Procore for Desktop

Right off the bat, one of the things we touch on in the very first software training is a very powerful project management software tool - our Procore for Desktop application. This is a document management tool. Essentially, what it does is drop your documents tool in Procore down so it sits on a local level on your computer's desktop, allowing you to drag and drop folders and files from your computer into the application, and it syncs in real time with the documents tool through the web portal. It's a very powerful way of managing your documents and ensuring that all the documents are in place in one location. And not only that, when it comes time for you to take documents out of Procore, it provides you with a quick way to download those folders and files. Simply by dragging and dropping your root folder into an area on your hard drive, you can effectively get all those files out of Procore so you can manage them locally.

Another great project management feature of the Procore for Desktop application is the ability it gives you to change files on the fly. Let's say you have a drawing that you've uploaded into Procore and you need to make a modification to that. Well, if you go into Procore for Desktop, you can open up that drawing, make those changes, and save it as a new version of that file. It gives you not only a quick way to make changes, but also version control over that file so you can come back into Procore and see every single iteration of that file: you can see when it was uploaded the very first time and how it changed over the last four or five times that it's been modified. It's a very powerful feature that doesn't always get touched on in the sales process.

Scheduling integration

Another outstanding feature is scheduling integration. With Procore's scheduling tool, you have the ability to integrate with MS Project schedules, as well as with Prima Vera ones. That allows you to initially upload your MS Project schedule into Procore. It displays not only on the scheduling tool but also on our daily log on our homepage, so anyone can come into the project, quickly glance through the project schedule, and see what's being worked on that day and what's going on two or three weeks, or a year, out in the future. Then, as modifications need to be made - let's say after a task is completed - you're able to go into the documents tool, click on an integration link, and bring up the latest and greatest version of the schedule. You make your changes; and when you hit save, it asks you if you want those changes committed back into Procore. By confirming you want that, it comes in as your new schedule with those tasks automatically updated. So it's a very powerful tool for keeping everyone up to speed with what's going on at the job site.

Merge with others apps

And here's a really big thing you might not have known: Procore Technologies has designed Procore so it's able to merge with mobile apps in the iPhone, iPads, Android, and tablet market in general. It's a huge component of what we offer clients, and a big advance in construction project management software. It's something that other software in our industry does not have out there the way we do.

iPhone, iPad, and other smart device apps

We've got iPhone - and Android - specific applications. We have an iPad app that we're continually building out, which our clients are finding to be very very user friendly. It really provides you with a lot of the core features in Procore. One of the most powerful things that you'll notice right away is that, within any one of those applications, you can access your Procore directory. That allows you, straight from the application, to see all of your different vendors that are a part of a project, to have their contact information directly in front of you, and to actually call them out of the application. The value of that is essentially twofold. One, you've got a list there of everyone who's on a particular project. Two, you don't have to clutter your personal phone directory with those contacts. So when you need to contact someone on the job site, you don't have to sift through all the other contacts. You can go into the application for that information.

Punch list tool

One of the other valuable things to touch on is the punch lust tool. Punch list, as most of our clients know, is a way to generate a list of to-do items on the job. It can be generated in any one of the applications while you're out in the field. You could be walking around the job site, snapping pictures on the iPad or iPhone or Android application in the field and assigning them to one of your punch list items. Perhaps there's a broken pipe that needs to be fixed. On your iPad, you could take a picture of that and tie it to your punch list “conduit to be fixed” item. You can then assign that task to the particular user who needs to take action on it. The punch list tool is just one of the ways that Procore is such great customizable construction project management software. There's a lot of value in there, and we're continuing to build it out.

Timecards

Let's also look at our timecard feature. Any of your employees that are set up to enter their time through the application can go straight to Procore's timecard, every single day, and enter the hours that they worked. Like other Procore features, this one is also going to sync up with the web portals so that the billing department and your HR department can come in there and see all the hours worked by a particular employee that week or that month.

Everything I've just talked about, well I know it's a lot of information coming at a new client, all these hidden gems in Procore having to do with scheduling and so on. A lot of Procore users might only need a 15 or 20 minutes of training: if they're tech savvy, they can almost figure it out on their own. But with the incredible implementation, training, and support we offer, we find that everybody picks it all up pretty quickly and easily. We find that our software is extremely user friendly. And if any questions arise, you will always be able to contact us. We really have a lot of consistency in our tools - you're going to be able to generate items and view items easily and simply, in whichever Procore tool you're using. All it takes, and this is an important caveat, is that people finish the required implementation process. That's the best practice to put in place, because it gives you a voice in the the customization of our software to your specific needs.

