Full Sail Partners Blog | Full Sail Partners (18)

As the leaves change from a cool green to the burning hues of fall, you can almost hear the annual groan that emanates from marketing and business development departments everywhere as we ponder next year’s budgets. We’re feverishly cramming numbers into spreadsheets, struggling to get that final hit rate report from the ERP system, and perhaps even consulting with a local palm reader, all with the goal of accurately predicting the future - next year’s sales!

Review Your Professional Services Sales Vocabulary

Many of us in the professional services industry don’t approach our sales vocabulary as clearly as we should – or worse, it’s just that “s” word that nobody wants to talk about. Let’s quickly review some common numbers:

1. New Backlog. The rest of the world usually calls this number sales. It generally answers the question about the measured period, such as, how much NEW billable work did we book/contract/sell? You might sell the project one year, but could deliver it over several years.
2. Earned Revenue. This number values the work we actually did in the measured period, and is recognized as such, whether we billed for it or not. Learn more about earned value in this article.
3. Billings. This number is the total of all the invoices your firm sent in the measured period. Again, depending on how you count the beans, this number may or may not match Earned Revenue.

It’s imperative that that we clarify exactly which thing we’re budgeting. Most professional services firms have a theoretical limit to what they can deliver, based on staff size and utilization. But is there a limit to how much new work you can sell? Hmm.  

Mix Your Sales Sauce

Here’s the point – these numbers all work together, but marketing and business development departments are usually focused on “New Backlog” when discussing sales. So, where does New Backlog come from? It comes from the strategic combination of two variables: Stuff you sell and Clients. Your job is to figure out the best mix of these combos to achieve the firm’s overall growth plans. Easy right?

Let’s have a brief look at the different ways we can combine our New Backlog variables.

Combo 1 - Sell the same stuff to existing clients

Unless you offer bread, milk or toilet paper, this combo can only take you so far. If you sell a corporate headquarters design project to ACME, Inc., when will they buy the next one? Large retail rollout programs and compliance-required assessments/surveys/reviews are good exceptions to this challenge. Watch out for “better, faster, cheaper” competitors led by well-dressed daredevils focused on Combo 4.

Combo 2 - Sell the same stuff to new clients

We should always analyze how to position our core offerings to new clients – in new markets or new geographies. Most of us claim about 80% of our New Backlog is repeat work, so that means 20% has to come from this combo and Combo 4. Leverage your highly experienced professionals who like to build new relationships.

Combo 3 - Sell new stuff to existing clients

Maybe ACME, Inc. doesn’t need a corporate headquarters designed this year, but really needs help with a facilities management system. Here’s a little secret: Your existing clients trust you and would prefer to buy new stuff from you rather than from someone they don’t know. Build internal partnerships between your key relationship managers and the technical leader(s) of the new stuff. Watch out for experienced competitors focusing heavily on Combo 2.

Combo 4 - Sell new stuff to new clients

Break out the phone books and line up the cold calls! OK, that may be excessive, but this is definitely the final frontier in selling professional services. You’re convincing people who don’t know your firm to buy stuff for which you don’t have a track record. Totally possible, but not for the faint-hearted. This combo often requires strategic hires or acquisitions, which might be the only way to beat the competition in the other combos. You could get crazy and buy a new suit, but your competition in Combo 1 knows you’re coming.

Serving over Selling in Professional Services Industry

While we can’t completely avoid the annual budgeting process, we can look at it differently. You’re in the business of professionally serving others. Instead of simply looking for more projects, more offices, or more technical credentials, why not look for the best ways your firm can serve more people next year, and get paid for the value you created? Use the combinations above as a framework and correlate the targets for each to your firm’s overall strategic plan and annual business plan. Tada! Now you’ve got a growth target that everyone can embrace. Happy budgeting, and more importantly, happy serving!

As the leaves change from a cool green to the burning hues of fall, you can almost hear the annual groan that emanates from marketing and business development departments everywhere as we ponder next year’s budgets. We’re feverishly cramming numbers into spreadsheets, struggling to get that final hit rate report from the ERP system, and perhaps even consulting with a local palm reader, all with the goal of accurately predicting the future - next year’s sales!

