Procore announced a raft of exciting new solutions, enhancements and platform features at its Groundbreak conference this week. In broad terms, the announcements include payments, labour, pre-construction, and communication.
Procore Pay
One of the biggest announcements is the launch of Procore Pay. This solution builds on the lien rights management from the acquisition of Levelset and the reworking of its invoice solution over the last couple of years. Tooey Courtemanche, founder, president and CEO of Procore, commented, “Procore is designed to help solve our customers’ greatest challenges so they can manage risk and grow their businesses. For example, construction is one of the slowest paying industries. According to Levelset’s 2021 Construction Cash Flow & Payment Report, it takes an average of 83 days to get paid after an invoice is sent. For this reason, we are excited to announce that Procore Pay will launch in 2023.”
Procore Pay aims to address that challenge, and as Wyatt Jenkins, SVP of product, noted, “Our goal with Procore pay is to get everybody paid and get them paid faster.” To achieve this, the company has partnered with Goldman Sachs Transaction Banking to embed payments into the platform and bring an end-to-end solution that should accelerate the time to payment.
Procore highlighted three real benefits to solutions.
- It reduces payment friction by expediting invoice review and providing payment options powered by Goldman Sachs.
- Saves time by removing a point solution and associated data entry, integration and payment process friction.
- Streamlines lien waiver collection via an automated lien waiver exchange.
Enterprise Times asked Jenkins if this is a silver bullet for construction late payments?
Jenkins replied, “It’s not a silver bullet because some people still won’t like to pay because they want to hold it up for other reasons. I can’t solve that. What I can solve is the visibility. Already in Procore, we’re seeing owners look at the projected cost, understand what the change was, or understand why they could pay early and then pay it earlier than they were going to previously.
“Today, all payments can stay digital, and we can lift a lien. There’s this magic moment in the product where I submit my invoice if I’m a subcontractor. Now I go to this page in Procore pay, and there’s this little button that just says, lift the lien, and your payment will show up in your account the same day.”
And on the roadmap for Procore Pay, Jenkins added, “In the future, we can tie payment back to that projected cost. That’s next on the roadmap. We also have an early pay feature that we’re working on too. Further down the road and (we) have a couple of engineers thinking about automated pay with computer vision. An owner will see that something changed on the job site and decide whether they want to fund the invoice. That’s a little bit of where we’re at today and where we want to be in five years.”
Platform enhancements power AI features
In May 2021, it acquired INDUS.AI, its computer vision product, which is now a core part of the Procore platform, forming part of the Construction intelligence layer. One of the new features powered by Computer Vision is the Procore QuickCapture, announced last year. Procore Quick Capture has now been enhanced with speech-to-text. In time all of Procore will become speech-to-text enabled, including all searches.
Another new area is takeoffs. Jenkins explained, “Now, with our construction intelligence platform, we have automated area takeoffs. We’re using computer vision, looking at drawings, and we’re able to count everything up, count symbols and count cubic feet if you’re doing flooring or roofing. We’re using computer vision to automate tasks like that.”
Procore has also added predictive analytics to the platform. It is still in the early pilot delivering insights on the trends of RFI’s and General Conditions budgets compared to historical projects within an instance.
Jenkins explained, “Data and predictive analytics will power the next generation of projects. As the current workforce begins retiring, job sites are losing seasoned superintendents and project executives with 30-plus years of experience. To keep building safely and efficiently, we need to arm the next generation of construction leaders with the knowledge and insights captured from every project built in Procore. This creates smarter planning while easing the pains of the labor shortage by arming teams with previous experience and knowledge from similar projects.”
What about prescriptive analytics? Jenkins replied, “I don’t think we’re there yet. Where we are is still predictive. It’s not hard to imagine the use cases, so I think its coming soon.”
Pre-Construction
The Procore Construction Network continues to expand. It is now one of the biggest construction networks on the internet. Focused on the US initially, ET asked Jenkins about international expansion. He commented, “The Procore construction network is starting to get into Canada. It’ll be headed to the UK shortly, probably the back half of 2023.”
Alongside the Construction network, Procore will launch Procore Document Management early next year in a limited release. This new document management system will handle any ISO standard used in construction. It aims to provide a platform to share documents across multiple stakeholders within different companies.
In addition, Procore announced Procore Connect on Drawings. This will provide every stakeholder with a shared repository of the most up-to-date drawings. This collaboration tool will enable people to review the latest drawings and avoid repeated work.
Brad Mohler, virtual construction manager, ColonialWebb commented, “Procore Connect is a great start to being able to connect across platforms on Procore. It strengthens our ability to connect with the customer and utilize a single source of truth for drawings, so we’re all working the same revision.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
This is just a snapshot of the updates that Procore announced during its conference. While these solutions are in different release phases, they indicate a strong continuous roadmap for the construction management platform.
Procore is differentiating itself because it has focused on building and extending its platform first, enabling it to deliver features that benefit customers directly. In turn, this enables its customers to differentiate from their competition by introducing automation and AI-backed solution at a pace that is faster than many competitors.
Will all of the new features take off in every client? Probably not, but it could bring digitisation to the construction industry, which has been hesitant about deploying such front-line technology. As rivals perceive the advantage of solutions like QuickCapture, this could be good news for Procore.
