Establishing meaningful key performance indicators (KPIs) is vital if your firm is committed to data-driven decision making. First, you will need to determine what most clearly correlates with your company’s goals. A simple way to think about KPIs is that you can only improve what can be measured, and using today’s business intelligence (BI) offerings, measuring KPIs can be especially precise and easy to do. Let’s look at some trends in BI and the connection to KPIs. 

Easier data discovery

It used to be that data discovery was only done by IT experts who created reports about crucial information regarding KPIs. This process could take many days, and by the time a report was generated, the information was irrelevant. With the continuing simplification of BI, more people can now have access to real-time analytics. Using simplified BI, anyone can drill down into the data and find answers to important questions which are related to KPIs.

Visual Analytics

For non-analytical people, visualizations are helpful to digest key information. They activate the brain’s recognition capabilities and enable people to detect patterns in charts and graphs. Rather than having to discover data buried in tables over multiple pages, visual analytics allow for decisions to be made quickly and are a much more efficient way to evaluate KPIs.

Self-service Business Intelligence

More and more business users are accessing BI solutions to make faster and better-informed decision. Each company has unique goals and so does each department. To measure specific KPIs, customized BI dashboards can be created with the features relevant to each user. These dashboards are viewed in a single screen providing immediate, accurate and up to date visual status reports.

Mobile Business Intelligence

Today’s fast paced business environment requires that people have access to critical BI anywhere, anytime. With increased accessibility and improved smartphones, BI can also be analyzed on mobile devices. Companies that use mobile BI can stay ahead of the competition because there is always access to important data for decision making and gauging KPIs.

Cloud Business Intelligence

While most BI software has been hosted on-premise, the increase in on-demand data access has led to cloud BI. There are many benefits of a cloud BI solution. It is easy to install because it is an internet-based software, adding new users is a simple and the cost is low. Cloud BI is an option for companies of all sizes within an industry that provides an instant way to assess KPIs.

Being Proactive with Business Intelligence

All firms strive to be successful and creating KPIs allows them to measure success and avoid potential negative outcomes. Using a BI solution, firms can be proactive by visually seeing KPIs and making quick decisions based upon critical information. The two go hand in hand and together they help firms make sense of it all.

Deltek Insight 2018 is fast approaching­! Have you thought about attending? This year it will be in Dallas, Texas from November 5^th to the 8^th at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center. If you are not sure yet about attending Deltek Insight this year, here’s a look at some reasons to make it worth your while.

Learn More at Sessions Led by Experts

Deltek products can do so much for your business. At Insight, there are multiple sessions with Deltek experts where you can learn things you might have never known. These educational sessions are provided to Deltek users, so they can utilize their Deltek products successfully.

Additionally, experts from Full Sail Partners will be on-site leading other sessions. Rick Childs along with Tim Burns will be demonstrating how to speed up your accounts payable process through automation. If you are struggling with workflows, join Kelly Duquette as she shows how you can use standard workflows to automate repetitive tasks. Check out the whole list of Full Sail Partners’ led sessions here.

There is also a great lineup of keynotes at Insight. The list includes Mike Robbins, The Four Oarsmen, and Johnny Cupcakes. These sought-after speakers will provide inspirational stories and talk about their achievements. Learn more about the educational opportunities at Insight 2018 here. 

Meet Other Deltek Users

Insight is the largest gathering of Deltek users. Attending this conference gives you the opportunity to connect with Deltek users from around the world that you would normally not be able to meet. You will be able to speak with others in your industry about common issues and how they use their Deltek products. With so many Deltek users in one spot, you can get answers to questions that you have or give feedback to those struggling with an obstacle that you have overcome.

Have Fun While You Work

Deltek Insight will kick off Monday, November 5^th with a general session where attendees can mingle while learning what will be going on throughout the four days of Insight. Then at the welcome reception, everyone will enjoy snacks and beverages provided by Deltek. Make sure to stop by our booth and see what we have been doing this year to improve our customer experience!

