This is the sort of adversarial match that goes on too often every day for professional services firms. Buyers are overwhelmed by the sheer number of features when they watch a software demo. What is often forgotten, though, is that elephant in the room – the function of the software and how the product solves your business problems.   

Differences Between Features and Functions

But first, what’s the difference between features and functions? Features are all the cool things software can do. While functions are all the cool things software can do…FOR YOU! 

A solid ERP should support your professional services firm’s business processes. You should not need to change your business processes; the technology should be there to strengthen your processes. 

Usual Process for Seeking New Technology

Let’s check out what often occurs as a professional services firm seeks out solutions to its business issues:  

1. Deciding the Need 

Here is usually how it goes.  A firm feels business pains – growing pains, direction, or market pains, etc. The leaders decide that new software will solve their problems and set about contacting vendors to see what their software will do. What is sometimes not communicated, though, is exactly what the problems are. Sometimes the leaders keep their needs/want to themselves preferring instead to see what the sales rep has to say, or sometimes they simply don’t know exactly what the problem is or how to solve it.   

2. Feature Overwhelm 

The eager sales rep arrives and starts working with the firm trying to understand the business issues, however, there remain the previously mentioned miscommunications regarding the business issues that need to be solved. So, the sales rep, having confidence in the quality of the product to solve a myriad of issues, launches a demo campaign perfectly designed and choreographed to show every remarkable thing the software does. It works - the firm is awestruck by all the impressive features, but will they solve the business problems? 

3. Selecting the Solution 

After looking at several vendors’ presentations and perhaps even some RFP responses, the firm gathers, compares notes, and ultimately chooses the most appealing and financially comfortable solution.  

I’m sure, as a savvy member of our business community, you spotted the increasing snowball of issues that all come down to one basic, yet seemingly elusive, concept – the lack of clear definition, well-defined communication, and effective partnering with the vendor on the business issue(s) itself.   

Solving the Business Issue...the Function 

Now, let’s replay that same first scenario with a significant tweak to the beginning. The professional services firm is realizing some sort of business pain: current market/direction pains or future growth and development pains, disparate and inefficient processes, and lack of relational data for business metrics. Key firm members still convene to try to clearly identify what the issues are.   

However – and here’s where it gets exciting – they reach out to a preferred vendor who, together  with the key firm members: 

• Clarify the business issues. 
• Develop a plan to solve them. 

And only then do they … 

• Acquire the right software solution. 

Notice how the features weren’t even mentioned yet? Sure, it’s important to have cool things that your software business solution does which make everyday work life easier or more interesting. And yes, it’s great to have hotkeys, a special GUI (graphical user interface) on pages, neat buttons, and clicks. But, in too many instances, those features are there mostly to sell but not to solve. They are frosting, gravy, or special sauce – yummy to see and eat, but without solid nutrients, are not satisfying the functional need.  

And what’s more, those “bling” features almost always end up costing far more than going with what may seem like an initially expensive business solution. The cliché, “you get what you pay for,” is very true in the software industry. Going with a less expensive solution can sometimes cost more in the long run, because if you haven’t solved your business issue, you end up with voluminous customization costs or just more disparate systems.   

Partnering with Firm and Vendor Garners Results 

At some point in the future after choosing based solely on price, bells, and whistles, you will likely need to cut your losses and just go with a vendor who will work with you to solve your business problems. It’s the partnering of a professional services firm and vendor which garners the real result. 

In the Forbes.com article, “To Increase Revenue Stop Selling” former contributor, Mike Myatt, states that organizations want to be treated like partners and not a software sales targets. Working with its vendor is the only way a successful solution will be realized resulting in a long-standing, productive business relationship. In the article, he says, “Engage me, communicate with me, add value to my business, solve my problems, create opportunity for me, educate me, inform me, but don’t try and sell me – it won’t work.” 

The article makes you think about it - do you establish trust by profiling and targeting prospects, or by attempting to understand the needs of a potential client? This is much more than a semantical argument – it’s a philosophical shift in thinking, and a practical shift in acting. Stop selling and start serving.  

