Accelerating digital transformation and going paperless

The Challenge

GL Homes’ invoicing processes was 100% paper driven. Anthony LoFurno, Senior Director of Land Development shares, "We had multiple approvers per invoice for 50-70 invoices per project on 10-12 active projects. There were a lot of manual and repetitive touches. Even emails were getting printed and handed off to the next individual. It was very labor intensive, involved too many handoffs, and was cumbersome and prone to error."

Tired of being slowed down by disparate systems and paper-driven processes, GL Homes had just kicked off their digital transformation journey with Procore. GL Homes’ main focus and reason for purchasing Procore was to create a seamless digital financial workflow from budget, bidding, contracting, change management, invoicing, and payment. Anthony notes, "the concept of Procore being a true, connected platform was huge. Having a single platform allows us to integrate our tools in a system that is both fluid and flexible. Procore gives us that platform."

Due to the rate of the transformation GL Homes was looking to achieve, Procore recommended a Procore Certified Consultant to enhance and speed their roll out process.

When COVID-19 hit, their digital transformation timeline had to be expedited.

When the GL Homes offices shut down due to COVID-19 everything was in disarray. GL Homes was not set up to work remotely. "IT did a great job making sure most people could work from home, but we still had a manual monthly invoicing process that required multiple individuals to come into the office. We did not have our JD Edwards ERP integration anywhere near complete to move everything into the financial tool in Procore. While we are still working toward that seamless financial workflow, we needed a digitized stop gap now." Anthony LoFurno explains.

The Solution

"We had to break our paper addiction and even more importantly, we didn’t want to put anyone, employees or vendors, in harm's way by being in office. We had to come up with a solution fast," Anthony shares. 

Procore’s flexible platform and Kris’s ingenuity was instrumental in coming up with a creative interim solution. Kris was able to leverage the Submittal Tool and custom fields in Procore to create a totally paperless invoice routing and approval system. With The Rollout Crew’s help, GL Homes was able to go from concept to completely paperless in the first 45 days of closing their offices. "We are so thankful for the flexibility of Procore and its ability to meet us where we were at." Anthony notes, "this type of work was completely out of our original scope for Kris- he blew us completely out of the water." 

"To really roll something out with success, you need someone on the inside who wants to make it across the finish line just as bad as you want to. This person needs to be in a position of influence but more importantly they need to be eager to roll with the punches and adapt as the situation demands. Anthony checks all those boxes and has been critical to the ground we've covered to date with the GL Homes Procore rollout."

By going paperless, it has already yielded a 40% reduction in cycle time for invoice approval with 100% adoption rate. More importantly, this continues to keep their people safe during this protracted pandemic. "People were scared to walk into the office to sit down and review invoices because of the unknowns. With Kris, he was able to figure it out, and get it running. That is when I knew we made a very good investment in such a short time. It was eye opening and this really proved the Procore Certified Consulting route was a good one." 

The Results

• Completely paperless within 45 days
• 100% adoption rate
• 40% reduction in invoice cycle time
• Kept people safe during the pandemic