Procore has acquired LaborChart, the Overland Park, Kansas-based developer of workforce management software for specialty contractors and self-performing general contractors. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but LaborChart had been a part of Procore’s partner network for more than a year prior to the Oct. 22 acquisition announcement.
LaborChart’s cloud-based labor management software is designed for contractors to use without having to change their existing processes. LaborChart user Tim Ekberg, quality manager at Structural Group, wanted a better way to coordinate labor for the Columbia, Md.-based structural repair contractor’s projects. He turned to LaborChart because it fit the way Structural Group manages people better than a custom development or by integrating a general labor management application such as Salesforce.
“It had things that resemble a whiteboard, things that resemble a spreadsheet, but that also outperform both of those solutions,” Ekberg said. “We felt like we’d be able to evolve our schedulers into this product, but not fundamentally make them change their processes.”
For Procore, the acquisition comes less than a month after its acquisition of LevelSet, a New Orleans-based payments and lien management technology company. Both companies will be added into Procore’s platform as it focuses increasingly on tasks that are essential to the business of construction beyond the field.
“Our customers were loud and clear that their biggest cost that they have to manage is people,” said Tooey Courtemanche, Procore CEO. Courtemanche said that while Procore’s productivity tool manages personnel, bringing in LaborChart allows customers “to look out into the future with scheduling and the commitments that are made and ensures people get to the right place at the right time.”
LaborChart founder and CEO Ben Schultz, who started the company after being frustrated by the available non-whiteboard solutions as a fourth-generation electrical contractor, said that Procore provides a larger platform to get LaborChart out to more specialty contractors and self-perform GCs. Customers are either starved of or overwhelmed with work right now, he said.
“It’s not as easy to dig yourself out of an influx of work,” said Schultz. “Forecasting those peaks and valleys across your organization, affirming you’re set to operate with 200 people, forecast out sometimes 12, 24 months has been a driving force in our adoption as well.”