To put this in terms for your professional services firm, stop buying and start receiving this service. I’ll go even further and suggest an early warning sign…if your vendor doesn’t keep the door open that its software may not be a fit until an in-depth discovery is done, and all stakeholders are aligned, be wary. A solid partnership will be cognizant of the fact that an install that isn’t actually solving problems is a lose-lose situation.  

Finding the Wonderful Consultants Who Care  

So where are these wonderful consultants who care and want to partner with your professional services firm to solve your business issues? They’re out there all right. Yes, they’re tougher to identify among all those throwing the title around on their business cards or in their lingo.  

Here are 5 tips to help you find the right business solution partner. You’re looking for consultants who: 

1. Talk more about you and less about themselves and their product features.
2. Question and then listen.
3. Work with you and don’t sell to you.
4. Take the time to build trust and mutual respect.
5. Provide solutions that function for your firm instead of features that “could” work.

Partner Up to Navigate Features vs. Functionality 

Interested in learning more about finding a business solutions partner to help your firm operate better? While you’re at it, get rid of those boxing gloves. You won’t need them now that you can win the match – because you know how to make the right choice between features vs. functionality in selecting your next business software solution. 

The new features in Deltek Vantagepoint 5.5 enhance usability, increase personalization for individual users and streamline project management and accounting workflows. It’s easier than ever for professional services firms to access the right information and complete common tasks quickly. Here’s an overview of what’s new.

Schedule Dependencies

Users with the Resource Planning Module can create dependencies in the Gantt chart and manage a project’s critical path. Project managers can quickly visualize and modify the project schedule, work breakdown structure elements and the relationship between those elements. When an update is made at one level, all of the dependent levels are automatically updated.

Dependencies are also accessible in the Project Planning report. Users can view information about dependency relationships between work breakdown structure elements, projects and associated labor codes.

Drill-Down Paths

Help users access the right information quickly with drill-down paths. Users can determine which information is shown when they drill down into key summary metrics on a chart or table. For example, when a user clicks on a column displaying outstanding accounts receivable data, Deltek Vantagepoint can be configured to show them a dashpart with AR invoice detail.

Personal Dashboards

Users can now create their own personalized dashboards without engaging an administrator or manager. This added flexibility will help expand adoption and free up administrator time since users can customize more of their experience with Deltek Vantagepoint.

Update Percent Complete from the Dashboard

With Deltek Vantagepoint 5.5, project managers can easily manage percent complete with fewer clicks, ultimately improving reporting and billing accuracy. There are new columns in the project dashpart base for Weighted Percent Complete and Weighted Percent Complete Cost. Users can see and modify the percentage of completion per project billing or cost amount right from the dashboard.

Streamlined Purchasing

Deltek Vantagepoint 5.5 enables staff to perform purchase requisitions and process approvals within any browser. Purchasing Requisitions, Purchase Orders, Items and Items Master are now accessible in the navigation pane of the browser application.

Other Purchasing Updates

Additional purchasing updates in Deltek Vantagepoint 5.5 include: 

• New layout for suggested vendors
• Ability to add a vendor on the fly
• Ability to attach documents of any status
• Ability to view purchasing reports
• Redesigned interface for the purchase requisition form

Accounting Updates

Deltek Vantagepoint 5.5 offers several new features that streamline accounting processes. Users can now post cash receipts that were created in bank reconciliation. This option is available for those that have rights granted to their role in the Accounting tab from Settings >Security> Role. The Transaction Center Approval option must also be set to “No” in Settings and Accounting Transactions.

Other Accounting Updates

The other accounting updates in Deltek Vantagepoint 5.5 include: 

• Expanded reporting in timesheets and billing
• Print capability for Billing Category Rate Table reports
• New overtime premium calculation that uses the cost rate in the Billing Labor Override Table instead of the Cost Rate in the Employee Hub for the employee

Email Templates

To help support digital payment processes, Deltek Vantagepoint 5.5 allows users to use email templates when sending electronic payment remittances by email. Templates can be configured to reuse standard information, such as regular text or database fields. Email templates are available in the Vendor Payments, Employee Payments and Payroll Payments applications. Users can save templates for personal use, for all users with the same role, or for all users within the firm.

Approval Center Updates

Users can restart approvals for timesheets and expense reports. This process removes all approved history and comments that are associated with the record and begins the process from the first step, no matter where the record is in the approval process.

