Case study: Construction software scales through Salesforce

"Anytime we need some sort of Salesforce automation we can’t handle, we go to Idealist Consulting...we've grown so rapidly that having a resource like this is critical. We know we can turn to [them] to help us think through any new Salesforce ideas or predicaments we have." - Brandon Poling, Business Intelligence Manager

Procore Technologies, Inc. provides cloud-based construction software to clients across the globe. Procore helps firms drastically increase project efficiency and accountability by streamlining and mobilizing project communications and documentation.

Procore is growing quickly -- the company added over 100 employees to its workforce in 2014 alone. Throughout this growth they have partnered with Idealist Consulting to problem-solve, integrate solutions, and imagine how Salesforce can best be used to help them reach their next major milestones.

Long-time Salesforce users

While many Idealist Consulting customers are relatively new to the platform, Procore is unique in that they have been using Salesforce since the company formed back in 2003. This means that while they have gone through many changes and shifts, Salesforce has always been the crux of their business, consistently providing insights into marketing attribution, sales trends, and customer success metrics. Over the past year, there are several factors that make careful Salesforce management more critical than ever:

• Rapid growth: Procore went from 100 employees at the end of 2013 to over 200 by the end of 2014, necessitating the restructure of many internal processes and systems
• Need for dependable lead management: Now that they have an outbound sales team, there is a constant push to feed the business development team with high-qualify leads and routed territory management
• Limited internal coding resources: Procore does not have APEX skills on staff
• Solution integration: With such rapid growth, solutions cannot exist in silos, and Salesforce integration has become a #1 priority

Procore works with Idealist Consulting on a Tech Support basis, meaning that they have a direct line to a specific consultant who helps them problem-solve and brainstorm about new areas of Salesforce optimization. Most recently this has included two main projects: integrating financial management system, Intacct, with Salesforce, and integrating the internal Procore application.

Intacct integration takes Procore one step further toward “telling the whole story”

In early 2015, Procore went live with their Intacct-Salesforce integration, which gives their sales and finance teams greater insight and transparency into each other’s pipeline. Intacct now syncs new sales & renewal amounts, along with customer information straight from Salesforce, while also providing a feedback loop back to Account Executives & Customer Success Managers regarding the current status of payment. Idealist Consulting helped give Procore the structure they needed to create the integration in a way that would tell the whole story.

Integrating Internal Application lends greater insight into customers

As a software company themselves, Procore uses their own software in addition to Salesforce to track customer data. Together with Idealist Consulting, they recently built out a proof of concept to test out integrating the Procore application with Salesforce, including API call testing and a full customer use case exploration.

“We proved that they can create a Salesforce-integrated application, which has tremendous value to customers who don’t want to have another silo of information,” says Poling. The company hopes to explore publishing on the AppExchange soon.

Procore is exploring further ways to optimize their sales process and sell to more people. Currently, they are developing a way to add customers’ project contacts (from construction companies to architects to contractors) to the Procore database, giving the Procore sales team a strong new channel of prospects who are already familiar with Procore.

Nearly 100% user adoption

As long-time Salesforce users, Procore has a unique advantage: there is no alternative legacy system, and their new business development team has never known any system besides Salesforce. Based on a recent survey of license usage, almost all of Procore’s 108 licensed users had logged in within the past 24 hours.

“Every single business development rep is in Salesforce daily: we live out of it,” says Poling.

That said, Procore’s usage in the past year was nothing compared to where it is today, and it has exponentially increased with the company’s growth. While individuals at different levels use Salesforce to varying levels, everyone knows it is the system of record.

The Idealist Consulting partnership

“I go to Idealist Consulting when I have a problem to solve and rough logic of where I want to go, not just to place an order to get something done,” says Poling. “It’s more of a partnership: it’s immensely valuable to be able to say, ‘Hey, this is the predicament I’m in, this is what I’m trying to solve, can I get your opinion?’ As we grow further, having a partner like this is key.”