BuiltWorlds’ 2025 Project Management & Oversight Benchmarking Report offers a revealing look into how contractors are using software to manage the people, paperwork, and payments that keep projects moving. Drawing on fresh data from BuiltWorlds Benchmarking Program, the report covers five major categories: project management, document management, accounting & payment, customer relationship management, and human resource information systems.
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While the data shows adoption is rising, user satisfaction tells a more nuanced story—one shaped by rising expectations, rapid innovation, and some lingering satisfaction gaps.
What’s Driving the Shift?
Contractors are adopting digital solutions to reduce delays, improve coordination, and bring real-time visibility to job sites. Tools for managing documents, teams, payments, and client interactions are now considered foundational. In fact, across most software categories, usage is now approaching or at full saturation.
Take document management solutions, for instance, which 90% of contractors report using it on all or nearly all projects, up from 77% just a year ago. Accounting software has seen even greater adoption, with 100% adoption among survey respondents.
When it comes to satisfaction, however, the picture is less black-and-white.
Project Management Software: Widely Used, But Underwhelming?
Project management tools are meant to be the backbone of project delivery—connecting people, data, and workflows across the lifecycle. Our research showed 80% of contractors currently report using PM tools on most or all projects. Procore emerged as both the most implemented and top-rated solution.
Yet, despite high usage, satisfaction is slipping. Compared to 2024, respondents rating their overall project management & oversight efforts as “excellent” dropped 20 percentage points. The majority of contractors (82%) now describe their efforts as only “good” or “very good.”
What’s driving this decline?
It may come down to higher expectations. With contractors gaining a better familiarity with existing tools alongside a flood of AI-enhanced features and new startups promising smarter workflows, the bar for what “great” software should do is getting higher. And based on the data, certain functionality—like supply chain and asset management—is still falling short.
CRM: The AI Learning Curve
CRM tools are becoming essential for managing bids, clients, and project stakeholders. Adoption jumped significantly this year, with 70% of survey respondents now using CRM tools on every project, up from just 56% in 2024.
But that increase hasn’t translated to higher satisfaction. Ratings for ease of use, activity logging, and reporting all dropped from last year.
The reason for those drops may be a response to the influx of AI in CRMs.
BuiltWorlds’ 2024 AI/ML: Project Management & Oversight Report showed that CRM companies in the AEC industry are on the frontlines of implementing AI-powered tech, but these features may still be struggling to win users’ approval. Research from Springboards’ The State of the Workforce Skills Gap 2024 highlights how the push for AI features in technology has outpaced many workers’ AI skillset.
Accounting & Document Management: Widespread, Trusted Tools
In contrast, accounting & payment as well as document management solutions are viewed more favorably by users. Both are near-universal in use, and both saw gains in perceived value.
- Document management tools saw the highest satisfaction score in the category of access control/permission management (7.1/10).
- Accounting solutions received high marks for adoption/utilization (6.7/10), but lost ground on ease of use (3/10).
Procore again led the pack in both adoption and satisfaction in the document management category, while CMiC took top honors for accounting solutions.
The Big Picture: A Functioning Tech Stack, But Room to Grow
Across the board, contractors are embracing project oversight software, but not all tools are keeping pace with expectations. Many are still clunky or fragmented. Others have added AI without fully addressing user experience.
Still, an important takeaway from the report is this: No respondents rated their company’s project management oversight efforts as “poor” or “fair” in 2025.
As innovation teams chart their next moves, this report offers more than a snapshot—it’s a mirror for assessing where you stand, where to improve, and how to get ahead.
Want to know how your company stacks up?
Participants in the Benchmarking Program receive a confidential technology assessment comparing their software usage to industry peers. Learn more at BuiltWorlds.com and check out our industry-leading Benchmarking Program.
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