General Usability Updates

Deltek Vantagepoint 5.5 also comes with a number of usability updates:

• See notifications immediately instead of every five minutes with real-time alerts.
• See all users viewing a record.
• Set favorites in navigation to find commonly viewed applications with ease.
• Set minimum/maximum and default values for standard numeric fields.
• Use predefined searches within Advanced Search.
• Print timesheet reports from the Floor Check dialogue box.
• Access Labor Planning videos in Online Help.

Learn More About the New Features in Deltek Vantagepoint 5.5

This is just a high-level overview of the many new features in Vantagepoint 5.5. To learn more about what Vantagepoint has to offer, watch What’s New in Deltek Vantagepoint 5.5 on demand.

I have to admit that I have never once watched an episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” nor really any reality TV shows except my one-time foray into one of those “Housewives” shows while I was in a hospital recouping from a surgery. I would categorize these types of shows as guilty pleasures. There are people I know and respect that watch reality TV, and I too have my own guilty pleasure - I like to read People magazine, and occasionally I’ll even dip into a US Magazine in the check-out line. However, despite my interest in what’s happening in the world of celebrities, my biggest concern with reality TV is my general disgust for the million-dollar contracts involved. Yet contracts are necessities, right?   

Making a strange leap from reality TV to contract management in the architecture and engineering (A&E) industry, let’s talk more about the necessity of managing contracts. Contracts and agreements are imperative in almost all business interactions, even the simplest things these days. For those of us in the A&E industry, there could be any variety of risks that are mitigated by a contract. Not only are some of the A&E contracts protective in nature, helping to ensure compliance, safety, etc., but there are also project-related contracts that dictate important financial amounts related to the lifecycle of the project itself. 

First Off, Deltek Vantagepoint Drives Efficiencies 

The good news here is that Deltek Vantagepoint, out of the box, helps you manage contracts directly in the Projects hub. In fact, the Deltek Vantagepoint knowledge base states: “The primary overall benefits of the contract management feature in Vantagepoint are that it helps you coordinate the contract process, keep everyone up to date on its current status, and ensure that the compensation amounts that will be billed and received as you execute the project are in sync with the amounts spelled out in the contract.”  

This is such a valuable piece of functionality that Full Sail Partners’ Principal Consultant, Rana Blair, has done two different mini demos on the subject. In an introductory mini-demo, Rana shares an overview of contract management - it covers configuration considerations, contract document columns and entry, and the use of the 'Synchronize Contracts to Fees' feature. One of the main takeaways from this important twelve-minute video is that firms that leverage the Project hub tool Contract Management can enjoy benefits in the measurement of revenue and backlog as well as identify risks.  

Contract Management is Integral to Successful Projects 

A big part of why reality TV is so darn successful is pure drama. Whether it’s learning “secrets” or seeing inside the lives of others, at the root of it all is transparency. The exact same is true for projects and their contracts. If you can’t determine the health and status of your project, how can you predict the financials of your firm? Project based firms must rely on exposing the differences between contract amounts and expected compensation. Deltek Vantagepoint can help you control these amounts (both the contracted total and the compensation amounts) as well as how they matter to the project work breakdown structure. This type of transparency, at any point in the life cycle of a project, sets your firm up to avoid surprises. 

Solid Contract Management is Story Telling 

Yes, reality TV shows tell stories. Are their stories worth the thousands and millions of dollar contracts? I personally don’t think so, but I know many of our clients’ contracts are indeed worth that much. A good story not only conveys a message that needs to be told, but it also usually has a happy ending. Despite reality TV, in the real world of projects, mutually beneficial success derived from all parties feeling they received value is the happily ever after. Using Deltek Vantagepoint Contract Management, these happy endings can be ensured. 

All About the Money 

Deltek Vantagepoint’s Contract Management reporting capabilities can help your firm not only stay informed on the status of a project, but you can also adjust upward or downward (but let’s be real, most of the time it’s add-on work) as the scope changes. This helps firms scope better in the future. Contract management can even help salespeople and seller doers get their credit or reward for winning the deal. Just like how a reality TV show can spin out one small situation into a million different possibilities for viewer consumption, Deltek Vantagepoint allows you to audit your own contracts by a variety of filters such as Type, Status, or Date. 