For more information on Procore, the number one, on-demand construction project management software, visit procore.com.

The implementation process starts for a new account when we assign one of our people to be that company’s implementation specialist. That person’s responsibility at Procore is to provide full training to all of the users at that particular company, the internal employees who are going to be responsible for managing the Procore account. That process generally takes between 30 and 60 days, depending on how quickly the client wants to move through the curriculum.

Getting started with Procore

Once an account is sold, everything in the implementation process starts with a kick-off call. We get onto a screen-share with that client and go through a PowerPoint presentation that outlines the training goals for them. The first thing we try to establish is how quickly they want to implement Procore at their organization, what the timeframe is before they want to get up and running on a project. Once that’s established, we want to determine their training groups. And ideally, we like to choose some top-level, high-end users - their key stakeholders - who are going to be in charge of Procore and construction project management on their end. We preview the training: four standardized training sessions that cover everything in Procore. Once they get up to speed on all of that, they help us define the training for some of their other users, such as their architects and engineers, their superintendents and foremen, and so on.

What's covered during training

For our first training, usually over the course of three or four business days, we want to customize some of the features in Procore to meet their specific needs. We get their custom cost codes in place so they can track costs accurately. We do directory imports so they can also get all their contacts in place. That way, as they begin to add them to projects, they already have them in their global database to access and add to the project.

Once we’ve done that, we move on to our backbone features in the system: our directory tool, and that means adding users to Procore and assigning them specific permissions, and our document management tool, which essentially allows you to create folders and files and distribute those among team members. That generally lasts between 45 minutes and an hour, and we cover those two tools in depth.

From there, our last three training sessions can be customized based upon what tools the client needs to understand the quickest, or which ones are of the most importance to their organization. We follow up with training videos for them to review what we covered. We set the agenda for the next training, and provide links for watching training videos that give our new Procore users an understanding of what we’re going to be going over, including a heads-up on training number two.

During each training session, we try to cover anywhere between three and five Procore tools. Wherever certain tools work together with a common function, such as our RFI tool, our submittal tool, and our punch list tool, we group them together into one training. The last training always touches on our contract management features. We like to build up to that, because that’s when we can focus on our prime contract tool - how Procore helps construction project managers implement the contract between our client and the project owner. Then it’s about generating subcontracts and purchase orders that link to that prime contract, and about being able to create not only change orders, but also payment applications off of those contracts.

At the end of it, we sort of circle the wagons with those key stakeholders: we determine how we want to implement Procore for the lower-level users at their company - those people who just need to specify or understand a particular tool. And we move forward from there.

After implimentation

One of the best selling points of Procore is that we offer support service that is second to none. Ultimately, once the implementation process finishes, we’re going to turn them on to our support department, which all our implementation specialists are members of. So our key stakeholders are still going to be able to have that connection with the person who originally trained them, plus we offer unlimited support. At any time in the future, if any one of their users needs any assistance at all, they have a support email address where they can reach us. If needed, we can even reach out to them via phone and provide them with support. We can use on-screen shares that take us directly to their screen, and we can assist them with whatever issue they’re having.

Obviously, we are on board one hundred percent in getting our clients trained up in Procore project management software. Of course, also essential to a successful implementation is the buy-in on the part of the organization that purchases Procore. Our success rate is 99.9% if we can get them to commit to the trainings and to getting the right people on board. Not only that, but when the trainings are done, their commitment should lead them to actually try out those features that we taught them how to use. Client commitment is hugely important to guaranteeing not only that the implementation is successful, but also that the best practices are picked up. So as they start utilizing Procore on a project, they’re teaching their subcontractors, architects, and engineers the correct way to utilize the different tools that they’re managing.

We ensure that every single client’s experience in Procore is a positive one: we offer unlimited support to every single one so that they can always contact us with any questions or concerns that they have. We have an online forum that is accessible any time they’re in Procore, so they can browse our knowledge base, which is chock full of the most frequently asked questions. We have training videos always available for viewing. And our agents will always respond very quickly to support tickets submitted by our clients. We guarantee that when our new customers finish the implementation process, they’re going to fully understand how Procore software works and how it meets their construction project management needs. The value of Procore, in a nutshell, is that we offer support that is second to none.