Review Your Professional Services Sales Vocabulary

Many of us in the professional services industry don’t approach our sales vocabulary as clearly as we should – or worse, it’s just that “s” word that nobody wants to talk about. Let’s quickly review some common numbers:

1. New Backlog. The rest of the world usually calls this number sales. It generally answers the question about the measured period, such as, how much NEW billable work did we book/contract/sell? You might sell the project one year, but could deliver it over several years.
2. Earned Revenue. This number values the work we actually did in the measured period, and is recognized as such, whether we billed for it or not. Learn more about earned value in this article.
3. Billings. This number is the total of all the invoices your firm sent in the measured period. Again, depending on how you count the beans, this number may or may not match Earned Revenue.

It’s imperative that that we clarify exactly which thing we’re budgeting. Most professional services firms have a theoretical limit to what they can deliver, based on staff size and utilization. But is there a limit to how much new work you can sell? Hmm.  

Mix Your Sales Sauce

Here’s the point – these numbers all work together, but marketing and business development departments are usually focused on “New Backlog” when discussing sales. So, where does New Backlog come from? It comes from the strategic combination of two variables: Stuff you sell and Clients. Your job is to figure out the best mix of these combos to achieve the firm’s overall growth plans. Easy right?

Let’s have a brief look at the different ways we can combine our New Backlog variables.

Combo 1 - Sell the same stuff to existing clients

Unless you offer bread, milk or toilet paper, this combo can only take you so far. If you sell a corporate headquarters design project to ACME, Inc., when will they buy the next one? Large retail rollout programs and compliance-required assessments/surveys/reviews are good exceptions to this challenge. Watch out for “better, faster, cheaper” competitors led by well-dressed daredevils focused on Combo 4.

Combo 2 - Sell the same stuff to new clients

We should always analyze how to position our core offerings to new clients – in new markets or new geographies. Most of us claim about 80% of our New Backlog is repeat work, so that means 20% has to come from this combo and Combo 4. Leverage your highly experienced professionals who like to build new relationships.

Combo 3 - Sell new stuff to existing clients

Maybe ACME, Inc. doesn’t need a corporate headquarters designed this year, but really needs help with a facilities management system. Here’s a little secret: Your existing clients trust you and would prefer to buy new stuff from you rather than from someone they don’t know. Build internal partnerships between your key relationship managers and the technical leader(s) of the new stuff. Watch out for experienced competitors focusing heavily on Combo 2.

Combo 4 - Sell new stuff to new clients

Break out the phone books and line up the cold calls! OK, that may be excessive, but this is definitely the final frontier in selling professional services. You’re convincing people who don’t know your firm to buy stuff for which you don’t have a track record. Totally possible, but not for the faint-hearted. This combo often requires strategic hires or acquisitions, which might be the only way to beat the competition in the other combos. You could get crazy and buy a new suit, but your competition in Combo 1 knows you’re coming.

Serving over Selling in Professional Services Industry

While we can’t completely avoid the annual budgeting process, we can look at it differently. You’re in the business of professionally serving others. Instead of simply looking for more projects, more offices, or more technical credentials, why not look for the best ways your firm can serve more people next year, and get paid for the value you created? Use the combinations above as a framework and correlate the targets for each to your firm’s overall strategic plan and annual business plan. Tada! Now you’ve got a growth target that everyone can embrace. Happy budgeting, and more importantly, happy serving!

Knowing how your AE firm compares to your peers is critical for evaluating the health of your business. Fortunately, regularly monitoring your firm’s performance doesn’t have to be a challenge for Deltek Vision users. In this article, we’ll take a quick look at the background of the AE Clarity study and introduce the Vision Performance Management (VPM) interactive dashboard.

What is the Deltek AE Clarity Study?

Each year, Deltek works in conjunction with the American Counsel of Engineering Companies (ACEC), ACEC Canada and the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) to gather and benchmark key performance metrics for the AE industry. The study draws from over 250,000 data points provided by 386 US and Canadian AE firms of every shape and size.