What About the People?  

Reality TV about famous people like the Kardashians pulls in the revenue. Similarly, a People Magazine story about Brad and Angelina most likely would catch my eye. It’s all about the people, and project-based firms’ client projects at their core are all about the people involved. 

Contract Management inside of Deltek Vantagepoint allows for workflows to be arranged so that stakeholders and project managers can be alerted when important contract-related events happen. Vantagepoint can even automatically fill in fields based on the stages of a particular contract.  

Learn More about Advanced Features 

While Contract Management in Deltek Vantagepoint may not have the pizzaz as some of the weird stuff on TV or in the magazines in the check-out line, to those of us in the AEC industry, I think it might warrant a little bit of “geeking out” because of the great benefits to project-based firms. Taking what we have learned about reality TV, let’s leverage terrific tools for the AEC industry to bring in even more revenue by telling real stories of real projects in real time through the power of Deltek Vantagepoint. For more about the Advanced Features of Deltek Vantagepoint Contract Management, check out Rana Blair’s second min-demo on Contract Management. This one goes a little deeper than the introductory one.  

After two virtual years, the annual Deltek conference is back in person. Wondering if your firm should attend this year’s Deltek ProjectCon conference (formerly known as Deltek Insight)? Well first off, let’s use some math logic, so hear me out. 

In project-based businesses, like engineers, architects, consulting firms, and other professional services organizations, it is usually important to hit the mark for a successful business. What is a mark? It’s a point different from nearby points; something to shoot at or a visible indication that distinguishes something. 

However, think of a project lifecycle. I would say that most of the time folks in our world visualize the life cycle of a project as a circle. In fact, go ahead and Google “the project life cycle” and check out the images…they pretty much all include a circle. A sphere doesn’t really have a point, and by its nature, the circle is not like other shapes. As we can agree that the project lifecycle is usually a circle and that circles don’t have points like other shapes, clearly the next logical step is that since your firm really can’t “be square” then you should be there at Deltek ProjectCon 2022!  

My logic is not convincing? Here are other reasons you should attend, and as I know you’ve been thinking about it, let's just say that the new name for Deltek’s annual conference will in no way change the “insight” you will get for attending. 

Gain Some Valuable Deltek Product Insight 

We all know conferences are for learning; that’s basically the entire business case and why you or your firm is paying to be there. So, get knee-deep in your Deltek knowledge at ProjectCon. Obtain a certification through a free Deltek University exam. Add more skills to your resume and get paid more. Learn how to solve your complex challenges using Deltek technology. 

Meet, Greet and Network with Insightful Experts  

Go and have some fun gosh darn it; you’ve earned it. You made it through a pandemic and can finally see your friends and business connections in person for the first time in over two years. There are networking events being thrown just for you at Deltek ProjectCon, so don’t turn down a free party! Even better, you can finally connect with the actual experts about Deltek products, not just your colleagues.  

Fresh Insights and Latest Trends 

Best practices are game changers for professional services firms. At Deltek ProjectCon, learn how your peers are getting things done and get all juiced up on innovative new technologies. Attend the keynote and learn what “The Power of Connectional Intelligence” means. Think about robots; artificial intelligence is the future not just in cars but also in data-driven organizations. 

Future Insights Through Product Roadmaps 

For many project-based firms, there are upgrade questions such as when is Vision's end of life? At ProjectCon, you can find out more from Deltek representatives and see the updated road map. Here you also have the opportunity to ask questions that would make the Deltek staff seriously consider adding your favorite missing feature to the next version of your software. It is critical to understand the journey your firm is on, and that’s hard to do without a map.  

Deltek Newbie? Acquire Insight, Historically Speaking 

There is no better way to meet seasoned groupies than to attend a conference like Deltek ProjectCon. You know you want to hear about what happened at this conference 20 years ago. Go soak up the old-timers’ knowledge or attend beginner sessions and feel less alone.  