For more information on Procore, the number one, on-demand construction project management software, visit procore.com.

What Procore provides is time savings: every feature we build into Procore optimizes the users' time. And that, in turn, will save money. There are many examples of how Procore does this, and at the highest level: Procore can help contractors deliver projects faster and more efficiently than they would if they weren't using Procore - using our construction management software translates into making more money.

On large, and even on small and mid-size, commercial projects, it's not unusual for a clause in the contract of one of our customers to state that if the job is not done in a timely manner by a given due date or completion date there will be liquidated damages. That means true dollar costs. Those are dollars that the contractor has to pay to the owner for not completing the project in a timely manner. In this world that we live in, time is money. It's not a euphemism, it's true. So everything we can do to speed up the process and take out the bottlenecks translates into direct, bottom-line dollar savings for our customers.

How does Procore do it?

It's a great collaborative tool, for one thing. A certain serendipity occurs with project teams that use Procore. One of the things that we see all the time is that people will send out a request to an individual asking for information, clarification, or some other answer to a question, and then, simply because it's so easy to do, they will copy or CC other project team members on that same question. Fairly often, we'll see that the correct answer, the most detailed answer, is not coming from any one individual on a project team. A piece of the right answer is held in the minds or the experience of each one of those project team members. So, collectively they give a much better, much more accurate, and often more timely answer than any single project team member can give. Without a collaborative tool like Procore, you really can't even begin to see that kind of efficiency and cost savings on a construction project.

Here's another example of the direct cost savings from signing up to become a Procore customer. Really good construction project management software implements an electronic document management system. Procore does that for every one of our customers, and saves them so much time, right off the bat. The cost of courier services and reprographic services are an enormous dollar cost burden on any given job. And when you can implement a tool like Procore, where you're electronically transferring files, revising files - soon to be marking them up and able to have discussions electronically around them - those dollar savings in courier services and reprographic services are real dollars. And those dollar savings are generally translated directly to our customers, right to the bottom line.

A lot of things can go wrong when pieces of paper are being handed back and forth, and something always will go wrong with important documents that are handled that way. But when they're all digital, they're all on file electronically, so that everybody can get to them - it definitely decreases the risk involved with every project. Procore is construction project software that not only introduces efficiencies into the process, but also, at the end of the day, we're really helping with risk mitigation. God forbid you end up in some sort of litigation at the end of the job, even though that's not very unusual in this industry. You need to be able to prove that, for everything under your responsibility, you did everything in your power to ensure that the job was done in a timely manner and that you were performing your job in the way that the customer wanted. Having a system like Procore, instead of a bunch of legal pads, really helps reduce risk, and reducing risk really translates into dollar cost savings to our Procore customers. We have many examples of our customers having asked us to provide backup for litigation, and we hear from the attorneys themselves how much money was saved over the last lawsuit they were involved with because all the information was readily available and well documented.

Risk can also be mitigated through timeliness and access to the information. One example is that processing paperwork can be a real bear. For example, if you're using a lot of different forms to approve a change order, those forms may be kept back at the office. Meanwhile, you're out walking a job site with the owner. What you want to do as a contractor is be responsive to that owner, so when he says, "You know what, I want to move this part of the structure over five feet this way," you want to be able to say, "Yes sir, we got it." You make a note on your pad. Maybe when you get back to the office, things won't be hectic and maybe you'll have time to fill out the proper forms and get them faxed over to the owner and get them signed.

But with Procore, "maybe" turns into "definitely," because you have the information right there. You have the change order form on your iPad or your iPhone or your Android device, and you have the ability to fill out a change order, get it approved, and distribute it by email to the entire project team so that the information is up to date, in real time. Things don't get lost in the shuffle, in other words, when your information follows you out to the job site with Procore. It's one thing when you have to wait for a fax or FedEx or UPS; but when it's all electronic, with apps on mobile devices, it's instantaneous.