As the oldest and longest running study of its kind, Deltek AE Clarity report is the authoritative industry standard and the 37^th annual Deltek AE Clarity Study is out and available for download. This report is a comprehensive summary of performance results for 2015.  Additionally, these results include several key statistics that are easy to calculate and monitor, plus allows you to compare your firm’s performance against your industry peers.

How Can Your AE Firm Use the Results?

Having measurable insight into the key performance metrics of your firm plays a vital role in strategic planning and decision-making. The Clarity report shows a number of measurements, and all are important items to track. However, every firm should track several key measures regularly such as:

• Operating Net Profit on Net Revenue
• Utilization Rate
• Net Labor Multiplier
• Total Payroll Multiplier
• Overhead Rate
• Net Revenue per Employee

Some of these statistics can be calculated in Vision, but they are not encapsulated into one comprehensive report without extracting individual measurements into a summary table like Excel. However, the spreadsheet will need to be a manual update for ultimate presentation to firm stakeholders. Surely, there’s got to be an easier way, right?

Introducing Deltek Vision Performance Management

With Deltek VPM, these statistics incorporate easily into an interactive Vision Dashboard. As a result, executives can simply view these vital statistics on the screen and use built in filters to “slice and dice” the numbers as shown below.

But wait, there’s more! With VPM, you also have interactive graphs to monitor performance. These graphs allow users to transform rows and columns into bars and colors. VPM will also enable users to see performance using visual metrics. In other words, Vision Performance Management is more like Visual Performance Management as demonstrated below.

Start Monitoring Your AE Firm

Staying ahead of the competition requires knowing where your firm matches up in terms of these key performance indicators. Luckily, VPM allows Vision users to see where their firm stands on a regular basis.

Full Sail Partners today announced it joined the Concur Solution Provider program and can now refer clients, including those using Deltek, to Concur, the leading provider of spend management solutions and services.

This partnership expands the Full Sail Partners offering to include Concur solutions and allows Concur data to flow into Deltek Vision, helping professional services firms create a better expense reporting experience for their employees and also enable the firms to realize significant cost savings.

“We are ecstatic to introduce Concur to our clients,” said Tanya Drake, Full Sail Partners Technology Division’s Technical Consultant. “This partnership gives project-based clients the most efficient expense reporting solution ever. Our clients will experience firm-wide cost savings and eliminate mistakes and fraud with the automated controls and duplication verification. Employees will love the automatic pull of data to their expense reports, virtually eliminating manual entry of expense reports. It’s a win-win for both the firm and employees.”

Concur Travel, Expense and Invoice are the industry’s leading solutions to help businesses manage spend and gain insights that drive savings. Concur has more than 40 million users globally, and in 2015 the company processed transactions worth more than $70 billion in travel and expense spend.

Kelly Duquette, Principal Solutions Consultant at Full Sail Partners who has worked with the Concur product at a previous firm said, “We believe this is a great opportunity for the Deltek Vision community to leverage Concur to create a fast, efficient process that allows employees to spend less time on tedious tasks and more time focusing on their billable work.” 

Together, Full Sail Partners and Concur will enable HR and accounting professionals to better manage expenses and invoice processing from approval to payment posting. The expanded capabilities offered through Concur will enable professional services firms to capture paper and electronic invoices, enabling efficient, automated processing – from purchase request through payment, including 2-way and 3-way match capabilities. 

“Travel and expense is the second largest area of controllable business spend – a challenge especially significant to SMBs. With a partner-focused initiative like the Concur Solution Provider program, we can help partners like Full Sail Partners expand the value they provide SMBs while driving business growth and profitability,” said Christal Bemont, SVP and GM of SMB and National Accounts, Concur.

To receive details about this partnership and the Concur solutions offered through Full Sail Partners, please visit http://www.blackboxconnector.com.

Full Sail Partners provides technology services and solutions for more than 1,000 professional services firms nationwide. Blackbox Connector, a division of Full Sail Partners, helps bring data together with a no-code, low cost, integration solution connecting Deltek Vision users to any API-powered application within minutes. Full Sail Partners represents project-based products focused on integrating business processes by connecting front-end and back-end systems. We seek to help organizations identify the critical resources needed to create a faster, more efficient, and cohesive business infrastructure.