Upcoming Insights from Full Sail Partners at ProjectCon ‘22 

Want to see us walk the walk and talk the talk? Join seven of our incomparable consultants as they lead the following sessions. You can search out the sessions by title, topic, presenter, etc. by visiting this page: Deltek ProjectCon 2022 | Project Success Starts Here | Session Catalog 

Discover how Vantagepoint and ADP can work together to enhance your payroll experience. During this session, learn how the Blackbox Connector offering from Full Sail Partners securely and seamlessly integrates 3rd party software platforms with Vantagepoint. The Vantagepoint Payroll Interface allows firms to efficiently move Vantagepoint project hours to ADP payroll hours based on business rules. Employee data can now be integrated between ADP Workforce Now and Vantagepoint with a single point of entry upon the employee hiring process. Presented by:

Scott Seal, VP of Consulting, Full Sail Partners 

Rick Childs, Principal Consultant, Full Sail Partners 

Jennifer Wilson, SQL Developer, Full Sail Partners 

Join this session to familiarize yourself with the new and improved features in Deltek Vantagepoint to help automate your accounting department and business. The presentation will cover the latest and greatest features including approvals, billing, AR, reporting, dashboard, and other features to improve your accounting processes. This is a must-attend session for your financial team to learn from two consultants that have spent more than 1,000 hours helping more than 100 companies upgrade from Vision to Vantagepoint. Presented by:

Terri Agnew, Principal Consultant, Full Sail Partners 

Theresa Depew, Senior Consultant, Full Sail Partners 

Welcome to the future of managing the project lifecycle for professional services firms! With Deltek Vantagepoint, see how one firm created a more cohesive and streamlined method for operating project-based businesses. JCJ Architecture will take you on a journey through its new project lifecycle. Learn how their team reimagined their processes from pursuit identification to final project execution, resulting in a more collaborative team environment. Better data provided better analysis, which resulted in better decision-making and a better business! Presented by:

Rana Blair, Principal Consultant, Full Sail Partners 

Amanda Roussel, Senior Consultant, Full Sail Partners 

Michelle Chapman, Senior Project Accountant, JCJ Architecture 

Jeanne Muscolino, Principal | Hospitality Sector Leader | Business Development Manager, JCJ Architecture 

Register for 2022 ProjectCon Today 

With all of these reasons to attend ProjectCon, we know you are thinking about what to pack already. Don’t miss the Full Sail Partners’ booth in the XPO hall. For all the latest information about ProjectCon 2022, hit up Deltek ProjectCon 2022 | Project Success Starts Here. This year it’s in Nashville from November 15 – 18th. I hope the insights you gain and the fun you have inspire you to do more in your own spherical world of projects. 

Before the pandemic, I used to volunteer to judge high school debate and often found myself sitting in a public-school library on a Saturday morning staring at those cheesy posters where the words say “Attitude is Everything” …those have not changed by the way. Except 25 years later, those words still ring true. I do not know about you, but if I am rolling into a Zoom business development (BD) call with a bad attitude, it is doomed to fail. Since attitude is important when it comes to developing relationships with clients, how can the new and improved Customer Relationship Management (CRM) power of Deltek Vantagepoint make it easier to keep those business development calls on track? 

Attitude and Deltek Vantagepoint CRM? 

I started writing this on a debate kick, and it therefore must continue… As any good debater will tell you, something should not be fully considered until it has been argued from both the pro and con sides. So, how can business development calls be made easy with Deltek Vantagepoint CRM? Let us compare how it would go from both attitude perspectives. 

Bad Attitude Scenario 

5am – snooze 

5:30am – snooze again, since I went to bed later than normal last night, that is the mental self-justification I will go through this morning. 

6am – wake up, grab phone, check calendar. Okay, good, first meeting is not until 8am, I can sleep more, reset alarm. 

7:15am – grab phone, what? Why? I should have gotten up earlier so I could work out and do my morning stuff. I am grumpy about it.  

7:45am – showered and dressed, sitting down, I must scramble to review a prospect’s info in Vantagepoint. I glance at some fields. I notice that I am about to be talking to the Facilities Director at an airport. My engineering firm has done the type of project they are looking to do but only in Europe. My job is to impress the Facilities Director and get him to introduce us to the architect and then hopefully she will want to bring us in on this massive project.  

