The following content is sponsored by Procore.

Earlier this summer, hundreds of construction financial professionals from across the country came together for CFMA’s annual conference. This year’s theme focused on ‘the pursuit of curiosity’. As part of the event, Procore hosted a construction technology forum that showcased the Procore platform and how it’s enabling the future of collaborative, real-time cost management.

Here are some of the highlights including Procore’s vision for project cost management,  product announcements, customer stories, and more. 

A Platform Purpose-Built for Construction

The technology forum kicked off with an overview of the Procore Platform. As a platform purpose-built for construction, Procore intimately understands the industry’s greatest challenges and offers unlimited users, unlimited support, and unlimited data to enable collaboration. Over 11,000 owners, developers and contractors around the world use the Procore to connect their technology, processes, and people throughout the project lifecycle. And with 300+ integrations in the Procore App Marketplace, from ERPs, lien waiver tracking, and digital signature solutions, all of your data is connected on one true platform.

Procore’s Vision for the Future of Cost Management

As the industry leader in project-cost management, Procore’s Financial Management solutions are built to give you real-time insight into the financial health of your projects and portfolio with centralized, accurate data connecting all stakeholders.

With construction projects and teams becoming more disconnected, the need for fully integrated cost management is only growing. “The systems you use to manage scope and schedule need to connect to the system you use to manage project costs”, said Eloise Hoegh, Senior Product Manager at Procore, echoing sentiments shared by Procore Founder and CEO Tooey Courtemanche earlier this year at Procore’s Cost Management Summit. Hoegh re-emphasized that having these tools connected on one platform is how you gain real-time insights into the financial health of your projects.

Hoegh also shared how Procore is continuing to advance its cost management solution by focusing on four key pillars:

1. Collaboration with internal and external stakeholders
2. Information transparency for all team members
3. Configurability for data consistency and financial control
4. Forward-looking visibility into project costs

Collectively, these pillars help guide Procore’s product vision of connected cost management. Next, Hoegh highlighted a series of new enhancements to Procore’s financial offering. The big highlights were…

Invoicing Approval Workflows - The new workflow builder allows you to configure and administer approval workflows for subcontractor invoicing, with the ability to set conditional logic thresholds such as invoicing dollar amount, to dictate additional approvers as necessary.

Cross-Tool Financial Reporting - Procore’s new reporting engine allows you to connect data from across multiple financial tools all in one report. For example, report on all change orders across commitments on active projects.

ERP Connector Platform - The ERP Connector platform gives companies the ability to integrate ERP or accounting systems with Procore. This new ERP Connector platform empowers third-party app developers to leverage Procore’s API to build integrations with the functionality that Procore-built accounting integrations deliver, so your field and office teams can collaborate in real time.

How Ryan Companies Is Benefiting From Real-Time Cost Management

The session rounded out with a presentation by Procore customer Lisa Leighton, Senior Project Controls Manager at Ryan Companies.

Leighton painted a picture of what’s possible for companies who digitize their cost management processes and take control of their costs by leveraging the data in Procore. She offered five tactics for companies to implement to take control of their costs:

1. Prioritize a collaborative culture based on accountability. Commit to creating a culture of transparency and accountability. Cost management is everyone’s job.
2. Invest in technology for project cost management. Move away from manual systems and invest in a digital cost management solution.
3. Leverage real-time insights. Unlock real-time insights by investing in technology and healthy data collection and management. Without accurate and complete data going in, nothing good can come out.
4. Create company-wide alignment around costs. Align the organization, from operations to accounting, around costing processes, technology, and people.
5. Standardize processes for consistency and visibility. Establish clear, integrated processes that leverage digital solutions and encourage collaboration and visibility.

Leighton then walked attendees through powerful insights dashboards in Procore that demonstrated the value of each of the five tactics.

For example, Ryan Companies uses a project health dashboard to give their teams easy access and equal visibility into critical items such as profit, general conditions, and revenue billings, so they can manage their costs better.

They also leveraged a commodities dashboard, which they pulled together in 24 hours in response to the commodities pricing unpredictability.

The insights from these dashboards brought clarity to an unknown situation and allowed Ryan Companies to make smarter business decisions. “Without Procore and our financial integrations, this commodities dashboard would not have happened in the timeframe that it did,” said Leighton.

Real-Time Cost Management: Construction’s Next Wave of Digital Transformation

Procore is redefining what the industry should expect from a cost management solution by connecting all stakeholders to accurate financial data on one secure platform, enabling real-time insights into the financial health of projects, and providing the ability to integrate with any industry leading ERP solution through Procore’s new ERP Connector Platform.

With construction projects and teams becoming more disconnected, the need for fully integrated cost management is only growing. In order to effectively manage costs in the future, your people, process, and technology must all be connected on one platform. The second wave of construction’s digital transformation is here and collaborative, real-time cost management is at the forefront of it.

Be the first to unlock the Construction Cost Management Report. Procore and Dodge Data & Analytics invite you to an exclusive first look at the Construction Cost Management Report. Join us to see what new data says about the current state of project cost management and why it’s time for owners and contractors alike to embrace collaborative, real-time technology solutions.

To see it in action, watch the cost management demo given in the live session from Procore Solutions Engineer, Michael Guerra.

The next wave of construction’s digital transformation is here, and collaborative, real-time cost management is at the forefront of it.

You can watch the session on-demand here. To learn more about Procore’s cost management solution, visit our website or schedule some time to talk with us.