Think about how the industry was 20 years ago, 15 years ago, even 10 years ago, and what construction management was like without something like Procore software. I was watching a show the other night about the building of the World Trade Center - I think it was 1972. It was really shocking, and I couldn't imagine how they did it without anything other than large pieces of grid paper, those hand-drawn Gantt charts, and general ledger notebooks. It's just amazing that they were able to do it. Imagine what it would cost today and the time savings that a tool like Procore provides to any project like that. As we get brought on to larger and larger projects, oil refineries and those kinds of things, it never ceases to amaze me how much information flow gets pushed through Procore, and it just makes me wonder how it used to happen.

For more information on Procore, the number one, on-demand construction project management software, visit procore.com.

In terms of security, for example, Procore's very, very configurable user permissions matrix is built-in, so end users only see what they need to-they don't deal with all the complexity unless they need the software for more administrative-level management of the construction project. One of Procore's tricks is identifying the user's role within a project or within a company, and then applying the appropriate permission template, so their experience within Procore is uniquely tailored to their role. I'll say more about security later, but that's an illustration of how end users are really just seeing the information that they need, to achieve the job at hand. It's the Procore design and operation principle that our customers tell us is really the way our construction project software differs from the competition.

An example

Think of an architect who is really interested in the RFI process, in the submittal process on a job and perhaps checking out a revision of a particular document-all that information, information that is very unique to that architect's role within the project, is really all that's needed when that architect goes into Procore. As a matter of fact, it goes even beyond that. Procore will deliver the information by email, so the architect doesn't even have to know how Procore's internals work. However, if the architect does go into Procore to interact with the system, all he or she is seeing is what needs to be seen-no dealing with all the complexity of contract management and change management, with contracts and change orders. He or she is dealing specifically with RFIs and submittals; and really, because the architect's role is as a reviewer or an approver, there is an even smaller subset of information than what an administrator user would see.

Subcontractor example

Subcontractors have a hard enough job as it is. They don't need to learn a whole new software application. During the bidding process, say, we don't have them learn all the complexities of how the inner workings of our construction management software works.

All we do is present them with:

• a very simple bid sheet that provides instructions on how to bid
• how to download the documents
• how to submit a bid
• how to ask questions during the process

For instance, and this happens a lot, addendums get delivered when plans change to the bidders. Well, the bidder doesn't need to know anything more than 'here is the set of plans that you now need to be working off of"-and that gets delivered in an email. It's very simple. We don't ask them to get into the inner depths and the inner workings of Procore. They are just simply given a sheet, and they provide their bids.

Customization options

Now we come to another way that our construction project management software is tailored to end-user needs: you can choose the desired level of user involvement. We've really tried to keep Procore as customizable as possible. That makes it more usable by a broader range of people, so everybody can get involved, but only at the level they want or need.

Let's look at some of the interface specifics that make this possible. Procore is laid out in a tab structure. Each of our tools-submittals, RFIs, document management, and directory management, for example-is a tab within Procore. One of our clients' project administrators can turn off and turn on different tabs for different users. Take, for example, a certain project team member who is really only concerned with tracking documents within her project; in other words, all she wants is a central location to access, upload, download, and replace any of her project's documents. In that case, all she really needs access to is the documents tab. She doesn't need to have, or even see, the RFIs tab, submittals tab, daily job log tab, or meeting minutes tab. All of that information is beside the point for her, so why clutter up her user interface with tabs or screens that she doesn't need to see?

Mobile apps

We've even extended the customizability concept to our mobile apps, the iPhone and iPad apps that we've just released. The end users only see the tools and the features within those tools that they need to see. So our iPad application, as well as our other mobile devices, is aware of the users' roles on the job. Therefore, they're only given the simple screens and input fields that are required for them to get their jobs done. It really makes these tools trainingless-using them requires no training. The apps are so simple to use because there's not that much on them. It just involves doing on the mobile app what the user was already used to doing.

Although some of our customers run just one or two projects, it's not unusual for a customer of ours to be running 90 to 150 projects at any given time. And individuals can have different roles within the same company on different construction projects. They can customize Procore for each project exactly as they would like it to look. For example, a project manager for one construction project might also be the superintendent on a different job. He might want to have different views of Procore for each of those projects. Procore lets you customize views and the user experience not only down to the individual, but also down to the individual on a specific project.

Procore's security

Now back to security, and how Procore makes it simple. Even with all these different, multiple projects going on, you need only one authentication. Can you imagine having to set up user permissions on each project for every new user you add to a system? Well, believe it or not, most of our competitors have a very complex and very long-winded approach to setting up users in their systems.