Finally, Celebrate Insight which is the last night of the conference will be held at the world-famous Gilley’s in downtown Dallas. Attendees will be dancing through the decades with six decade-inspired rooms including the 60’s Revolution, a 70’s disco, I Love the 80’s, Smells like 90’s Spirit, and Y2K Tech Nerds. Food and beverages will be provided in each room, and if that’s not enough, the legendary Kool & The Gang will be performing their iconic hits. This Celebrate Insight is something you’ll not want to miss.

Register Now for Deltek Insight 2018

With all these amazing events that are going on this year, you are going to want to sign up right away! From the networking, to the learning experiences, to the fun, it is worth the effort to attend. See you there!

Full Sail Partners is pleased to welcome Theresa DePew to our consulting team. As a Finance Consultant, she will be supporting Full Sail Partners’ clients across the United States regarding Deltek Vision and Deltek for Professional Services. Additionally, Theresa will be responsible for the implementation of Concur Expense & Invoice for those clients who choose this add on service.

Theresa has fifteen years of experience working in corporate accounting both as a Project Accountant and in accounts payable. Her past industry experience includes working with project managers and other staff to ensure projects are in budget and closed in a timely manner. Theresa has also previously assisted in the implementation of both Deltek Vision and Concur Expense software.

“Having been a Deltek Vision and Concur client on the firm side, I am so excited to work as part of the Full Sail Partners’ consulting team. Using my prior experience in corporate accounting, I feel like I can really understand the needs of Full Sail Partners’ clients,” said Theresa DePew.

With both Vision and Concur experience under her belt, Theresa will be able to immediately fill in our increasing Vision consulting services as well as be a Concur implementation expert. More and more Full Sail Partners’ clients are choosing to not only get the most out of their Deltek Vision systems, but also to streamline their processes with the Deltek Vision to Concur Blackbox Connector. It is an exciting time, and Theresa will fill a vital role in keeping up with client needs. 

“With our ever-increasing client requests for Deltek Vision consulting services and Blackbox Connector offerings, we were looking for a champion who could take on these efforts. In Theresa, we have found the perfect skill set with her knowledge of and experience with both Deltek Vision and Concur Expense. We are thrilled for her to be part of the consulting team at Full Sail Partners,” stated Scott Seal, VP of Consulting.

For more information, please contact Full Sail Partners’ Marketing and Communications Department. 

Full Sail Partners, a Concur and Deltek Platinum Partner, is excited to announce that Joel Slater has joined the firm as Product Sales Manager. In this newly created role, he will oversee all Full Sail Partners’ product sales. The firm’s product offerings include Deltek Vision, Deltek for Professional Services and Blackbox Connector solutions which integrate multiple best of breed software applications like Entrinsik Informer 5 business intelligence and Concur Expense and Invoice.

Joel comes to Full Sail Partners with more than ten years of experience selling ERP and finance-related software applications to project-based firms. Also, having been a Sales Executive for both Concur and Deltek, Joel has ample knowledge of Full Sail Partners’ product offerings. With this exceptional background, he will be able to ensure Full Sail Partners’ clients are provided with the right tools within their stated budget to help them streamline their operations. 

“I’m excited to continue my career working with project-oriented firms, and with a continued focus on a product set which I truly believe in,” stated Joel Slater. “This new role provides an ideal setting for utilizing my past experience to help our clients advance successfully into the future.” 

As Product Sales Manager, Joel will work with clients directly on any Full Sail Partners’ product offering, but he will also be available to assist the account management and the Blackbox Connector sales teams. Our account management and Blackbox Connector sales teams are located across the country allowing us to provide better service to clients throughout the United States. Joel will be a great asset in working with them to offer the solution that best fits the individual client’s needs.   

“Joel is a highly-regarded sales person in the Deltek and Concur ecosystem. We are thrilled to have him join the Full Sail Partners’ team as our new Product Sales Manager,” stated Sarah Gonnella, VP of Marketing & Sales. “In addition to his strong selling background, Joel is known for mentoring other sales colleagues. As a growing sales group, this is vital to our firm’s success and we look forward to his knowledge and expertise to grow the company.”

