Connecting all stakeholders in construction
OVERVIEW
Procore is software tailored for the construction industry, used by real estate owners, general contractors, and specialty contractors to collaborate on projects—all while maximizing safety, efficiency, and return. I joined Procore's Identity team in 2019, which was responsible for the Directory product, a tool used by general contractors to manage & provision collaborators with access to construction projects they're working on.
During the pandemic in 2020, Procore formalized its new vision of connecting all stakeholders in construction. Even though owners, general contractors, and specialty contractors were already connected on Procore, their collaboration was fragmented and carried a high administrative burden.
To tackle this problem, I worked closely with my team's Product Manager to develop a vision for the Directory product by brainstorming solutions, designing future concepts, and socializing these concepts with customers & internal teams at Procore.
Role
Senior Product Designer @ Procore
Team
Product Manager
Engineering Leader
Software Engineer x5
Duration
3 months (9/2021 - 12/2021)
PROBLEM
Procore can't truly connect all stakeholders in construction
As Procore grew, the focus was on finding product-market fit before expanding its offerings. This meant prioritizing General Contractors, the primary paying customers, and setting up a top-down collaboration model where they controlled access for other companies from their own accounts.
Over time, this created extra work for General Contractor administrators. As one put it: "I have to manage every company and user we invite to our account. The worst part is keeping track of their company details and project permissions, it's so time-consuming."
Specialty Contractors faced their own challenges. Since they were logging into a General Contractor’s account to collaborate on projects—not their own—they were often doing duplicative work: "I have to log into my own account and re-enter project information, which feels like a waste of time. But we need that data for bookkeeping and audits."
At its core, these issues boiled down to three key pain points:
PAIN POINT #1
Significant administrative burden
Managing collaborators is a burden - some customers even hire part-time help to manage their list of collaborators and keep all of their information up-to-date.
PAIN POINT #2
Double data entry
Since all data lives in the project owner's account, collaborators who are also Procore customers have limited access to that data unless they re-enter it in their own accounts.
PAIN POINT #3
No source of truth for company identities
Collaborators are manually created by our customers, so we don't have a source of truth for the identity of all companies using Procore.
EXPLORING SOLUTIONS
Finding leverage as a platform team
As a platform team, our work enables other teams to deliver incremental value to customers too. To hone in on the key problem to solve, we reviewed customer insights & mapped how our work relates to other teams’ initiatives.
We decided to focus on pain point #3—we believed it was the root issue, and solving it would help address the others. Our goal was to create a single source of truth for company identities, which would unlock two major benefits: automatically keeping company information up to date for our customers and giving collaborators their own accounts—eliminating the need to enter data twice.
We also saw a bigger opportunity: solving this problem could support other product areas, like Growth and Pre-Construction, and move us closer to seamlessly connecting all stakeholders in construction.
But how would we create a single source of truth for company identities?
To tackle this, we brainstormed with the team and landed on a machine learning-driven approach. The idea: use an ML algorithm to suggest matches between companies in our customers' Directories and a verified data source. If a customer confirmed a match, that company’s details would update automatically, saving time and reducing errors. If they rejected a match, their input would help improve the algorithm for even better suggestions over time.
In parallel, the Growth team was building a new marketplace where companies could create free Procore accounts. If those identities could be verified, then we could use that as our data source.
Prototyping our north star
Once we aligned on this concept and confirmed it was technically feasible, I built a prototype to share with customers and gather feedback on our long-term vision for the Directory. This wasn’t just a visual refresh—it introduced key features designed to tackle the biggest pain points we had uncovered:
Add collaborators with a single click
Customers can quickly find verified construction companies in our database and add collaborators—past, present, or future—to their Directory with a single click.
This minimizes the administrative burden our customers deal with today, making it easier to keep their Directory up to date.
Invite collaborators to Procore
If a collaborator isn’t in our database, inviting them to join Procore is simple—just enter their email and send an invite. This also supports the Growth team’s goal of expanding free Procore accounts.
This minimizes double data entry since collaborators can manage their own accounts, with project data syncing automatically.
We got feedback from administrators at 10 of our customers' companies, and overall received very positive feedback to our vision. Customers understood the value of a "Connected Directory" that would take work off their plate and play well with their bidding processes. There were a few areas we needed to investigate further, but these weren't blockers to iterating on the designs and start planning our roadmap to building this vision.
We gathered feedback from administrators at 10 customer companies, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. They saw the value of a "Connected Directory" that could take work off their plate and integrate with their bidding processes. While there were a few areas that needed further exploration, these didn't prevent us refining the designs and mapping out the roadmap to bring this vision to life.