With Procore, you don't have to remember five different logins, five different passwords-you just need that one authentication. Procore's templatized permission means all you need to do is apply a permission template to a user one time, and that becomes their default on all new projects. Now, when you add them to a project where their role has changed, you just simply click one button and a new permission is applied to them for that one-off project with that one particular template. It really cuts down maintenance of the system, and we get a lot of customers coming to us from our competitors because that one procedure is so time-consuming that they need to have a system in which they're not spending all their time trying to figure out what a user's going to see and what they're going to do. We've already conquered that.

The only reason a user needs a login and password is for accessing Procore online or through one of our mobile apps. But because Procore does such an effective job of communicating to the team members via email, the whole concept of having to remember passwords and login IDs and resetting passwords goes away, because most of the interaction is done through email. Procore does a great job of pulling all that information right back into the system without forcing someone to log in. Again, if they do have to log in, there is only one user ID and password they have to know, and it doesn't matter if they're working on one project, or on a thousand projects, or across multiple contractors: there is just one authentication they need to know. It's pretty straightforward.

For more information on Procore, the number one, on-demand construction project management software, visit procore.com.

"So what value do I get with an annual Procore license?" is a question we're often asked, and it's a good one. Suppose you bought a car a year ago and walked out to your driveway this morning to discover it had all of these new features in it-like XM radio and navigation-that it didn't have yesterday. An annual Procore license works similarly. The way we like to think of it is, if you become a customer today, you will receive so much more a year from now because we are constantly innovating, and this is where the value lies.

Here's a great example: Following the release of our Procore iPad application, we took the opportunity at a trade show to evaluate our competition. They all touted that they had an iPad-friendly application, but what they meant was that you could go on the web and just look at their application. None of them had made an investment in creating a true iPad application. Developing a mobile app is not easy, by any means. It's a very complicated process that introduces lots of questions. At Procore, we've invested a ton of resources and time in making this first release of our app. If you became a customer a year ago you weren't sold that feature, but with an annual license you automatically get it after your license renewal-there's the value.

That's just one example of the many features that Procore rolls out to our customers. We think it's an exciting business model, and we're thrilled when we hear customers say things like "Are you kidding me? I got so much more out of this tool than I ever thought I was going to get!" and "So what's next? What's the new cool skunkworks project at Procore?"

People are skeptical about this model at first.

Some have used client-server based construction software that wasn't universally adopted by their employees. Others wonder what it means to have a cloud-based software application that isn't called software, and what the experience will be like. Still others have repeatedly shelled out money for software upgrades, only to discover that they have to reload all that software on their computers or train their users in a new way of working.

It is one thing to help our customers see that they will be able to manage their projects more efficiently within the first month or two of using Procore, know they can log into a project and see its progress 24 hours a day, every day, check the latest change to a special plan, or see what bidders have signed in the bidding process. But to have them log in and see a splash screen that says, "Guess what? We added a whole new contract management module and your cost for this new feature is exactly zero!" is when that light bulb goes on and people say, "Ah, now I get it. I'm getting a more powerful tool for the same cost, just for being a Procore customer." Some car manufacturers are now mailing out USB thumb drives to owners to upgrade their vehicle's software. Along the same lines, we offer upgrades to our customers, but we go one step further: our customers don't have to load any new software-the upgrade happens for them automatically.

Just adding a bunch of new features to our products, however, isn't necessarily a good thing.

We've watched some of our competitors throw everything-including the kitchen sink-into their products, inundating their poor customers with rules, big screens containing hundreds of input fields, and a huge learning curve. We don't just sit back, deliver features to customers, and hope they like them. We spend a lot of time debating which features to introduce. We'll develop an idea (that often originates from our customers themselves), and then we'll show the feature to several interested customers and get their feedback. If the feature is something that customers find useful, we'll include it in the product. As a Procore customer, having your voice reflected in the evolution of our product is key to what we do, and we value that relationship.

We give the smaller contractors a tool so that they can act like a big business. We make it simple to use, so that it will infuse in their organization some standardized processes that will really make them more professional and more profitable. People don't implement software because it's fun or because they love software. They implement software because it's going to make them more efficient, save them time, and save them money in the long run. Procore helps to instill best practices in the smaller organizations, which leads to better performance and is where small business customers find their value.

