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How Skender Drove Enterprise Usage of Claude & AI-Powered Analytics
Skender leveraged Kroo to operationalize data from Sage 300 CRE, Procore, Bridgit, TradeTapp, and Membrain. With Kroo providing the foundational, unified data hub, Skender drove enterprise analytics and usage of Claude via the Kroo MCP.
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Skender's data lived in disconnected silos across Sage 300 CRE, Procore, Bridgit, TradeTapp, and Membrain.
Building and maintaining reliable data infrastructure in-house was not feasible for a lean IT team supporting nearly 400 employees.
Skender wanted to leverage AI on their data, but they lacked the unified data layer. Although existing point-solutions offered their own AI tools, they failed to capture the full scope of Skender's data.
Solution
Skender partnered with Kroo for turnkey data infrastructure, including pre-built data connectors, managed data warehousing in Azure SQL Server, Kris (Kroo's agentic coworker), and the Kroo MCP.
Skender uses Claude enterprise-wide and leverages the Kroo MCP to operationalize all of Skender's data sources as a company-wide AI layer.
Results
Unified data across Skender's disparate systems into a single data warehouse
Eliminated data engineering costs, saving mid-six figures annually
Deployed Claude enterprise-wide with Kroo MCP as the data layer
Notable Team Members
Stacy Laughlin
Chief Financial Officer
Clint Siebert
Director of Technology
Erik Janc
Financial Analyst
“Before Kroo, we were constantly fighting the data. Every report required someone manually pulling from multiple systems and building our own warehouse just wasn't realistic for a five-person IT team. Kroo gave us the infrastructure layer we needed without adding headcount - and it's what made our Claude rollout actually work.”
— Clint Siebert, Director of Technology
Background
Skender is a Chicago-based commercial general contractor with more than 70 years of experience delivering complex construction projects across 15+ markets including interiors, multifamily, healthcare, mission critical, higher education, and life sciences. Headquartered in Chicago with an Indianapolis office, Skender is recognized as an ENR Top 400 contractor and generated $657 million in revenue in 2025. With nearly 400 employees, Skender is known as a pioneer of Lean construction and is regarded as one of the most innovative builders in the construction industry.
$657M
2025 Revenue (ENR, Rank #204)
400+
Employees
70+
Years in Business
Skender runs a diverse construction tech stack including Sage 300 CRE for financials, Procore for project management, Bridgit for workforce data, TradeTapp for subcontractor prequalification, Membrain for CRM and business development, and many other systems. The company has long prioritized a cloud-first approach, intentionally moving away from physical infrastructure to ensure their teams can operate fully from any device, anywhere.
Under the leadership of their CFO (Stacy Laughlin) and Director of Technology (Clint Siebert), Skender has been proactively building a data and AI strategy that puts them at the forefront of the construction industry. That journey led them to Kroo.
“We knew AI was going to be transformational for construction, but AI is only as good as the data behind it. Kroo became the foundation that made our Claude deployment real - not just a demo, but something every team member can use to get answers across all of our systems in seconds.”
— Stacy Laughlin, Chief Financial Officer
Challenges
No unified data hub or single source of truth: Skender had explored building their own data warehouse in-house, but the experience was difficult. It required significant manual setup and a level of technical sophistication that was impractical to maintain across the IT team. Without a managed data layer, Skender could not operationalize siloed data from Procore, Sage 300 CRE, Bridgit, TradeTapp, and Membrain, making cross-system reporting and analysis time-consuming and unreliable.
Missing the contextual data layer to use AI effectively: Skender had already decided to deploy Claude enterprise-wide, recognizing Claude's potential as a personal assistant for every team member. However, Claude without a clean, centralized data layer would have no access to the construction data that makes it truly valuable. Skender needed Kroo to serve as that foundational, context-rich data layer before they could unlock AI at scale.
Managing API connections was too costly: Internally standing up and managing the back-end “data plumbing” work required dedicated data engineering resources the team did not have. With only 5 people in IT supporting nearly 400 employees, taking on ongoing data management was not a cost Skender wanted to pursue. Security was equally important—at the time of their Kroo evaluation, Skender was pursuing ISO 27001 certification and needed to limit the IT team's management liability across data infrastructure.
