Speed Matters: Procore Construction Project Management Software Faster
Monday, May 3, 2010 at 8:00AM 
If you're evaluating web-based construction project management software, you may be interested in the biggest feature that isn't evaluated until AFTER most companies have actually bought and implemented their new software.
We're talking about speed - meaning, how fast does the web-based construction software actually work?
Scroll down to see a chart of what we're talking about, but here's the background on the data:
Many prospective buyers of web-based construction project management software evaluate different vendors' products by creating a "must have" list of features and functions. These lists include the ability to track documents, manage communications, create project schedules -- standard stuff for the construction software packages in the marketplace.
What those lists don't cover is the actual user experience of the software. In other words, what is it like to actually be the guy who has to use the construction software on the job site?
One thing we've learned at Procore -- if the software is slow, the guys at the job site won't use it. Ever.
Most construction software vendors make it difficult, if not impossible, for potential users to judge exactly what the user experience is going to be like. Vendors will show you all sorts of PowerPoint presentations and "canned" demos, but they'll never let you actually get in and knock around with the software. These companies also don't offer any kind of pilot project evaluation, because selling just one project instance of their software doesn't make sense with their business model. Software vendors that rely heavily upon implementation and configuration charges need to sell an entire company-wide software implementation before their users even get a chance to try out the software.
The result? Many investments in construction software fail because the software is hard to use and SLOW.
Older client-server and web-based construction software technologies get slowed down by the load of simultaneous users. That's why Procore uses the latest and greatest 21st century web technologies, not old code left over from the earliest days of the Internet.
Procore invests a lot of time in making sure our construction software has fast response times and no lag. A fast page response means our users spend less time waiting for the information they want to see. And when the software is fast, the guy at the job site is happy.
We benchmark Procore against other web-based construction management software packages. As you can see from the chart below, Procore handily beats the other vendors, even under equivalent load conditions:
The chart shows that Procore's pages consistently load faster than any of our competitors' pages. This is because our competitors don't have the highly scalable infrastructure that Procore has to deal with the load of many users. In addition, Procore's competitors use older technology that can deliver web pages under loads from multiple users, but only at speeds that are half as fast, or much worse, as Procore.
The lesson is clear: with web-based construction software, speed matters. Don't forget about speed when evaluating web-based construction software. Make sure to ask construction software vendors if you can try a pilot project before you buy their product.