For more information, please contact Full Sail Partners’ Marketing and Communications Department. 

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Platinum Partner, is excited to announce that it has been recognized by Accounting Today on the top 100 VAR list for 2018. Every year Accounting Today picks the top value-added resellers (VARs) of accounting software, and Full Sail Partners has been ranked in the top 100 again this year. In fact, it has increased in ranking by ten, which is a 25-position increase over the last two years.  

Each year a select group of 100 organizations are honored for their accomplishments as VARs. The top VARs are chosen from firms focused on sales and implementation of accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. Criteria used to determine the winners include 2017 revenue, number of offices, and staff size.

“Just four years ago we were listed as one of the VARs to watch and returned to the list in 2015. Each year since then we keep leaping up the rankings. We are thrilled to continually move up on Accounting Today’s VAR 100 list,” stated Sarah Gonnella, VP of Marketing & Sales at Full Sail Partners. “As Deltek end-users too, we share our clients’ desires of wanting a robust project-based ERP system like Deltek offers with the flexibility to choose other best of breed solutions to help automate end-to-end processes. This provides us a unique perspective that many VARs do not have. With the creation of our Blackbox Connector we are bringing data together and streamlining the integration process.”

Accounting Today’s VAR 100 also indicated that a cloud offering is a must for VAR clients, and these clients are actively seeking higher-level capabilities from their technology. They are asking for analytics, intelligence and automation. Conveniently, Full Sail Partners has positioned itself to respond to these exact needs. With its Blackbox Connector capabilities and emerging business intelligence offerings, Full Sail Partners intends to keep developing solutions to fit client growth and desires.

Here is the full 2018 VAR list: https://www.accountingtoday.com/the-2018-var-100

Accounting Today is a leading provider of online business news for the accounting community, offering breaking news, in-depth features, and a host of resources and services. The VAR 100 list is an annual report developed to rank the top technology resellers in the accounting and ERP spaces.  

For more information, please contact Full Sail Partners’ Marketing and Communications Department. 

Full Sail Partners, a Concur and Deltek Platinum Partner, is pleased to announce the addition of Jon Rogers to the Blackbox Connector Team. Jon has joined the Blackbox Connector team as a Technical Support Analyst. In this role, Jon will work directly with clients on the set up of the Blackbox Connector software and provide technical support on the Deltek Vision platform and custom solutions.

“I am excited to be part of the Full Sail Partners crew. I enjoy working with clients to identify problems they are having and providing them with a solution,” Jon stated.

The Blackbox Connector team connects Deltek Vision and Deltek for Professional Services quickly with ready-to deploy business solutions including its Concur Expense and Invoice Connector and its new Informer Connector. With increased demand for Blackbox Connectors, Full Sail Partners sought a new technical team member to provide clients with a personal point of contact to troubleshoot any issues relating to their Blackbox Connector purchase. Additional connector offerings include Constant Contact, MailChimp and Client Feedback Tool.

“We are very excited to have Jon join the team and lend his expertise to expanding our ‘white glove’ approach to Blackbox Connector implementations and support team,” stated Wes Renfroe, VP of Technology.

For more information, please contact Full Sail Partners’ Marketing and Communications Department. 

Financial reports are essential to every organization for providing information about the health of a business to internal stakeholders as well as interested outside parties. For many firms, this is a manual process which requires significant time and resources to collect expense and invoice details, code them to the ledger, and then organize high-level summary information. Your accounting staff shouldn’t be spending their time organizing data, but instead analyzing the data to help your firm make better business decisions.

What’s the Solution?

To get started, SAP Concur has organized the key information into many standard dashboards, tiles and over 180 reports available in the standard report catalog. Many of the standard dashboards include the bulk of information your teams need, but they can also be personalized to meet specific requirements or preferences. These dashboards, tiles, and reports can be used to assist managers in tracking budgets and forecasting for future cashflow management. Tracking elements include spend by expense type, time-period, and project or department.

Why SAP Concur Reporting?

