As a veteran of the architecture, engineering, and construction industry for over 17 years, I've seen firsthand the importance of having a reliable and effective CRM system in place. When it comes to professional services marketing, Deltek Vantagepoint CRM is the go-to solution for many professionals in the industry. In this blog post, I'll explore why professionals in the industry love Deltek Vantagepoint CRM and why it's an essential tool for successful marketing and business development. 

1. Robust and Customizable Dashboards 

One of the most significant benefits of Deltek Vantagepoint CRM is the robust and customizable dashboard. The dashboard provides an overview of all essential information, including opportunities, leads, clients, and projects, in one centralized location. The dashboard is fully customizable, allowing you to choose the specific metrics and data that are most important to your marketing efforts. The ability to view all relevant data in one place helps marketing professionals make informed decisions and streamline their workflows. 

2. Natively Built Integration with Other Deltek Vantagepoint Modules 

The natively built integration between Deltek Vantagepoint CRM and other Vantagepoint modules offers numerous benefits to marketing professionals in the architecture and engineering (A/E) industry.  

First and foremost, the integration provides a complete view of the client's journey, from initial contact to project completion. This means that marketing professionals can easily access all relevant data related to a client, including project milestones, billing and invoicing information, and resource utilization. Having a complete view of the client's journey allows marketing professionals to make informed decisions about how to allocate their time and resources, resulting in more successful marketing campaigns and a better overall client experience. 

Another significant benefit of natively built integration is the prevention of duplication and errors. Because all data is up-to-date and accurate across all modules, there is no need to manually input information into multiple systems, reducing the risk of errors or duplications. This also means that marketing professionals can spend less time managing data and more time focusing on high-value activities, such as nurturing leads and developing targeted marketing campaigns. 

In addition, the natively built integration ensures that all data is secure and protected. Because there is no need for custom connections or plugs, there are fewer potential vulnerabilities in the system, reducing the risk of data breaches or security threats. The integration also ensures that all data is backed up and recoverable in the event of an outage or other issue, providing peace of mind to marketing professionals who rely on the system to manage their critical client data. 

3. Robust Reporting Capabilities 

Deltek Vantagepoint CRM offers robust reporting capabilities that allow A/E professionals to analyze and measure the effectiveness of their marketing and business development efforts. The reporting capabilities include customizable reports, dashboards, and analytics, giving A/E professionals the insights that they need to make data-driven decisions. The reporting capabilities also allow A/E professionals to track the ROI of their marketing campaigns, pipeline and forecasting, and win rate percentages enabling them to make adjustments and improvements as necessary. 

4. Comprehensive Contact Management 

Deltek Vantagepoint CRM provides comprehensive contact management capabilities that allow marketing professionals to manage all client and prospect data in one place. The contact management capabilities include contact details, communication history, and relationship tracking, ensuring that marketing professionals have a complete view of all interactions with clients and prospects. The comprehensive contact management capabilities also enable marketing professionals to segment their contact lists for targeted marketing campaigns. 

5. Mobile Accessibility 

Deltek Vantagepoint CRM is mobile-accessible, allowing marketing professionals to access critical information and tools on the go. The mobile accessibility feature enables marketing professionals to stay connected and informed, no matter where they are. The mobile accessibility feature also allows marketing professionals to quickly respond to client and prospect inquiries, improving customer service and satisfaction. 

Watch a brief demonstration of the Deltek Vantagepoint CRM Mobile App here. 

6. Connection to Outlook and Gmail 

Deltek Vantagepoint CRM allows marketing professionals to connect their Outlook and Gmail accounts, enabling them to synchronize email communications and appointments with their clients and prospects. This integration ensures that all communications are recorded in the CRM system, providing a complete view of all interactions with clients and prospects. The integration also enables marketing professionals to schedule follow-up activities and reminders directly from their email accounts. 

7. User-Friendly Interface 

Deltek Vantagepoint CRM has a user-friendly interface that is intuitive and easy to use. The interface is designed to be customizable, ensuring that marketing professionals can easily navigate to the specific data and tools they need. The user-friendly interface also ensures that marketing professionals can quickly onboard new team members and get them up to speed. 

8. Manage the Entire Project Lifecycle in One Place 

Deltek Vantagepoint CRM allows marketing professionals to manage the entire project lifecycle, from opportunity to project closeout. The system provides a complete view of all project-related information, including proposal and contract details, project milestones, and financials. The ability to manage the entire project lifecycle in one system streamlines the workflow, reduces duplication, and improves collaboration among team members. 

