Many specialty contractors have been introduced to Procore after using it through their clients’ accounts. But, while there are plenty of benefits to being a guest user on another’s account, accessing Procore features are limited to that client and that project — which means they’ve only experienced the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to all Procore has to offer specialty contractors.
The solutions available for preconstruction, project execution, workforce management, and finances operate as a unified and consistent software across departments, jobs, and years.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits that come when a specialty contractor purchases their own account.
Make preconstruction work for you
Specialty contractors face unique challenges in preconstruction, but Procore for Preconstruction provides a comprehensive software solution that addresses these challenges head-on. Our fully integrated preconstruction software connects design documents, take-offs, estimates, quotes, bids, and budgets in a single location, streamlining this complex, multi-stakeholder process.
As a specialty contractor, you also often work on complex, highly technical projects that require specialized knowledge and skills. With your own Procore account, you can customize the software to fit the specific needs of your business and the projects you work on, streamlining your preconstruction process and improving your overall project outcomes.
Specialty contractors often face miscommunications and a lack of collaboration with multiple stakeholders involved in preconstruction, particularly if they are outside the orbit of the GC. With Procore’s centralized software, all stakeholders can access the same information and collaborate in real-time, reducing the risk of miscommunications and ensuring that everyone is on the same page.
Moreover, Procore’s data and analytics can help improve your business decisions by analyzing data from previous projects to identify areas for process improvement, cost reduction, and profitability increase. This includes using historical productivity rates and material cost data to create more competitive bids, simplifying takeoff and ensuring accurate estimates with our customizable library and auto count feature — and with your own Procore account you can ensure that you have access to this information when you’ve completed on the job.
Overall, having a unified preconstruction software that you own allows for the customization of Procore software to fit your specific needs, streamlines the preconstruction process, improves collaboration with stakeholders, and makes data-driven decisions that can improve your overall business performance.
Streamline project execution with centralized processes
Having your own Procore account gives you a project execution solution that connects the field and office together with real-time accessibility to up-to-date, accurate information. This type of collaboration is impossible to achieve if you’re just accessing Procore through a client’s account.
Procore Project Execution connects building information modeling, design coordination, project management, invoicing, financials, quality and safety checks, analytics, and much more in one integrated solution. By centralizing this work you can free your teams and partners from inefficient, disconnected, and inconsistent processes.
Consistent, standardized workflows vastly improve predictability and visibility for all project stakeholders, streamlining communication and collaboration across the entire organization. In addition, with unlimited users and robust account controls, you have full control over project information visibility inside and outside your organization.
“Procore has helped eliminate manual processes for sure, and just our overall process and technology,” said Kyle O’Connell of N.S. Giles.
His company was spurred to create its own account to help move it away from wasteful manual processes.
“It’s been really big for the company to get rid of pen and paper. I think that’s really helping us become more efficient and lean as a company,” said O’Connell.
With more project oversight, accurate budgets and trackable quality and safety standards, your Project Managers can confidently watch for issues and catch them before they become problems. And every project contributes to a digital paper trail that progressively deepens the analytics at your fingertips.
Take ownership over your data
Project Manager Spencer Cherry with Humphrey & Associates said that owning their own project data from start to finish, rather than adapting to every account they were a guest on, was a big draw for the firm.
“Not having full control of Procore from the subcontractor’s point of view can be a challenge. If I wanted to send something out, I could only send it to a couple of contacts with our GC specifically. Creating documents under their templates — general contractors don’t necessarily do everything the way we do,” explained Cherry.
If you don’t have your own account, you don’t own your project data, which means when that project ends and the client moves on, you lose access. Securing your own data means you are able to perform the historical analysis that any company needs to do in order to increase productivity and identify areas needing improvement. Cloud-based backups and standardized file structures across departments keep things running smoothly even when accidents occur.
Humphrey & Associates, a Procore MEP customer, experienced significant improvements after moving from a client’s account to their own.
“Knowing that our project data is secured and can be accessed by our operations team while we fight through a case of security breaches is priceless,” said Humphrey’s VP of Dallas electrical Jaeson Thornton. “Soft costs are at an all-time high right now, and having those resources unavailable and unable to perform their daily duties would impact the project’s progress and the bottom line. In addition, there will always be employees within an organization that inadvertently erase content, but having Procore keep our project data at a remote location that is backed up and out of our standard file structure minimizes the accidental deletion or relocation of files from occurring.”
Drive repeatable results
Having your own account helps you deliver repeatable results, improving confidence in estimates and better predicting risk. Under a client’s account, you can communicate and share documents freely with them, but them only. With your own, you can design your own workflows and automation to better serve your own teams — better efficiency lets them do more in less time with fewer resources.