To budget for future spending and forecast future cash needs, you need to understand what you have spent in the past and what spend is still outstanding. Firms often use the processed spend data from within their financial or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. However, the challenge firms face is real time access to spend and accrual data that hasn’t yet been submitted into their ERP system. Concur Analytics Data is available in real time and is available before the expense report or invoice is submitted for payment.

Get to Know Tiles

Tiles in Concur can be used by themselves or pulled into dashboards for a more comprehensive view of spend.

• Top 5 Spend by Category allows users to easily view where your spend has been incurred. This lets you quickly determine if it is incurred in the expected categories, if spending needs to be reduced, and where might make the greatest impact. Accountants can then utilize the Spend Analysis dashboard or Expense Entry Analysis Details report to drill further into the categories and spend by vendor to help negotiate better pricing with your top vendors.

• Top 5 Entry Exceptions by Category enables users to easily view exceptions. This allows your team to identify the impact of any policy changes and see the policies with the most violations that should be investigated further. For even more visibility, they can then drill down into the Policy Exception Detail or Spend Analysis dashboard as well as the Expense Exception Analysis for both Report Level and Report Entry Level reports.
• Accrual Detail lets you identify the largest opportunity to take action on with outstanding spend, and specifically which individuals carry the largest value of outstanding spend. Your managers can either find training opportunities with these top individuals or focused spending cuts. For your accounting staff, this tile will help you determine the impact to future cashflow during tight budget cycles.

• Credit Card Transaction Report is one of the best features since it enables you to easily regain hours or even days’ worth of your accounting staff’s time. Although it may not be the sexiest feature, it is critical for keeping your data in compliance. This report lists all credit card transaction details imported into Concur. It can be used as a comprehensive listing or as an ad hoc exception report to look at certain subsets of credit card transactions. Organizations with a corporate card program need to reconcile their credit card transactions with the card statement to ensure all expenses are being processed, and this report can assist with that reconciliation. Also, this report can be grouped by Employee, then sorted by Posted Date to mirror the format of the credit card statement for simplified reconciliation. Another version of this report, the Unassigned Credit Card Transaction report, can help you quickly find those expenses which have been accrued are not yet assigned to an expense report.

Take a Deep Dive with Reports

For more in-depth analysis and details, reports can help streamline your workflows and drill down into the data you need. Custom reports can also be created by the Concur team if your requirements fall outside of the standard options.

Quick Access with Dashboards

You can start with one of many pre-built dashboards or create your own from scratch by adding tiles and reports to existing templates. While there are many dashboards available, some of the top ones include the Expense Overview dashboard and Policy Compliance dashboard. 

The Expense Overview dashboard is a perfect starting point for budget, cashflow management, and policy compliance all in one place. This dashboard can be used as a starting point to create a new custom “Spend Management” dashboard. Managers can use this detail for budget and forecasting purposes. Personalization recommendations are to retain the Spend, Accruals, and Top 5 Spend by Category tiles as well as adding additional tiles: Spend Summary Trends, Spend Change by Category, and Accrual Detail.

The Spend Analysis dashboard is an incredibly functional dashboard that offers users an in-depth analysis on total spend for a given period along with a summary breakdown of that spend by Expense Type and associated detail. This dashboard can be easily filtered to show specific Spend Categories, Expense Types, or Employees for total spend analysis or grouped and sorted in ways that are meaningful for specific tasks. It allows leaders to identify what their teams have spent in a given period. They can even track individual spending patterns to identify specific areas for follow-up or track improvements in spending behaviors. This report is versatile in that it can be filtered to show trends in spending patterns or behaviors. If more detailed analysis is required, use the Expense Entry Analysis Detail report.

It is recommended that an organization review their travel policy once a year and adjust as needed. It is important to consider the potential impact of a policy change before one is implemented. If an organization does not have a limit on cell phone reimbursement, but needs to create a policy on this expense, the Spend Analysis dashboard can be reviewed to identify average reimbursement rates to establish a baseline for a new policy. This dashboard can also be used to assess the impact of such a policy change to identify how many individuals would have been out of policy if the value was changed.