8am – meeting starts, I am not as ready as I should be. It goes okay, but it is not a slam dunk. He agrees to let me call him back, but I know in my gut he is not going to be calling the architect immediately to sing our praises. 

8:30am – I guess I should get the notes in the system. I am super discouraged and annoyed at this point, but I try to rally myself to get my activity recorded with enough detail so that I can perhaps salvage this a bit when I do my follow-up. 

Here is the rub folks. The Deltek Vantagepoint CRM is there to help me, and it is a great tool in my toolbox. I did not use it here to my full advantage. 

Good Attitude Scenario 

5am – snooze 

5:30am – I am up! I am not necessarily happy about it, but it happened. I get started on my morning stuff. 

7am – sitting down in my office now, I will not bore you with the details of my morning ritual, but I fed my mind, body and soul before I walked in the door. I am happy I have an entire hour to prepare for my call.  

Here is what I do to prepare using Deltek Vantagepoint CRM: 

Since the project will a subcontractor opportunity to the architect that is always the prime at this airport, she is the contact record I want to peruse. I know I have only got 30 minutes to get this Facilities Director to agree to introduce me to her. From my networking, I know that if he says give this firm a shot, she will consider it. I immediately then go to look at the projects associated with these two contacts. 

I also know that she has been a little unhappy with the engineering firm they used from a well-placed cold call by my Business Development Representative (BDR) last year. How do I know this, you ask? I have an excellent memory, and it simply always unfolds perfectly when needed. NOPE. My team and I always track everything inside Deltek Vantagepoint.  

I read my Activity notes from three years ago when I had drinks with someone that reports to the Facilities Director at a conference. She was the one that clued me in to how key the Facilities Director was in terms of getting the architect’s attention. Then I reviewed the notes our BDR had in there from the cold call. Those notes were in an Activity from the call placed and on the Competition tab of my project.  

Next, I double checked his and her LinkedIn pages and saw no new connections between us that I did not already know about in advance. My project is at a Lead stage and being the awesome Relationship Manager that I am, I enjoy seeing my projects get into our system, and I lovingly monitor the data associated with them. 

I also have a custom field in my Deltek Vantagepoint CRM that gives me something to brag about here. I can query my CRM to find past airport references, and I have 2 or 3 case stories (bragging rights) ready to tell if I get the opportunity in the call. 

8am – The meeting starts, and I am ready to kill it. During the call, the Facilities Director mentions another two of his colleagues that I was not aware of, and their roles could be important should we get this project to the awarded stage. I jot down their info so that our Marketing Associate can fill in the gaps with some research and get them entered in the system.  

8:30am – The call is over. It was the slam dunk I deserved. He was impressed with the stories I was able to tell, and since I was aware of the pain that the current engineering firm is creating with the Architect, this allowed me to effectively differentiate our firm. He said that he would be emailing her right away before he forgot, to ask her to get coffee and discuss what we can bring to the table. We scheduled our next steps. I was able to use the Outlook Connect to immediately get the appointment calendared and tracked in the CRM in one fell swoop. 

Which Attitude Won the Debate?    

Obviously, this debate was destined to go for the Pro - we all knew that, right? The bad attitude not only set me up to perform poorly, but it also affected my ability to leverage my Deltek Vantagepoint CRM correctly. So, here I have proven a good attitude + a great CRM = successful business development efforts. Ready to maintain a positive attitude in your business development efforts by fully embracing Deltek Vantagepoint CRM?  

Stay tuned for future blogs on this topic that cover other parts of the sales cycle and project lifecycle prior to the awarded stage. 

Project-based firms have many options when it comes to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages, albeit difficult choices to make. In his well-known play Hamlet, Shakespeare delivered us a Hamlet who was contemplating a major decision in his famous soliloquy. So, are the decisions around life and death that Hamlet considered at all comparable to that of choosing an ERP? Well, let’s have some fun here with Shakespeare and try to make a case for it. 

Avoid the Old Bait and Switch

In the Shakespeare play, Hamlet has all these murderous plans and ways to avenge the death of his father. The famous quote “the lady doth protest too much, methinks” isn’t so much about how fickle women can be (even though everyone knows fickleness has no gender), but rather it’s said as part of a trap to see if Claudius will reveal his guilt. What can be learned from these homicidal maniacs, other than to bring back the word ‘methinks’, one may ask? 

