The Weitz Company Brings Job Costs to the Field With Procore JD Edwards Integration

The Weitz Company has been using Procore on its projects for just under two years. Within that time frame, the national general contractor partnered with Procore to implement one of the largest technological advancements in its 163-year history. The upgrade culminated in February when The Weitz Company became one of the first ENR Top 100 companies to merge its enterprise financial accounting system with its project management solution, a move that fundamentally changes how construction companies manage job cost data.

This year, Weitz plans on running approximately $1.2 billion in annual construction volume through Procore utilizing Construction Financials.

Back in 2015, Karmyn Babcock attended the first Groundbreak conference to learn more about Procore as she evaluated the product for The Weitz Company, the Des Moines, Iowa-based general contractor where she works as vice president of operational excellence. At the time, Weitz was seeking a cloud-based solution that would support four critical areas of its business, including field, engineering, quality, and safety. It would turn out that Procore met those needs and, soon after Groundreak, Weitz and Procore would kick off an implementation.

After successfully piloting Procore on its first project, Weitz decided it was time for the company to make its largest technology change since implementing its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution. Weitz would partner with Procore to integrate financial information from the aforementioned ERP, which happened to be JD Edwards, directly into Procore Construction Financials to bring job costs to the field team.

Construction Financials connects the office and the field, enabling project teams to manage costs in real time, while giving executives visibility into their company health at any given moment, providing a single source of truth for all financial stakeholders.

“It’s like building an interstate system,” Babcock said with regards to developing the financial integration. “You want data flowing smoothly without collision. A bad financial integration decision will stop teams in their tracks and disrupt business.”

The Procore team went to Des Moines to sit down with Karmyn and her team at Weitz to begin talking through the product development plan. From that meeting, a course was mapped to meet Weitz’s financial requirements and, before the end of 2017, the necessary budget, commitment, change management, and cost points were configured to move information between Procore and JD Edwards.

The first project with financial reporting kicked off in February 2018. Both Weitz and Procore acknowledged a key factor to enabling the JD Edwards integration was the execution of multiple pull plan sessions to remain collaborative through the process.

“It’s financial data so it needs to be auditable, and clean,” said Babcock.

The integration has had an impact across all departments at Weitz, from project managers to the executive leadership team.

Project managers are now only concerned with one system, where previously they’d be tasked with matching the financial information between their project management software and accounting solution. Executives have the ability to run more efficient reports and get immediate, accurate views into the financial status of all projects through company dashboards.

“The reporting and flexibility of information we can get out of Procore is well beyond anything we’ve ever had,” Babcock said.

"Having the financials integrated with Procore benefits our clients, too. By no longer having to manage multiple systems, our project teams have more opportunities to focus on the things that deliver value to our clients in the field.”

To get your field team access to the financial data they need, while allowing your accounting team to maintain control, check out Construction Financials.