Take this scenario: A smaller residential or commercial general contractor is bidding on a project against larger companies. In this economy, larger companies are reaching into the smaller project market to keep their teams busy. In order to succeed, the smaller contractor needs to be at the top of his/her game. Being good enough just isn't good enough anymore. You have to be great; you have to have industry - best practices. That entails keeping everyone from the the project owner and the architect–the entire project team - up to date with the most recent document revisions; the most recent job site photos; the ability to show a clear, concise, and organized daily project log; and the ability to use electronic communications for special purposes such as submittals or requests for information. If a smaller contractor can't say, "Here's my system for managing all of your information," then you cans expect that a larger firm will. Procore is proud to provide the tools needed for smaller contractors to be competitive with state-of-the-art business practices, communications, and online organization - and is priced in a way that makes sense for the smaller contractor.

Even so, winning the job is just the beginning of the game. Procore gets you in the door, but it also gives you the opportunity to demonstrate sound business practices. What keeps a contractor in business is the ability to meet deadlines, to stay on budget, and to get a great referral. Because Procore helps the contractor manage their processes, jobs end well. Clear communication throughout the entire project leads to the contractor getting a great referral and future work from the owner. It's not just about winning the job; it's about winning the customer relationship.

Even the smallest of our customers have business processes that they've implemented that are unique to their organization. With our skills and technology, we match their business processes to new tools configured to Procore, allowing them to leverage our technology with very little work. For example, let's say a smaller builder needed to report on post - construction service management work. Though we don't offer a service management module, we can enable some features in Procore's construction management software that lets the builder achieve his/her goals without having to invest in other software, especially for features that are just "nice to have." We are able to provide a fully rounded - out feature set for small businesses just by listening to the business' needs.

Clear and concise communication, effective sharing of information and accountability are the cornerstones of professionalism and successful methods to avoid litigation. Procore is built with those fundamental practices as part of its offering. We minimize risk by helping to avoid the downside of not managing it.

An example is our implementation process, to which our larger clients tend to dedicate more resources. We work very closely with our customers, putting together an implementation strategy that lets larger customers either apply Procore in a phased approach (applying several features at a time across a large number of projects), or take a segmented approach (applying Procore to a company division or to a regional office and implementing Procore in all of their projects at once). Larger corporate customers see value in our consulting with them regarding the most effective way to launch Procore. Minimizing risk is key when implementing any enterprise solution. Procore's launching methods are where our experience in the field really shines through.

The IT support staff in these enterprise companies value Procore's experience and capabilities because a lot of the 'heavy liftin'' is taken off of their shoulders. They are then able to reduce assets, such as servers and IT support staff, because Procore assumes much of that responsibility. This opens the company up to focus on other priorities. We find clients then saying to us, "What we really want to do is enhance this product." allowing Procore to offer consulting as well. Not only does Procore provide a solution, but also customizes it and configures it to meet individual business needs. Each of these large corporations have created very unique business practices and enjoy the fact that Procore delivers a product that meets the vast majority of their needs. Our goal is to close the gap by meeting our customers' needs to the fullest, which is what makes Procore stand out among our competitors.

Procore is able to keep up with large clients. We make it simple for the client who decides to expand the use of a successful productivity tool, or enterprise application, from one division/department to other company locales. For example, Procore construction management software is used to build a project in the New York metropolitan area. This project then creates a buzz about Procore's user friendliness and how well it allows for the management of all project data. Next, somebody inside the company is saying, "Well, I'm starting a project, but it's in Dubai. Can I use this software in Dubai?" Procore doesn't need to ship special servers to Dubai. There isn't any more complex implementation than what's already been done for the U.S. location. Procore is able to be instant - on, immediately, on the other side of the world.

Large clients also appreciate the ability of Procore to keep up with the pace of change and pace of expansion, offering the ability to be used by a team spread across the country - or across the world - in many different time zones and geographic locations. The cost savings of going with Procore, for a larger enterprise, are significant. Consider the alternative: installing seat software licenses in Dubai and New York; requiring staff member travel for on - site training and the loss of productivity from being absent from work. IT managers recognize that the true cost of implementation of a client server - based solution is astronomical. The true cost adds up even further in productivity loss, complexity, hiring, travel costs, and other extras that, with Procore, become irrelevant. That's where the value is found.