This year’s Deltek Insight Conference is in Washington, D.C., from November 14th to 17th. Are you still undecided about attending? If you’ve never heard of Deltek Insight, no problem! Here’s a quick rundown of the information you need to know about Deltek Insight 2016.  

Sessions with Deltek Vision Experts

Attending sessions at Deltek Insight is a great way to have that “aha” moment. Especially when you realize Deltek Vision can do more than you ever thought. Whether you are rookie user or are a Vision power user, there are sessions for you. Why should you attend sessions? Sessions are expert-led classes by peers designed to provide Vision users with continuing education so they can further harness the power of Vision.

Additionally, experts from Full Sail Partners will lead several sessions. Do you understand how to use Vision Marketing Campaigns? Join our client Karen Crilly from BG Buildingworks and our very own Graham Gardner as they review the fundamentals and best practices of Vision Marketing Campaigns. Are you curious about using Vision’s Approval Engine? Kelly Duquette will cover five critical areas you need to know before you start. Check out the whole list of Full Sail Partners led sessions here.

Network with Other Deltek Vision Users

Let’s take a minute for some self-reflection. Do you find yourself thinking about Deltek Vision when you’re not at work? Have you found yourself chatting away about Deltek Vision with people who don’t share the same amount of enthusiasm? Wish you could find others firms like yours somewhere else in the country? If you answered yes to any of these questions, Insight is the place you need to be!

Insight provides a prime environment to meet and network with Vision users from across the United States. At Insight, you can hang out with other like-minded Vision geeks to share tips and tricks, and to have a great time.

Insight Kickoff Night  

Deltek Insight will begin Monday night with a welcome reception in the expo hall. At the welcome reception, Insight attendees are able to mingle with other attendees and learn more about the planned events and projects for Insight 2016. Additionally, Deltek organizes a charity project each year for Insight. This year’s charity project will involve the assembly of toiletry kits that Operation Gratitude can include in their care packages that are sent to deployed troops, veterans, new recruits, first responders, and Wounded Warriors. You can volunteer to help during the welcome reception.

The welcome reception also provides a great place to meet with your Deltek partner. Make sure you stop by our booth in the expo hall during the reception and find out what we are doing to make Vision better!

Celebrate Insight

After several days of Deltek Vision information overload, Insight concludes with an exciting party and live concert. Celebrate Insight is on the Wednesday night of Insight and kicks-off with a variety of food and dessert stations. After you have filled yourself with all you can eat, the entertainment begins.

If you have been to previous Insight’s, it should be no surprise to you that the Deltek house band, LoCash, will be headlining the night. Before LoCash takes the stage, enjoy a jam session with the lead signers of Sugar Ray, Tonic, and Better Than Ezra. Don’t miss out on the most exciting A/E conference of the year!

I don’t know anyone that actually enjoys completing their expense report. The process is arduous, and steals valuable time from your already hectic day. The fact is, if you want to get reimbursed for a company expenditure, you have to take the time to complete your expense report. No ifs ands or buts about it.  Luckily, Blackbox’s Deltek Vision and Concur Integration eliminates this pain staking process for your employees and frees them up to concentrate on client-focused, billable work.

So, how can the Blackbox Concur Connector help you combine the benefits or Concur's expense controls and management with Vision's financial and project management tools? Easy! See how below.

The Deltek Vision and Concur Integration Made My Life Easier:

As someone who travels a fair amount, the Deltek Vision and Concur integration has allowed me to get the most out of my business expenses. Before, I was overly focused on diligently taking a picture of every receipt and documenting every incurred cost. Now, when I am out with a client, I can focus on listening and cultivating our relationship.  Here is how:

No more expense report time dump! Concur’s credit card integration is freakin’ awesome. I’ll admit it, I am terrible at manually documenting receipts and deciphering between my credit card charges vs. cash expenses. I used to stress out when thinking about the time dump required to complete my expense reports. Now, the Deltek Vision and Concur integration allows me to complete and submit my expense reports faster, rather than waiting until the end of the month to begin the process.