9. Real-Time Data Access 

Deltek Vantagepoint CRM provides real-time data access, ensuring that marketing professionals always have access to the latest information. The real-time data access feature enables marketing professionals to respond quickly to changing market conditions and client needs, ensuring that they remain competitive in the industry. 

10. Customizable Workflows 

Deltek Vantagepoint CRM provides customizable workflows, enabling marketing professionals to create workflows that align with their specific business processes. The customizable workflows feature ensures that marketing professionals can automate tasks, streamline processes, and improve efficiency. 

In conclusion, Deltek Vantagepoint CRM is an essential tool for marketing professionals in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. Its robust and customizable dashboard, integration with other Deltek Vantagepoint modules, robust reporting capabilities, comprehensive contact management, automation and workflow, mobile accessibility, and user-friendly interface make it the go-to solution for professional services marketing. With Deltek Vantagepoint CRM, marketing professionals can streamline their workflow, increase efficiency, and make informed decisions that drive results. 

Engaging clients is essential to any business, but it can be difficult to know where to start. However, by understanding the client engagement lifecycle, businesses can develop a process for engaging clients that leads to long-term relationships. 

What is the Client Engagement Lifecycle 

In every sales transaction, buyers (or clients) go on a journey that begins the moment they decide they need services and continues to when the contract is eventually signed. This is called the client engagement lifecycle. And you can imagine this as a funnel with the following phases: 

• Attract 
• Nurture 
• Convert 
• Grow 

A prospect is initially attracted to your firm and starts at the top of the funnel and goes through each phase until eventually you are providing services for them.  

Client Engagement Lifecycle Stages 

Now let’s go through each client engagement lifecycle stage in a little more detail.  

Attract

The client engagement lifecycle begins when you bring in new prospects. You can think of this as the top of the funnel. During this stage, it’s important to identify your target markets and personas such as project managers, facility managers, and/or directors that will be interested in your services.  

To do this, you’ll want to create marketing content and promotions that resonate with these key personas. The goal is to attract them to your firm using your expertise and/or answering their questions.  

The marketing content can be varied. It could range from written blogs to videos, webinars and podcasts. You just want to make sure the content is relevant to your target markets and personas and helps them solve common obstacles within their industry. 

Sales and technical staff will usually have little-to-no engagement in this stage of the lifecycle.  

Nurture

Once prospects have been attracted to your firm with your attract-type content, it’s important to maintain the prospects’ interests so they stay in the funnel. This is typically done through digital efforts like email marketing and offline efforts through phone calls and networking events.  

Knowing what content has sparked and sustained this interest is important so you can produce new content to continue to drive awareness. Additionally, the original content that brought them into the funnel should leave them with unanswered questions. 

During this stage, familiarity with the content which first attracted the prospects will help you determine questions they might now have. Your new content should be more specific to answer these questions with fact-based information that also communicates your expertise. Email campaigns provide a great avenue to share this fresh content. 

Your sales managers or technical team members may also follow up with the prospects to ask further questions and make introductions to your firm and its services. 

Convert

As your prospects move from the attract and through the nurture phases, it’s now time to get those prospects to make a conscious decision to move further. This is not to say they were not interested in your services before, but rather the content that you have been sharing has made them recognize you are a trusted authority and a subject matter expert. 

This stage is when specific, offline conversations need to begin, and you should convert these prospects into advocates. For professional services firms, this means that your technical staff may be meeting with the prospects over the phone or in meetings to talk about a specific project. The conversations are turning to either a request for proposal and/or proposing specific services.  

The content produced in this phase supports proposals, presentations, and other sales-related documents to close the sale!  

Grow

Congratulations, you now have new clients in your funnel. This is the stage where you will foster the ability to provide additional services to your clients. 

The tricky thing here is creating content that will be important to your clients in the future. For some clients, this is a few months down the road, and for others, a year or more. A great tool to use is a monthly or quarterly newsletter for sharing your newly created content to create new opportunities. 

Using the Client Engagement Lifecycle to Your Advantage 

Understanding the client engagement lifecycle for your specific firm and targeted markets works as an advantage for your marketing and business development efforts. When you identify your client engagement lifecycle for a specific market or persona such as a facilities director for a University Campus.  