“One way that I analyze the project manager’s efficiency is based on the quantity of projects they can manage simultaneously,” explained Thornton. “Where a project manager once managed on average $3.5 million a year––with Procore they can manage $5 million a year. That means we didn’t have to bring another person onto the payroll, or assign an assistant to help them out. They can do that by themselves because of the efficiency of Procore.”
According to Procore and Dodge Construction’s recent survey of specialty contractors, 20% of time is spent on low productivity tasks, often manual processes like updating individual logs and spreadsheets. Centralizing and automating these doesn’t just increase productivity, but morale as well as employees feel their time is being better spent. Standardizing these systems also cuts down on errors, leading to less rework and fewer delays — and that goes straight to the bottom line.
Maximize productivity with real-time labor management
Forecasting, scheduling, tracking and managing your workforce are incredibly important tasks that as a guest user of Procore you will not have access to. With your own account, however, you have a powerful, end-to-end construction workforce management solution. Increasing workforce utilization and uncovering real-time insights will improve your schedule predictability and maximize profits.
Labor shortages already plague the construction industry, and the next five years promise even more hardship to come. That’s why it has become increasingly vital to the success of specialty contractors to put powerful labor management tools to work. Using Procore Workforce Management, your teams will be prepared for everything from labor shortages to on-site logistics to tracking personnel and project performance.
A centralized, modern scheduling and communication software is a must-have to provide a real-time look at the deployment of your workforce’s resources and skill sets. It also ensures your team is tracking its time and tasks effectively. By tracking not just hours, but out of scope work and materials installed, you can maximize productivity and protect your labor budget. Integrating your HR and ERP systems makes sure all your labor-adjacent processes are visible in one place.
This data also informs your ability to know with confidence what you need from one job to the next: historical data from past projects can be analyzed to produce educated decisions and smarter estimates in forecasts for future work.
People are your most valuable resource, and consequently labor miscalculations can seriously jeopardize schedules and budgets. Relying on disjointed spreadsheets, whiteboards, and disparate file and folder structures definitely leads to mistakes and inefficient use of time. By centralizing not just the data itself but the communication methods used to access and update it, you can ensure everyone on your team, from the office to field leadership, is getting what they need, when they need it.
The usefulness of having your own Workforce Management tools isn’t limited to administrative tasks: empowered by data transparency and improved communication, your teams will be able to more easily and confidently optimize their field crews.
If team leaders know their employees will be at the right place at the right time, they can be confident in their ability to get the job done or, if necessary, respond to shifts and changes with a full, real-time picture of the resources at their disposal. This confidence generates excitement as managers and especially field leadership find they are spending less time on labor management paperwork, and more time actually building things.
Streamline financial processes for cost control and confidence
The financial health of your projects is easily visible through your own Procore account, which brings together project designs, estimates, bids, and budgets in one place. This 360-degree view of your organization’s work isn’t possible if you’re a user on a client’s account.
Procore Project Financial solutions help track and manage every dollar and action involved with every project your company is working on — and all the ones you’ve finished, too. Putting everything into the same system streamlines practically every financial matter, while syncing job cost data with most common construction accounting systems.
Change management can be handled from start to finish; estimates from a bid plug right into the budget; critical costs are forecasted using real-time data from the field. Your risk management, profitability, and collaborative workflows are unified and communication all takes place centrally.
Many organizations are made up of multiple siloed operations, most commonly the office and the field; Procore’s financial tools help break down those walls and overhaul communication between these two domains. Effective two-way communication is essential for managing budgets and costs, and for keeping projects on track and fully documented.
By more effectively and easily communicating the financial impact of changes in the field, design approvals, and labor issues, miscalculations will be minimized and margins will be preserved. From precon to construction to close-out, instant financial data visibility helps all stakeholders and team members stay on the same page — and learn to trust that the process can scale as your business grows.
Give your team the tools they deserve
Trusting the system matters, not just so that people embrace and use it, but so they feel the sense of security and confidence that good financial management imparts. Seeing that their work is predictable and profitable, and becoming more so, can provide a huge boost to morale at a time when the industry is facing serious pressure. Knowing that processes are in place to mitigate risk and protect project profits lets them do their job in peace.
Procore is built for specialty contractors. We have designed solutions that specifically address their needs across the vital and various construction processes of preconstruction, project execution, workforce management, and financial management. If you’re currently working within a client’s account, you’re only experiencing a small part of what Procore has to offer specialty contractors.
To set up your own account and find out how much more there is to discover. Click here.
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