
The Transactional Trap: Faster Claims Still Mean More Failures
Over the past decade, warranty teams focused on speed - processing claims faster, closing tickets sooner, and reducing administrative friction.
But faster claims processing does nothing to stop defective shingles, membranes, or components from continuing to ship.
This is the Transactional Trap:
optimizing the movement of bad information instead of eliminating the root cause.
In roofing, where environmental exposure amplifies small defects into large losses, this trap is especially costly.
What Is Product-Centric Warranty Management?
Product-centric warranty management flips the model.
Instead of organizing everything around the claim, the system organizes around the product unit itself - from factory to roof to repair.
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Feature
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Legacy Warranty Systems
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Product-Centric Model (iWarranty)
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Primary Focus
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The claim
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The roofing product lifecycle
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System of Record
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Customer & ticket
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Unit-level digital twin
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Failure Visibility
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Post-failure
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Early pattern detection
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Data Access
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Service team only
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Quality, engineering, supply chain
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Response
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Reactive
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Predictive & preventive
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Cost Reduction
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Volume efficiency
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Failure prevention
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The result: fewer repeat failures, earlier interventions, and materially lower warranty exposure.
How iWarranty Enables Product-Centric Intelligence
iWarranty provides a product-centric warranty intelligence layer purpose-built for manufacturers with complex, failure-sensitive products like roofing.
Each roofing unit is tracked as a digital twin, capturing:
- Production batch and BOM
- Supplier inputs
- Installation and environmental context
- Service and failure history
Under the hood, this product-centric model is powered by autonomous AI agents-meaning the system doesn’t just report issues, it acts on them in real time, within defined business rules and audit controls.
Key capabilities include:
- Automated Claims Triage
Low-risk claims are resolved instantly, while high-risk patterns are escalated without delay.
- Batch & Cluster Detection
The system identifies emerging defect patterns by product, region, climate, or installer- before claims spike.
- Engineering-Ready Feedback
Field data is translated into structured insights that R&D and quality teams can act on immediately.
Supplier Accountability
Evidence for supplier-driven defects is automatically compiled, accelerating recovery and enforcement.
6 Steps to Moving to a Product-Centric Warranty Model
1. Treat Warranty as a Profit Protection Lever
Ask: What would a 30–40% reduction in warranty costs do to margin and cash flow?
2. Make the Roofing Product the System of Record
Track each unit’s full lifecycle - not just the claim outcome.
3. Close the Loop Between Field and Factory
Automatically trigger quality holds and engineering alerts when patterns emerge.
4. Predict Failures Before They Escalate
Preventive action costs up to 10× less than field remediation.
5. Align Teams Around Prevention
Reward reductions in failure rates - not just claims throughput.
6. Build a Learning System
The most competitive manufacturers are those whose systems learn- and act -the fastest.
From Warranty Cost Center to Competitive Advantage
Every roofing warranty claim already contains the intelligence needed to build better products and avoid repeat failures.
The difference is whether your system is built to extract and act on that intelligence—or simply archive it.
Product-centric warranty management turns warranty from a blind spot into a strategic advantage.
Ready to Identify Your Warranty Intelligence Gap?
Most roofing manufacturers believe they are operating efficiently - but are still reacting months too late.
👉 Click here Schedule a 15-Minute Warranty ROI Diagnostic call with our iWarranty team to identify your top three warranty cost drivers, the fastest path to a 30%+ reduction & product-centred warranty management.
About iWarranty
Our team combines expert consultants, technologists and lawyers from global firms such as PwC, McKinsey, Baker & McKenzie, DLA Piper, CMS, and Ropes and Gray who lead ground-breaking technology and legal transformation programmes for global multinational corporations. We bring deep subject matter expertise in operational transformation, product strategy, and enterprise-scale execution as well as a great people to partner and collaborate with.