You can then begin to create marketing content that specifically appeals to that facilities director. This specific content strategy will work to attract the right type of prospects and generate leads for your firm.  

The client engagement lifecycle is a valuable tool for businesses to use when developing their client engagement strategy. 

Wrapping it All Up 

The client engagement lifecycle is a process that businesses use to manage and improve their relationships with clients. It typically includes stages such as attract, nurture, convert, and grow. By understanding and leveraging each stage of the client engagement lifecycle, businesses can drive results by identifying opportunities for improvement and developing strategies to increase client satisfaction and loyalty. This can lead to increased revenue, repeat business, and improved overall performance. 

To learn more about content marketing strategies for each stage of the client engagement lifecycle, click the image below for our series. 

Deltek Vantagepoint is a powerful tool with many capabilities to ensure the success of project-based firms. Despite the availability, many users often don’t use the system to its full capacity or simply overlook some of the features of Vantagepoint that will make their jobs easier. In this article, I’ll just scratch the surface of Vantagepoint’s capabilities by sharing 10 tips and tricks. Hopefully one or two of these will help you get more out of your system.  

#1 – Use the Application Finder to Get to Your Information Faster 

As part of its re-imagination process, Deltek took the redesign of the user interface seriously. This means getting the information you need faster and more streamlined. One way they did this was by adding an Application Finder or search bar to the left-hand navigation. You can use this application finder to type in a few characters of what hub you want to open. For example, if you want to open a project record, you can begin typing “Pro...” and it will display all the areas with the word project in it.  

And, with Vantagepoint 5.5, you’ll find little stars next to each sub-menu and you can click to fill in the star and make it available in the favorite menu. To toggle between the favorites menu and the normal menu, use icons directly below the find application and above the menus. Find application is active no matter which icon is selected. See below for an example. 

#2 – Personalize Vantagepoint in My Preferences 

While the Deltek admin can configure the settings for the company, security roles, and even specific users, you can personalize some of the Vantagepoint experience just for you! By clicking on the gear in the top right corner, then selecting “My Preferences,” there are some ways that you can personalize your experience. Some of those include:  

• Set your preferred project search sort order. You can choose to sort the project lists by Project Name or Project Number.  
• Choose whether you select saved searches or records when running a report. 
• Choose whether you want to default to an accounting period or be prompted to select an accounting period upon initial log-on to Vantagepoint.  
• If your firm has turned on the Contact Qualification settings, you can choose the default Qualified status as either New Lead or Qualified Lead.  
• You can set your default Country for all addresses in the system.  
• You can choose what you want to load initially when you log into Vantagepoint. Options include the Application last used, the default Welcome Page, or you can select a specific application.    
  

#3 – Access Vantagepoint from Your Phone 

This is often one of the most overlooked features of Vantagepoint – the mobile apps! Deltek has created two mobile apps specifically for Vantagepoint. One is for time and expense and one is specifically for CRM. Both are available for both iPhone and Android users. Stop what you’re doing right now, open your phone, go to your app store, and then search and download at least the Deltek T&E for Vantagepoint.  

The Deltek T&E for Vantagepoint allows you to complete and submit your timesheet on the go! And, with Vantagepoint 5.5, Deltek improved the navigation menu and usability to make completing your timesheet even easier. The T&E app also allows you to submit expenses from your phone too. It utilizes ICR so that you can snap a photo of a receipt and the app intelligently reads text and handwriting to populate the form using machine learning.  

Please note that you’ll need the CRM license to access the Deltek CRM for the Vantagepoint app. With this app, you’ll be able to view, add and edit records including firms, contacts, projects, and activities. And, with Vantagepoint 5.5 or later, you can snap a photo of a business card, and using the same ICR technology, it will either add or update the contact information.  

#4 – Don’t Miss an Important Alert or Assignment 

The notification center allows you to instantly see how many outstanding action items and notifications you have. You’ll know you have an important notification when a red number appears in the top right corner of Vantagepoint. This notification center is organized by Action Items and Notifications. The Action Items area includes activities, approval assignments, and past-due timesheets. The Notifications area includes workflow notifications, alerts, and failed and completed process server jobs. 

#5 – Use List View to See and Update Many Records at Once 

Every Hub area in Vantagepoint has the ability to show one record at a time or multiple records at once using List View. No matter what Hub you’re in, to toggle between record and list view, click the button with the three lines just to the right of the record numbers (see screenshot below). 