SAP Concur is a Complete Spend Management Solution

With over 180 reports available in the standard report catalog, Concur can help you quickly and easily analyze your Travel, Expense, and AP automation program to gain valuable insight into how to proactively manage all aspects of your business’s finances. It’s been said that knowledge is power, but having too much information can be as bad as not having enough. You need to be able to see spend clearly so you have more time to run your business. As your business and reporting needs evolve, let Concur and Full Sail Partners help you capture and monitor the data you need.

Many people don’t realize that talent management is a key business strategy and is vital to a firm’s success. It begins with recruiting potential hires and follows employees throughout their entire life cycles with a firm. Since talent management has such a great financial impact on a firm, talent metrics should be used to show return on investment and to make informed business decisions. So, which metrics are the most significant?

5 Important Talent Management Metrics 

1. Cost to Hire

It is very expensive to hire a new employee. Up front, you have ad placement and sourcing costs. Additionally, there is the time spent by the recruiter and managers to interview and determine the best candidate from the pool. As much effort and time will be put into selecting and onboarding the right match for a position at your firm, you want to ensure the new hire is a good return on investment. You also want to assess whether your ad placements and sourcing tools are getting you the quality candidates you desire. 

2. Time to Full Productivity

Every new hire needs some time to become acquainted with the new position and learn the ropes. Generally, it requires several months before a new hire can be fully productive. However, it is imperative that your firm has an effective onboarding and training program to get new hires up to speed as fast as possible. The quicker a new hire moves to full productivity, the faster there is the return on investment. 

3. High Potential Talent

As part of your talent management plan, you should hire a percentage of people that you expect to provide more value down the road for the organization. This talent should be the best of the best. These employees will be the ones you pull from for future succession into higher-level roles. Making sure you hire talent with potential is necessary to avoid more costs of hiring. 

4. Talent Mobility

Retention of talent is another important factor to consider, especially when concerned with the financial impact of hiring a replacement. Employees need to know that there are opportunities for them to move within the firm, so they don’t stagnate in the same position after several years. Your firm should offer career paths for upward mobility for top performers who seek new challenges. 

5. Talent Turnover

Turnover is probably the most relevant metric of all. Your firm will want to keep this number as low as possible to reduce its financial impact. With turnover, you have the cost of replacing the position with a new hire and the loss of the knowledge gleaned during the years of service. Additionally, turnover stops the cohesive flow of business and causes efficiency to wane.

Manage Your Talent Well

Of course, there are cases where turnover cannot be prevented no matter what the firm does. Overall though, your talent should be chosen wisely, trained properly and given opportunities for mobility. When you manage your talent well, you will in fact reduce your costs because word of mouth is free and high potential talent will come to you.

In almost every business we walk into, AP is the cause of significant, but often overlooked, strain and costs. From sorting through emailed or paper invoices and tracking checks to manually entering accounting information often requiring corrections, these tasks are huge time consumers. Do you know how many people are managing this in your business, and how many hours they spend each week/month? Think about what else they could be doing with this time and how much money could be saved.

Just the Facts

Did you know that 77% of invoices received by companies are in a manual format – either hard copies, PDFs, emails or faxes? The average cost to manually process just one invoice is $34. Using a manual system, there is limited visibility into who needs to get paid what and when, not to mention the possibility of late fees or the dreaded double payment. To add to this issue, any disruptions or delays in payments can jeopardize critical vendor relationships.

By automating your invoices into and through your system and eliminating errors, the average cost per invoice is 80% less. Multiply that times all your invoices and see how much you can save. It just makes financial sense to go with AP automation.

Using AP Automation

With AP Automation, you can connect every step from purchase requests to processing and payment with one solution eliminating paper and costly mistakes. Invoices of all types get captured electronically and matched against POs and goods received before being automatically routed for approval.