Most customers come to us frustrated and looking for a solution. Many times, a corporation - especially in the construction and engineering world - will have a large number of offices where each seems to find a small technical solution that solves a small in - house problem. For the IT directors at the highest level, this leads to a lack of continuity across the enterprise. With no visibility into company project management practices or data, they search for a solution usable throughout the company which can be implemented with minimal impact and will be worth the cost of changing. This is Procore strength. We demonstrate a very simple, easy to use solution geared towards the least experienced staff member. Once he/she adopts it, then all of the management, and not just the IT management, gains visibility into their project management data. This is where corporations make money - being able to identify problems and address them before they become out of control. Single point solutions distributed across the organization with no continuity simply can't give them that visibility. Procore construction management software provides an enterprise view of all projects, therefore mitigating risk.

Success for us is in saving everyone, every one of our customers, time and money.

Special power supplies and sources of power, backup generators, and steel cages around each tenant’s computer add to the center’s security and stability.

When the words ‘data security’ are mentioned, many people automatically think ‘hackers.’ But there’s more to security than worrying about hackers. The physical security of one’s data and computer server, as well as electronic security, may be far more vulnerable than one might expect.

Think about the physical security of a computer server that’s kept within a steel cage that’s locked. And that steel cage is kept inside a data center, the access to which is highly restricted using things like fingerprint scanners and card scanners to make sure that everybody that comes onto the property at that facility is identified and has proper clearance. So for Procore, that physical security means we can’t even get to our own servers. In fact, no one from our company has ever been to the data center that has our data, or our application, or our customers’ data. That’s just not something we need to do. It’s not something we’re allowed to do. Physical security measures for cloud-based systems are much, much higher than in a company that would have its own server room on site.

Consider how this may affect a typical Procore client; a construction company who’s concerns revolve around having enough offices for their accounting team or space for their superintendents. They’re not focused on the security of their server room, even though it’s holding the driving force behind their business. That’s in contrast to a data center for which security is everything. When measured against that level of physical security, one really sees what the cloud has to offer.

The beauty of having the actual data security in the cloud is that we can leverage all of the infrastructure that these very large corporations primarily focus on, like securing customers’ data, authenticating access … things that, frankly, we don’t have to worry about here at Procore. It’s synonymous with the idea of not having to visit the power plant to know that we’re getting power. We don’t have to generate our own power. We don’t have to worry about whether the nuclear power plant is a secure facility … and we don’t have to be experts in securing a physical plant. Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t focus on security—it simply means that we are free to focus on what’s called ‘application-level security’.

Application-level security entails anticipating threats to customer security before the customer is even aware of the threat. A lot of customers come to Procore from the client server world where their server room doubles as a storage room, with a rack of servers in the back, and staff going in and out of it for coffee supplies or paper towels. These customers worry about: What happens if somebody puts a thumb drive in my server and grabs all the credentials? What if there’s a power surge? What if there’s an outage? With Procore, it’s off your mind. Procore’s construction project management software, housed in an unassailable hosted data center, becomes a perfect solution.

What about a recovery plan in the event of a disaster? Procore’s cloud is set up in a most remarkable way. The application writes all of the data to a database. That database is in a very secure server (a physical device sitting in a data center). But it’s not only writing to that one server. It’s also writing, at the exact same time that the database is updating, to another server in a completely different physical area—in a different part of the country—in a secure location. It’s called ‘replication,’ and for Procore, it’s ‘real-time’ replication. This means that if there was a problem with that one particular server—a hardware malfunction, etc.—Procore would automatically switch over to the other database with no loss of data. The beauty in this is that the customers don’t even see a hiccup. And, the Procore code is kept in a third party repository that’s not in the same location. Because the servers are housed in different locations, when Procore is accessed, it’s done from one, to many different places. All of the obvious faults are covered, making Procore a fault tolerant solution.

This kind of fault tolerance is unheard of when a company is self-hosting and has an event as common as a hard drive failure in the office server room. Production stops. Even after the drive comes back up, there may be significant data loss or damage. The real cost in fixing the problem isn’t the amount of money spent on repairs. The real cost is in lost productivity. To us, downtime is something that is taken very seriously. In the same vein, uptime is critical. Because of this, Procore purposefully schedules its infrequent maintenance times on weekends, which our wide customer base finds very convenient.

Customers can rest easy at night knowing that they’ve got Procore monitoring, watching and making sure that their information is safe and secure.

