Streamlining payment application approvals to enhance project efficiency

The Challenge

ShopCore Properties, the Chicago-based retail arm of The Blackstone Group, manages over 24 million square feet of retail space in the US. With the rise of technology slowly becoming the norm in the property business, ShopCore knew that their processes were ready for an upgrade. Their teams recognised that the payment application, tendering and contracting processes were ‘archaic’ as they relied primarily on email chains and paperwork – which caused errors and delays. The project teams felt burdened by administrative tasks.

ShopCore found that not only were their processes creating a build-up of admin work, but they were also interfering with transparency, especially for their vendors waiting on status updates for pending payment applications, variations, etc. The cross-checking of multiple systems was inefficient and frequently resulted in vendors being paid later than expected, putting a strain on the relationship. ShopCore was confident that technology could help relieve administrative time and enhance transparency for project teams and their vendors.

The Solution

At the start of 2018, the ShopCore team began looking for a platform that could help improve their time management and best practices for project cost management so that their teams could spend more of their time driving progress on projects and less time on administrative work. When Stephanie Karolich, a development analyst at ShopCore, was brought in to analyse Procore, she immediately saw the potential to create a one-stop shop for project management.

Procore presented a clean user interface and the ability to create a single source of truth across projects, accounting and budgeting. ShopCore decided to implement Procore and integrate their accounting instance in MRI with Procore to create a frictionless process for managing budgets, payment applications, variations, contracts and paying vendors.