The process is a very simple one. The vendor sends an invoice to an email you provide that automatically routes into Concur. The Concur system uses optical character recognition (OCR) to read the invoice and fills in the:

• Vendor information
• Payment request type
• Request name
• Invoice date
• Net payment terms
• Invoice & PO number with invoice received date
• Currency type and amount
• Shipping and tax
• Line item descriptions, quantities, and unit price 

Your staff simply reviews the invoice, makes any corrections necessary, fills out the Project, Phase & Task information, as well as Expense Type, then submits the invoice to be routed through your process. Your firm can also establish policies to automatically route invoices from specific vendors or projects to the appropriate staff members and to code those invoices and flag exceptions.

Your firm’s approval process can be as simple or complicated as you need. The approver has the ability to approve, approve and forward or send back to the submitter. A comment can also be added that will communicate the reason for not approving. The communication thread is maintained with the invoice as it flows through the system and even after it is paid. You can always see what was discussed during the approval flow.

Gain Visibility into the AP Process

All this is great, you say, but I still need visibility. With Concur, you get all these benefits plus easy to access reports and dashboards that allow you to track many KPIs, including:

• Invoice accruals
• Invoice cycle time
• Top vendors by spend - to help give you visibility into where you can negotiate to lower your costs 

If you’re also using Concur for your expense reports, you can truly capture your entire firm spend with one solution and view reports and data across all areas in one place. Below is a diagram that demonstrates the Concur Invoice process: 

Concur Integrates with Deltek Vision

How does this all get back into Deltek Vision, you ask? With the Blackbox Connector, integrating Vision and Concur is simple. Of course, there are some mandatory fields that must be synced – for example, the Vendor ID and name. However, you can choose what additional data is synced.

Do you need to send the vendor type to Concur? Have you added a custom field you wish to include? The Blackbox Connector mapping will allow you to sync the fields you want with a simple click and drag. This works on any field from Vision into Concur. All you do is ensure that a field is in Vision and is in Concur to hold the data. Within some limits, you can also control what comes back into Vision for the AP transaction file including the images associated to the invoices.

Your accounting team will likely be concerned about everything going to the correct GL Account. Concur uses Expense types for the entry data. The Blackbox Connector for Vision to Concur allows for these Expense Types to be translated into Vision GL Accounts based on the project type used, which allows for your GL coding to be automated and standardized, significantly reducing errors.

What about the periods? How do you control what period this goes in? Simple, the AP transactions go into Vision as an unposted status. This gives you the ability to post the transaction to the correct period.

Stop the Madness

AP Automation is a simple phrase that, as you can see, solves a not so simple challenge facing almost every firm. In addition to lowering your costs, you also get the added benefits of better control over and improved visibility into your spending. Automate AP and free up your team to take on bigger challenges and make a greater impact on your firm!

Full Sail Partners, a Concur and Deltek Platinum Partner, is pleased to announce the addition of Amanda McClain to the Account Management Team. Amanda joins the Blackbox Connector team as an Implementation Project Manager. In this position, she will oversee implementations for financial related Blackbox Connector integrations. Amanda’s strong finance background in combination with her vast customer service experience will enable her to provide a positive client experience throughout the project lifecycle when purchasing a Blackbox Connector solution.

“Joining the Blackbox Connector team allows me to utilize all aspects of my background to help create a long-lasting client relationship,” stated Amanda McClain. “I am very excited to begin this position as Implementation Project Manager. My previous experience has given me the tools needed to effectively listen to clients and work with them to create a system tailored specifically to their firm needs.”

The Blackbox Connector team integrates Deltek Vision and Deltek for Professional Services with ready-to deploy business solutions, including Concur Expense and Invoice Connector, as well as, the Informer Connector that is coming in the first quarter of 2018. With the increase of Blackbox Connector solutions, Full Sail Partners sought a new team member to ensure quality was provided throughout the implementation. In her role, Amanda will provide clients with a personal point of contact to discuss and resolve any issues relating to their Blackbox Connector purchase.

“As demand for our Blackbox Connector continues to grow, we are focused on providing a quality product. This includes ensuring our clients have a successful implementation,” stated Wendy Gustafson, General Manager of Full Sail Partners. “We are super excited to have someone who is customer service and detail-oriented. She will be instrumental in keeping our client implementations on track.”

For more information, please contact Full Sail Partners’ Marketing and Communications Department.