Discovery Builders Tears Down Silos with Integrated Approach

The Challenge

Discovery Builders (DB), the construction arm of a real estate developer and operator of private luxury residential communities around the world, was working through challenges related to business silos. Different teams used different accounting software and cost coding, making it tough for accounting to track, report and forecast financials. Critical documents like change orders, contracts and drawings were tracked with spreadsheets and emails, slowing down projects and leaving the company open to costly errors. Getting teams or units to collaborate was nearly impossible, because everyone seemed to be speaking a different language.

The Solution

DB opened its first Procore account in 2016, but an overall resistance to change kept them from adopting it widely at first. Once they integrated Procore with its ERP, Sage 300, in 2017, employees could see the benefits for themselves, and enthusiasm for the platform spread throughout the company. Today, Procore is “a fundamental part of our DNA,” says Heidi Heitz-Lowe, DB’s Director of Procore Systems and Integration.

The Results

• With standardized processes across all locations, Discovery can create better financial reports and maintain a high level of service and customer experience.
• Transitioning from spreadsheets to Procore has helped streamline operations and enhance overall productivity.
• The efficiency gains achieved through automation have enabled Discovery Builders to offer additional services.

An Entrepreneurial Spirit, but Not Very Efficient

Discovery Builders (DB) operates with an entrepreneurial spirit. Specializing in large-scale luxury residential communities, DB can spend up to 10 years on a single project, with teams operating simultaneously all around the world. From the beginning, project managers were encouraged to operate semi-independently, developing their own processes for everyday tasks like sharing markups, executing contracts and processing invoices.

As the company grew, the lack of uniformity became increasingly challenging. Different units were using their own cost code structure and accounting software, creating silos that made it difficult to track and report financials. There was no standard process for executing change orders or contracts, slowing down projects and causing confusion among vendors and owners. “We were missing simple markups, because people were using excel spreadsheets to track them,” says Heidi Heitz-Lowe, Director of Procore Systems and Integration for DB. With everyone doing things their own way, collaboration among teams or units was rare, depriving the company of opportunities to scale or find new efficiencies.

“It was very archaic.” says Heitz-Lowe “We were in the dark ages. A lot of emails back and forth, and a lot of time wasted.”

An ERP Integration Tears Down Silos

DB signed up for its first Procore account in 2016. But a year later, “it had barely been touched,” says Heitz-Lowe. “Change is hard in this industry—people love their Excel spreadsheets.” It took dedication to integrate Procore with DB’s ERP, Sage 300, that the tide began to shift.

“Right off the bat, there was more opportunity for the operations team to see real live data so they could manage their budgets better, which was significant,” says Heitz-Lowe. “With real-time cost data coming in and everything getting coded correctly, we were able to start reporting properly and timely, and doing real forecasting.” Analysts were now able to create monthly snapshots that could be easily shared with the entire company. “They can put together dashboards for our C-suite that show our progress across a lot of projects, which we were never able to do before.”

“We immediately noticed a substantial increase in collaboration.” she says.

More solutions quickly followed. Soon, teams were using Procore for billing, scheduling, purchasing, drawings, and RFIs, and contracts, all of which saved time and cut back on costly errors. “It used to take days or weeks to turn around contracts when we were using old-school Word documents,” says Heitz-Lowe. “Now we just put it in Procore, and everything fills automatically. Everyone is able to sign through DocuSign, and it can be turned around in hours. Those are significant savings when you spread it across hundreds of projects over the years.” They also used Procore to standardize their change order process, ensuring that owners and members had a consistent experience every time they interacted with the company across all projects.

Most importantly, the company broke down silos and improved communication among its different units, making it easier for everyone to be on the same page. “In our business, plans can change dramatically in a very quick timeframe,” Heitz-Lowe. “Our biggest reward is being able to have a software that disperses those changes in a timely manner to all that are involved, which has led to significant savings.” And because Procore allows unlimited users on each account, DB was able to drive those savings broadly throughout the company. “With other software, you tend not to get as much buy-in, because your cost goes up every time you add a user,” she says. “But we have our designers, architects, subcontractors, C-suite, accountants, everybody in the same spot. Unlimited users have been phenomenal for us.”

‘A Huge Cultural Change’

For a company that once resisted change, DB ultimately adopted Procore in the most organic way possible. “Others began seeing what our department did and said, ‘Sign us up, get us going,’” says Heitz-Lowe. “When we move people who’ve worked with Procore within the company, they say, ‘I’m not doing that on a spreadsheet. We’re doing it the new way.’ It’s a major cultural shift for us.”

With standardized procedures for everything from cost-coding to RFI submittals, real-time insights into budgets and change orders and improved communication across the entire organization, DB has retained its entrepreneurial spirit while shedding the expensive, time-wasting inefficiencies that threatened to slow its expansion.

“It’s become a fundamental part of our DNA to use Procore,” says Heitz-Lowe. “When I have new projects start now, the first thing they do is call and ask, ‘When can we get our Procore account?’”