Snapshot of customer feedback
RE-DEFINING OUR IDENTITY
Sharing our vision
We also wanted to validate our vision internally, since our charter as a platform team included enabling other teams' goals. We had already mapped out how our work connected to theirs, so we put together a prioritized list of teams to engage with, including Growth, Pre-construction, and Resource Planning. I partnered with our Product Manager to create a presentation that clearly communicated our vision and how it could help these teams achieve their goals.
Here's some of the content we shared in that vision.
Creating a source of truth for company identities
The Business Registry would house all unique company identities, which could be sourced from many places like the Procore Construction Network and customers' Directories. Our team would own and maintain this registry, and build product experiences to ensure there's no duplicate companies.
De-duplicating company identities
As brainstormed previously by our team, we planned to build an in-product experience that let customers link the companies in their Directories to identities in the Business Registry. By tapping into our customers' knowledge, we could create a single source of truth—giving them the benefit of automatic updates whenever linked company information changed.
Improving the Directory
The Business Registry would power a new search experience in the Directory, allowing customers to easily add companies to their Directory with a single click—rather than manually entering information to create that company.
Enabling other initiatives
The Business Registry would also power other experiences like the Procore Construction Network (PCN), a new marketplace the Growth team was building. Construction companies can create free accounts on the PCN and eventually become paying customers.
RE-IMAGINING THE DIRECTORY
Solidifying our vision
After de-risking our north star vision and getting buy-in across the organization, I worked closely with my team and other stakeholders to refine higher-fidelity designs. This helped us map out our roadmap and break it into achievable milestones.
Linking companies
A key part of our strategy was linking the companies in our customers' Directories with the verified database of construction companies that the Growth team was building—the Procore Construction Network (PCN). We also made it easy for customers to add companies directly from the PCN to their Directory, which streamlined a critical pre-construction workflow for General Contractors when searching for bidders.
Managing collaborators
Customers use the Directory tool to manage the companies they collaborate with. Administrators are typically looking for companies that are working on active projects, so they can update their information, edit permissions, and change their bid & project membership.
BEFORE
An outdated UI, busy side panel, and buried filters made it difficult to find the most relevant companies in the Directory.
AFTER
We re-designed the "Companies" page to show the most relevant information first, and help customers find companies based on their business relationships (e.g. companies you're actively working with on a project vs. companies you've invited to bid on a project).
Viewing company details
When managing a specific company, administrators need to access information like primary points of contact, private notes about the company, and what type of work they do.
BEFORE
The details page just looked like a giant form, with little visual hierarchy or organization.
AFTER
The new company details page groups related content & organizes it based on what's most viewed or edited by administrators.
It also highlights your business relationship (e.g. if you're actively collaborating on a project) and summarizes project information to surface key insights (e.g. the total value of projects this company's worked on).
Managing employees
Administrators also use the Directory tool to manage permissions & project membership for their own employees, and to invite employees from other companies to collaborate.
BEFORE
Viewing & editing employees also took place in a giant form that provided no hierarchy or guidance on where to look.
AFTER
The new employee details page brought project membership to the forefront since managing that was the most common "job-to-be-done" here, while still helping administrators manage things like permissions & contact information.
OUTCOME
Influence beyond my scrum team
This was one of my favorite projects because of how well I collaborated with my product management counterpart. We had a clear vision for Procore as a whole and the freedom to shape our roadmap around it, so the problem & solution spaces were wide open.
Working closely with our engineering team, we brainstormed ways to build the Business Registry and solve the challenge of de-duplicating company identities. Our goal was to create a smoother experience in the Directory and set the foundation for other teams to do the same.
Along the way, we influenced at least three other teams' roadmaps and helped enable key features like the Procore Construction Network and Procore Pay.
~ 3 roadmaps
influenced
RETRO
If I could turn back time…
No project is perfect. If I could do two things differently, I'd spend more time earlier in the project to explore more divergent solutions, and share lower-fidelity work with the team.
Making time to diverge
Early on, we focused on building a single source of truth for company identities, but we didn’t spend much time exploring different ways this could improve the user experience in the Directory. I’m happy with where we landed, but I can’t help but wonder what other solutions we might have discovered if we had taken the time to explore more possibilities.
Sharing early work
At first, the project had a pretty broad scope, so I explored different concepts on my own. Looking back, I should have brought my team in earlier—some technical and business constraints didn’t come up until later, which could have helped shape my ideas sooner. It didn’t cause any delays, but catching those earlier in the project would have made the process smoother for myself and the team.
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