Some construction accounting software vendors attempt to sell construction project management solutions as a "bolt on" module to their accounting packages. This approach is rarely a good fit, primarily because of differences in the work processes and design goals that exist between general ledger accounting applications and project management software.

Accounting software is designed to reside in one location on a single server, primarily for reasons of data security. The over-riding design goal of general ledger accounting software is data security, and not to promote team member collaboration. In contrast, construction project management software is only successful if its design encourages collaboration and information exchange – a design goal that is exactly opposite that of general ledger accounting software. Users need to be aware of this fundamental issue before attempting to combine construction accounting and project management using one software platform.

Procore's construction project management software resides in the cloud. The primary design goal of Procore is to encourage and enable access to project data for all stakeholders. One aspect of construction project management that must be kept confidential is general ledger accounting information. Accounting information is kept behind a corporate firewall, and is rarely opened up to collaborative input. This is completely different from collaborative project management. This difference in design goals goes a long way to explain why combining accounting and project management software usually doesn't lead to a best-in-class solution.

Unlike Procore's cloud-based construction project management software, client-server based accounting software is sold by the seat license, because a company knows how many people are in its accounting department. Accounting departments function by knowing that they are not going to have a constantly fluctuating number of users. Most accounting departments can easily predict their costs for a construction accounting software solution by simply purchasing seat licenses for each internal employee in the accounting department. Again, this is the opposite case from a construction project team, which usually has a constantly fluctuating number of members as the project progresses from the planning phase to course-of-construction to the post-construction phase.

To ensure the security of our users' financial data that is imported to Procore, our software application has a comprehensive matrix permission system in place. Procore's permissions allow company and project administrators to select exactly what data they want displayed in the Procore system. Financial data can be viewed, but managing data in Procore's system does not change the data within a company's general ledger accounting software. Procore's approach provides the best of both worlds -- true collaboration among project stakeholders while also maintaining the data firewall between a company's accounting software and its construction project management software.

Procore's construction project management software does not use seat licensing because this approach limits access to valuable information, since only specific machines can run a seat-licensed software application. Seat licensing slows down problem solving for a construction project team. Procore's construction project management software promotes collaboration and transparency, because allowing more people to view data at the same time speeds up workflow and improves transparency. This is incredibly valuable in construction project management, which is inherently a collaborative process.

Procore believes that everyone on the construction project team should be involved in exchanging project information, as long as they have permission to view that information. Procore's customers get much more value out of using Procore's construction management software because they are no longer limited to certain machines and certain users – anyone who is provided access to a Procore project can join in the collaboration, at no additional cost.

Because Procore is sold for a flat annual license fee, a construction manager or general contractor no longer needs to worry about buying individual seat licenses for project team members who are external service providers or partners. Those stakeholders, such as the architect, the engineering firm, and subcontractors, may be involved in the construction project to varying degrees. Managing individual seat licenses for these extended teams often presents more of a hassle to the project owner or contractor than they care to deal with. When it comes to purchasing and distributing seat licenses, the construction project management software solution can be more trouble than the problem!

With Procore's construction software, it doesn't matter whether a project team member is involved in one short-term segment of the project or for the entire construction process. Because Procore never charges for additional team members to use its construction project software, the entire project team can share information and fully collaborate through Procore's construction management software.

Construction project teams are often made up of employees from many different companies. A team consists of not just the general contractor, but also subcontractors, trade partners, engineers, and architects. If only one person has to make all the decisions in terms of who should be let in to a construction software application, and then that organization has to pay for the seat licensing for those allowed access to the construction software, an artificial lid is being placed on the usefulness of that construction project management software. This reduces the utility for everyone, not just the people who aren't let into the construction software, but also the project team members who are already using the construction software.

The best way to avoid this dilemma is to say, as Procore does to its clients, "We want everyone to be on board who's involved in this project; if you use Procore construction management software, there won't be any additional costs for that usage."

In terms of cost savings, Procore's customers appreciate the fact that when they sign up for Procore they are given one flat annual price. That price is the same price no matter how many users they have on their system at a given time. Procore's customers can budget for the fiscal year knowing the price for their construction management software is fixed, and won't be affected by the number of users on a project team. In this regard, predictability and pricing is one thing that Procore offers that the seat-licensing vendors really can't match.