When you go into List View, you’ll see all of the records you have opened based on your search criteria. And, once you’re in List View, you can do a few different things. Below are just a few of the list view functions.  

• Quickly sort and filter the records by clicking the little funnel icon on the right-hand side.  
• Choose which columns (or fields) you want to see in list view by clicking the gear just above the list of records
• Update the information in each cell by clicking in it.  
• Download the records as they currently appear on the screen by clicking the down arrow just above the list of records. 
• Save the view so you can apply it again or save different views based on the task for that session.   

#6 – Stop Wasting Time Searching for Your Information 

If you find yourself constantly looking for the same records or the same type of records over and over again, I encourage you to create a saved search. You can create saved searches for yourself or for others (based on your security settings) to quickly find the records you need. Some popular saved searches include: 

• Projects where I am the Project Manager (or Principal or Marketing Manager), 
• Contacts located in a certain city or state,  
• Clients where I am the client manager, and 
• Active pursuits which can be a list of projects in certain stages. 

Watch this mini-demo to learn more about searching and saving frequently used searches. 

#7 – Set Up Projects Faster Using Project Templates  

With Deltek Vantagepoint, there are most likely going to be more people creating new project records. This includes marketing, business development, project managers, and accounting. This differs from other ERP systems, including Deltek’s previous Vision system, where mostly finance or accounting open new projects. Because of Vantagepoint’s streamlined project lifecycle, you only need to open one project record that will be used from pursuit to project delivery.  

Make the project creation process faster and more consistent by utilizing project templates. When you create a project from either another project or a project template with a structure already determined, Vantagepoint will build that new project with that same structure and/or allow you to choose to edit the structure during the project creation process.    

Through this process, you can choose the levels of the project that you want to use as well as add additional levels and edit values as needed before saving.  

#8 – Use the Calendar to Complete Your Timesheet 

If you’re like me and find visual displays easier to read than line-item displays, then the Calendar is for you! The calendar feature is found under My Stuff and allows you to create, edit, and schedule events and activities as well as their associated tasks and timesheet entries. You can use the Calendar Timesheet Pane to add timesheet entries. In this view, you can see recent projects and upcoming assignments and drag these items to the calendar.  

#9 – Share Vantagepoint Records Easily 

Because Deltek Vantagepoint is a web browser-based application, each record or screen has its own URL that is specific to your Vantagepoint instance. You can save your Vantagepoint URLs to specific applications, Hubs, or records similar to how you save other favorite websites, or you can share them with your coworkers.  

See the screenshot below, specifically the URL at the top of the image. I can copy and paste that URL link to send in a Teams Chat or email to one of my coworkers. When they click on the link, they will be prompted to log into Vantagepoint but then be taken directly to that project record.  

#10 – Get the Right Help, When You Need It 

Another part of Deltek’s reimagining was the help or support portal for Vantagepoint. No matter where you are in the system, you can click on the question mark in the top right corner and the Help options will change dynamically based on what Hub or application area you’re currently in. The example below shows project-related information including links to Online Help, Learning Aids, Information Center, and more.  

If you find yourself not knowing what a specific record or application does, what to do next, or if you want to learn more, make sure the next step is to click the question mark in the top right corner.   

Do More with Deltek Vantagepoint 

These are just 10 tips and tricks to help you get more value from Deltek Vantagepoint. To see these and others in action, please click the image below to view our mini-demo series – Powering Project Success with Deltek Vantagepoint. Each mini-demo is less than 15 minutes and will show you how Vantagepoint empowers the different roles in your firm.  

Throughout the Driving Revenue Growth with Digital Marketing Series, marketers have created and implemented the marketing campaigns and collected results. Now it’s time to analyze and optimize the marketing campaign and strategy to achieve even more efficiency towards the marketing SMART goals.  

This article shares just a few of the items to review to optimize digital marketing performance. Areas to optimize include the website, conversions, content promotion and email marketing. And this article just scratches the surface but will offer some ideas to begin.  

Improving the Website 

The firm’s website is the starting place for any digital or online marketing program. It’s the key piece of online real estate that marketers have complete control of and have access to the background statistics. Some of these key statistics to track will be based on the marketing campaign goals. Others will be general performance statistics to gauge the overall site performance such as overall website traffic, time on page, etc.  