Locked-in, siloed AI with no portability: Skender leveraged native AI tools within individual systems, but found them limited in usability. There was no true flexibility to take data outside of a single system or work across the full tech stack in one place. The goal was an AI that could exist everywhere the team works, not locked to one application.
“The time savings are hard to overstate. What used to take me hours of manually pulling data from Sage, Procore, and other systems, reconciling it, and formatting a report - I can now get in a single Claude query. It's changed how I work every day.”
— Erik Janc, Financial Analyst
Solution
Skender implemented Kroo as their end-to-end data and AI infrastructure platform. Kroo's pre-built data connectors for Sage 300 CRE, Procore, Bridgit, TradeTapp, and Membrain immediately eliminated the need for custom API development, ongoing pipeline maintenance, and any “data plumbing” workstreams. Kroo provides a managed Azure data warehouse, empowering Skender with a reliable, cloud-based single source of truth for all of their construction and business data.
With scalable data foundations in place, Skender is now rolling out the Kroo MCP across the company, connecting Claude directly to Kroo as the data backbone via the Kroo MCP. This allows any Skender teammate to query across all of their core systems in a single conversation. They can ask Claude a question about a project and get data pulled from Procore, Sage 300 CRE, Bridgit, and other systems in one unified response.
Turnkey data infrastructure, managed end-to-end: Kroo handles all API connection management, updates, and pipeline maintenance for Skender's core data sources. What previously would have required dedicated data engineering resources or costly external consultants is now fully managed by Kroo, freeing the IT team to focus on strategic initiatives rather than infrastructure maintenance.
A single source of truth across all systems: Skender's Azure SQL data warehouse, managed by Kroo, centralizes data from Sage 300 CRE, Procore, Bridgit, TradeTapp, and Membrain. Project teams no longer need to jump between systems or manually compile reports. All data is accessible from one place, in real time.
Claude powered by Kroo MCP for company-wide AI: Skender deployed Claude enterprise-wide and is using the Kroo MCP as the data layer that makes it actionable. Team members can ask Claude questions that span multiple systems—for example, querying workforce data from Bridgit in the context of a specific project's costs in Sage and getting a single, synthesized response.
Enterprise-grade security and row-level security: With granular role-level permissions in Kroo, Skender can ensure the right team members only see the data relevant to their role and projects. Sensitive financial data from Sage 300 CRE is locked down appropriately, while project teams can access the data they need. All of this is managed through Kroo's fully configurable row-level security.
Results: ROI for Skender
Expanded capabilities to operationalize data for analytics & AI initiatives
With Kroo as the foundational data layer, Skender can now deploy Claude enterprise-wide with real, actionable data access across all business systems.
Kris and the Kroo MCP enable actionable use cases that would be impossible inside any individual system, including cross-system queries, real-time project insights, and AI-powered analysis at the fingertips of every team member.
Skender can leverage Kroo's growing connector catalog to add additional data sources as the business evolves, without taking on additional infrastructure overhead.
Significant cost savings of mid-six figures annually
Skender eliminated the need to hire dedicated data engineers or engage costly external consultants to build and maintain reliable data infrastructure for their core systems.
Kroo manages all ongoing data infrastructure maintenance and updates, freeing Skender's IT team to focus on higher-value initiatives.
Months saved in development time
Kroo's pre-built connectors for Sage 300 CRE, Procore, Bridgit, TradeTapp, and Membrain eliminated months of custom development work.
Skender's Azure SQL data warehouse was stood up in weeks, accelerating the ROI on Skender's broader data and AI strategy.
Internal data teams typically spend more than 80% of their time just maintaining infrastructure. Kroo removes that burden entirely.
Reduced security risk and compliance liability
Kroo's comprehensive row-level security ensures sensitive data like payroll and salary information is accessible only to authorized users, without requiring complex manual SQL configuration—mission-critical for enterprise-wide AI adoption.
By outsourcing API connection management to Kroo, Skender limited its IT team's management liability—a key priority during their ISO 27001 certification process.