User protection / fraud prevention. Recently after traveling in New York City, I submitted an expense report with duplicate charges for an Uber ride. This minor mistake held up the processing of my expense report as we internally worked out my error. Concur allows me to eliminate this time consuming process of going back and forth from submitter, management and accounting. Additionally, these controls protect the company from accidental or direct fraudulent activity.

Mobile is where it’s at! I’m constantly on the go and I rely on my smart phone for just about everything. I can honestly say that Concur’s mobile app has been a big reason that I have been more diligent with completing my expense reports.

The app utilizes OCR technology that allows me to automatically pull all relevant information off of receipts, including:

• Vendor
• Date
• Dollar amount
• And more

Additionally, the mobile app sends me alerts when I have new charges, reports to approve or notifications.

Real-time, Automatic, Transaction-based Integration.  No more waiting for new projects to show up so I can associate expenses.  No tedious manual uploads to share information between the two systems.  No more having to input the same information in multiple places.  The bi-directional connector allows the information I and my accounting team need to be available where and when it is needed.

Ready to See How Concur Integrates with Deltek Vision?

Are you ready to learn more about this turn-key integration of Deltek Vision and Concur? Join Pete Nuffer as he unveils how all Deltek Vision users can win with automated expense management.

Recently, Beaudin Ganze Consulting Engineers, Inc. embarked on a rebranding initiative, officially becoming BG Buildingworks. A critical element of this rebranding effort was to notify the company’s key constituents to reaffirm that the rebranding was primarily a cosmetic change, and that BG Buildingworks would maintain their personnel and technical expertise.

Hear directly from Karen Crilly, BG Buildingworks’ Director of Marketing & Client Development, about this process. See how the firm was able to overcome challenges with their contact data in time to announce the rebranding prior to their 25^th anniversary.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For BG Buildingworks, innovative solutions are at the core of their business. BG Buildingworks provides mechanical, electrical, lighting, technology, commissioning, energy analysis and LEED consulting services for projects ranging from those in higher education to government, commercial, hospitality, healthcare and more. They are experts in REVIT modeling, employing state-of-the art technology and tools to optimize energy-efficient building systems and improve the owner’s bottom line.

Through early program definition, focused project management, expert systems design and engineering and highly experienced construction phase services, BG Buildingworks provides owners with low-risk, high-return solutions for their facilities.

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Premier Partner, announces that Kelly Duquette has joined the firm as a Principal Solutions Consultant to assist professional services firms with improving their business processes within Deltek Vision. Kelly’s specialties include planning and supporting firms with migrating data during mergers and acquisitions; configuring and training of the Vision Purchasing and Asset Management modules; and building and implementing client solutions within the Vision Advanced Workflow Engine. This strategic hire expands Full Sail Partners’ consulting team presence on the east coast.

“I am thrilled to be in a client facing position that will allow me to assist clients with the use of Deltek Vision,” stated Kelly Duquette. “Full Sail Partners offers a wide variety of services and offerings that work to expand the product and make it a unique experience for each company. I look forward to engaging with clients so they can benefit from our entire team’s knowledge of the product.”

With a background in accounting, Kelly has more than 25 years of experience focused around Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system management and implementation. She holds her Master’s Degree in Business Administration and has been both a Deltek Vision user and system administrator. Prior to joining Full Sail Partners, Kelly was Vice President and Director of ERP Systems at a large Engineering/Environmental Consulting Firm, with more than 120 offices across the US and approximately 4,200 employees. With a focus on process improvement throughout her professional career, she has managed several mergers and acquisitions and led several Deltek Vision implementations and business processes initiatives.  

Kelly was the leader of the Deltek Vision Large Firm User Group and a member of the Deltek Vision Power User group. She participated in the early adopter program for the Purchasing and Asset Management modules. In November, at the Deltek Insight Conference, Kelly will be presenting on the Critical Roadmap Factors for Mergers and Acquisitions and Getting Started with Deltek Vision's Approval Engine. She will be co-presenting with Ed Zanaty for Vision Purchasing - A Project Centric Approach. In the past, she has presented at numerous user group meetings.

