Leveraging a scalable solution to streamline communication and collaboration

The Challenge

Ryan Companies US, Inc. is a national commercial real estate solutions provider headquartered in Minneapolis, providing development, design, construction and property operations services. The organization was struggling with a lack of mobility and user experience in its technology, and needed an innovative solution that would allow for better support and integration between the office and the field.

The Solution

With projects spanning different locations and diverse teams, Ryan sought a scalable solution to streamline communication, enhance collaboration and drive unprecedented project efficiency. Procore offered all of the above, with information transparency that empowers leadership to better support project teams.

The Results

• Manages commercial projects from start to finish with greater visibility across office and field teams
• Enables collaboration, allowing the entire team to contribute to financial success and break down silos
• Streamlines the transfer of knowledge from preconstruction to construction, ensuring continuity across teams

Better Mobility and Ease of Use

As a national leader in commercial real estate since 1938, Ryan’s search for a construction management tool was about finding better ways for its people to communicate. Mobility and user experience were top factors in their decision that ultimately led to choosing Procore. “We were really trying to engage our superintendents and our field staff, trying to bring them into the process and make it feel less burdensome to start doing things in a consistent manner so that we could scale,” Mike Ernst, VP of Operations at Ryan Companies, explains. With Procore, Ryan could empower its field teams to access project information from anywhere without being tied down to a specific location or device. “Procore allowed us to bring everybody in intuitively,” Ernst says. “Before, we had to do a lot of training and administration. We had to set projects up and really refine and monitor what they were doing. Now we essentially give them the app and let ‘em go. Procore makes it easy for them to find the information they need in a couple of clicks.”

Transparency for the Whole Team

Ryan realized that Procore’s ease of use and data centralization capabilities could help bridge the gap between office and field teams. “There are numerous benefits to transparency, specifically with the project team. What used to be an extended, hours-long conversation at the end of a month to discuss issues is now in real-time,” Ernst explains. “We can now expose that issue, talk about it, develop a recovery plan and devise a plan for adjustment within the day.”

The platform’s immediate analytics and reporting capabilities provide further transparency into project performance, allowing leaders to identify areas that require additional resources. According to Ernst, Procore has proven instrumental in enabling leadership to support project teams more effectively. “Leadership can see what's going on in a project without requiring extra reports or burdening the team with additional meetings or paperwork,” he says. “They can quickly peek in and see how they can best support that project.”

Keeping Information Intact

For Ryan, Procore’s data accessibility and visibility are essential in preconstruction. In terms of defining a project’s scope with suppliers, vendors and partners, Ryan’s preconstruction group is tasked with moving everyone forward during the early stages of a project, then hand it off to the construction team to ingest as commitments are made and overall project execution takes over. The Procore platform makes this a seamless transition.

Additionally, Procore’s centralized repository is crucial to collaboration in the preconstruction phase. “If our developers are trying to find out what the concrete [subcontractor] is doing or when their dates are, we just allow them access and they can easily go in and see their commitments,” says Ernst. “It puts a lot more eyes on the execution process and allows everyone to succeed.” Because Procore stores and organizes important documents, data and insights, it eliminates the need for anyone to do extensive searching or rely on individuals for legacy knowledge.

Ensuring Financial Success

Procore breaks down the traditional silos that previously limited the involvement of Ryan’s team members in project financials. “When Ryan takes on a project, we want to make sure that the office staff, the project management staff and the field staff function as a team,” Ernst says. “By doing our financials in Procore, we can share that information with everybody so that they can have thoughtful conversations. Are we going over budget in a specific area? Are we on budget overall?”

This ease of transparency ensures that all stakeholders have visibility into the financial aspects of the project. Rather than leaving all financial issues to the accountants, Ryan chose a more inclusive approach, utilizing an integration component where the project managers stay in Procore to understand what their end budget or actuals will be on the project. With multiple perspectives and insights into financial issues, the entire team contributes to productivity and financial success.

From preconstruction to field coordination to financial management, Procore is helping Ryan grow and succeed. By leveraging Procore’s centralized data and real-time accessibility for all stakeholders, that growth is bound to continue.