When selecting an ERP, project-based firms must consider the entire cost of the product to avoid feeling trapped. No one likes to feel taken advantage of or stuck in a situation that isn’t meeting expectations. When clients come from other ERPs on the market, one of the main complaints is typically that they felt like their ERP provider or consultants were constantly after more fees. They were sold a product that could do a ton, but the investment necessary to get to all those great features was hidden. The result is feeling like a bait and switch has trapped the firm into pouring more into a system which was thought to be ready for full operation.  

Deltek Vantagepoint is sold as a highly configurable project-based ERP system. Full Sail Partners’ expert Vantagepoint consultants approach sales and implementations with eyes that are wide open to balance cost with efficiencies. Vantagepoint works best when it meets each firm’s business needs, and it does take configuration and therefore an investment, to get there, but it’s well worth it. So, if project-based firms have the right expectations going in, they shouldn’t be feeling trapped. 

Wrap Some CRM/RP Rigor Around the Madness

Some of the most significant and best changes from Deltek Vision to Vantagepoint are happening in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Resource Planning Management (RP) modules. These are complete game changers in the market and none of the competition invested as much as Deltek has into fine-tuning these glorious pieces of functionalities. Deltek has been listening to client feedback for more than a decade and continues to listen as they expand Vantagepoint’s capabilities.  

So going back to the play, Polonius responds to Hamlet at one point by saying “Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.” Running a professional services or consulting firm can feel insane some days. Clients can pop up out of nowhere with additional needs, and suddenly, the entire day’s schedule has been turned into something else. Deltek Vantagepoint helps wrap some rigor around the “madness” in a user-friendly way that will actually increase user adoption in project-based firms.  

Keeping the madness at bay, Full Sail Partners has now helped more than 200 firms go from Deltek Vision to Deltek Vantagepoint. The number one reason why system usage increases with Vantagepoint is because of its ability to manage the entire project lifecycle, from a prospect that knows nothing of what it’s like to work with the firm to managing the resources and how the work is delivered. Vantagepoint also offers the type of visibility into finances, operations and performance that firms need to grow. The number two reason usage increases with Vantagepoint is because the CRM makes life easier for marketers, seller-doers, project managers, and leadership. Opportunities are no longer separate files from projects, so it’s all one record in Vantagepoint.  

Additionally, with the Deltek Vantagepoint Outlook Connect and Gmail for business connect, users can see the interaction history between contacts, clients, and projects as well as quickly log emails into Vantagepoint. This feature allows users to bring Vantagepoint into their email inboxes. And this tool comes with other features like the ability to synchronize calendars and schedule meetings while saving them in Vantagepoint at the same time. To learn more about the Vantagepoint Outlook Connect, check out this mini demo. 

Keep that New ERP Feeling Longer  

To put it lightly, in the play, Hamlet was worried about the “afterlife” in that other famous soliloquy when he said, “to die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream.”  This is similar to how many of our clients are worried about their “aftercare,” with continuously improving their processes with Vantagepoint once they’ve made the leap to get there. A Full Sail Partners’ service becoming more popular with clients recently is the Navigational Analysis for Vantagepoint. A firm’s entire system is scanned, and current processes are evaluated to discover how well they are serving the firm. It’s like an annual physical exam by a physician that results in a complete work-up on the health of your system.  

It’s important to develop a plan for aftercare that includes regular data clean-up, optimizing processes, increasing efficiencies and overall continuous improvement. A consultant isn’t necessary to keep a firm’s ERP fresh; it’s like anything else. If experts are needed to bring their knowledge and best practices to the table, it can be outsourced, or a firm can do it itself.  

Exit Stage Right   

In review, it is certainly interesting to see how much Shakespeare’s characters in Hamlet seem to have reflected upon similar issues like with the tribulations of project-based firms regarding choosing an ERP. So perhaps they are comparable? However, the answer to Vantagepoint or Not to Vantagepoint appears to be evident. To Vantagepoint!  

Click the image below to learn how to add the powerful, feature-rich ERP to your toolbox and get your team working on the same page of the same book.