“Full Sail Partners jumped at the chance to bring a veteran, Deltek Vision user like Kelly on board,” said Scott Seal, Vice President of Consulting. “She has a proven track record of improving processes and creating efficiencies within the Deltek Vision system. Kelly’s extensive consulting, data migration and custom experience with professional services industry brings a wealth of knowledge to the Full Sail Partners’ consulting team and provides fluidity between the client, consultants, and the custom solutions division to ensure we are providing the right solution.”

For more information, please contact Full Sail Partners’ Marketing Communications Department. Interested in learning more about the Full Sail Partners' team? Check out our crew!

If someone were to ask you what do you like least about your job, what would you say? Assuming you like your boss, your environment and co-workers, there is still always a task that you just wish you didn’t have to do. For me, it is my expenses. You would think, getting reimbursed would be motivation in itself. Yes, at some point it absolutely is. It has gotten much easier now that I can take a picture of my receipts and quickly upload through my Deltek Vision Touch application with my phone. However, I still have to fill out the details which takes time. Time I don’t always have. What if I told you it could get even easier? I was then introduced to the Concur expense solution.

I literally was giddy over expenses when I saw what the solution could do. The Concur expense solution automatically imports credit card charges and matches them to receipts and itinerary data. Instead of manually entering your expenses, I can simply take a picture of the receipt and it reads the information and fills out my expenses. Sounds too good to be true, right?

So how can this help Deltek Vision users you might ask? Well, there is an integration being finalized right now. I invite you to view the video below to begin to learn more about the Concur expense solution:

Learn more in the upcoming Concur webinar. This webinar will further show you how Concur expense reports write themselves and we will provide a sneak peek of the upcoming Deltek Vision integration.

For project-based firms, the competition for new business is constantly increasing. As a result, the ability to win new business requires firms to produce powerful and convincing proposals. Here is a list of tips to improve your business proposal development process to help you increase your firm’s win rate.

1. Create a Checklist – There’s nothing worse than completing a proposal and realizing that a required form or document is missing. Start the proposal process by studying the request for proposal (RFP) and creating a list of requirements, forms and documents that have to be included when submitting the proposal.
2. Identify Areas of Focus for Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) – It’s rare for companies to employ full time SMEs dedicated solely to the proposal team. In reality, SMEs have other responsibilities within the company that relate to their expertise, and the proposal team gets a limited amount of their time. Therefore, help them so they’ll help you! Identify and assign key sections of the RFP to the appropriate SME to allow them to maximize their time dedicated to the proposal team.   
3. Have a Kickoff Meeting – This is the time to bring together all contributors for the proposal to set expectations in regards to timelines, writing assignments, and writing guidelines. During this meeting, the team should discuss the win strategy and major themes, and how the proposal will differentiate your firm from the competition.
4. Know When to Bid or No bid – Red flags, such as tight project timelines and rigid subcontractor requirements are indicators that the risks might outweigh the benefits. Additionally, red flags can present themselves at any moment in the proposal process. As a result, making the decision to no bid on an opportunity can happen during any point in the proposal development process. Learn more about the bid/no bid process here.
5. Avoid Information Overload – More information doesn’t always make a better proposal. Instead, what ends up happening is important details get lost in all the added irrelevant text. If you desire to include additional or unrequested information, provide this in the Appendix.
6. Avoid Stale Boilerplate Content – It’s likely that your company submits several proposals to the same client for different work. Additionally, certain content can become outdated and inaccurate. Use periodic reviews and rewrites of boilerplate content to keep proposals fresh and current.
7. Use Graphics – Always remember this, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
8. Create an Executive Summary that Wins – The executive summary should tell the reader how the proposal is organized by summarizing each key section. More specifically, the summaries should show that you understand the goals and expected outcomes, and also contain an overview of your firm’s solution.
9. Keep in Touch with References – Checking in with references and saying thank you can go a long way. Let them know you appreciation their endorsement and tell them about future anticipated reference requests.
10. Deadlines are set in Stone – When creating a timeline for the proposal development process, the internal deadlines are dictated by the deadlines in the RFP. Therefore, internal deadlines should not be treated as suggestions.

Increase Proposal Process Efficiency

Is your firm struggling to win more business? Gain a competitive edge by using these tips in your business proposal development process.