Some areas to focus on to optimize performance when it comes to the firm’s website include: 

• Highest traffic volume pages – Look at the specific site pages that are getting the most traffic. Identify what, if any, SEO elements are on the page including specific keywords. Look at where the traffic is coming from to that page. Also, check to make sure there is a call to action (CTA) on that page to either capture that visitor’s information or move them to another page to continue the visitor's journey.  
• Most read blog posts – Similarly to the site pages, look at the most read blog posts. Which articles or topics are getting the most views? Marketers can assume that this is the type of content or topic that their audience is interested in. Work to create either more content around this topic or repurpose those specific blog topics into other content formats.  

Increasing Conversions  

A conversion can be any action a person takes that the marketer wants them to do. For example, if there is a form on a webpage, the call to action (CTA) for that page would be to fill out the form. Each time that CTA is completed, it’s a conversion. Conversions don’t always have to be filling out a form; it can be watching a video or requesting a meeting. The idea is that the person took an action, and that action is the conversion.  

Once marketers set up their CTAs and start collecting data, it’s time to see how to increase the number of conversions. Some ways to do this are: 

• Use CTAs – This may seem obvious, but so many AEC websites do not have any CTAs anywhere on their websites or there’s just one – “Subscribe to ACME Engineering’s Newsletter.” The easiest way to increase conversions is to start using CTAs and inserting them throughout the entire website.  
• Make CTAs relevant to the page – Even though we just said to use CTAs, don’t just put them on every webpage and think it is done. Marketers will want to use different CTAs that are relevant to the topic of that blog or page. For example, an architecture firm has a checklist called “10 Ways to Derail an Elementary School Renovation” that they want people to download. A good place to put that CTA is on project profile pages of elementary school renovations, not their healthcare project pages.  

Using Specific Landing Pages 

Most website management systems like WordPress or HubSpot are easy to set up and update. But sometimes it’s often difficult jumping through internal hoops to get new web pages or new navigations approved internally. So, that’s where landing pages are a great alternative, especially since they are easy to create with software like HubSpot or Leadpages.  

A landing page is just that – one page where marketers can direct specific traffic too. Some ways to optimize landing pages are: 

• Minimize the design – Remove any design elements, navigation, or CTAs, that would distract the viewer from taking the one action you want them to take. For example, remove the navigation/menu bar, remove the firm’s social media links, etc.  
• Write a strong heading – Continuing with minimizing the design is to have a strong headline. This headline should draw the viewer in and make them want to read more. It should either describe a pain point they are looking to solve or some kind of aspiration they are trying to get to.  
• Describe the benefits – The landing page should be promoting the goal of the marketing campaign. And that marketing campaign should be benefiting the potential client. Under the headline, describe what the item is and the benefits the potential client will receive. Be clear, concise and to the point. Less is more here.  
• Place the form above the fold – Most of the time, landing pages have some type of form for the viewer to complete to get something (a PDF download, checklist, case study, etc.). Make sure the viewer doesn’t have to scroll down to see and fill out the form. Seconds count, and if it takes even just a second longer to realize there’s a form, you might lose them.  

• Determine the right questions – There’s a balancing act between asking for enough information and too much information on the landing page forms. Firms often want all the information they could get about a lead, but the lead will balk at having to fill out too many fields on a form. Marketers should determine the right questions to have on their forms to qualify and segment leads, and not one more. This is usually done by testing and then optimizing. 

In online marketing circles, the conversion rates of landing pages are somewhere between 5-15%. But marketers should be tracking their own conversion rates and then use these strategies above to make changes and see if that rate increases.  

Promote Even More 

A previous article discusses how important it is to promote the content and ways to do that. Once marketers begin promoting, they can use that information to make the promotion even better. Some ways to do this include: 

• Determine the best channel – Once marketers start getting data, they can see which channels are bringing in the most visitors and highest conversions. Once they know that, they can lean into that channel even more. 

• Consider each social media channel – If the firm promotes content on different social media channels like LinkedIn or YouTube, how can the content be re-formatted into different media types or different language used that corresponds to that specific channel?  
• Going back to the basics – Marketers should make sure that the graphics and media are appropriately sized and formatted for each social media channel.  
• Test frequency to find the sweet spot – Each channel is going to dictate just how often the firm posts content. Once marketers start getting results, they have a baseline and then can start testing posting more or less to see how that affects results.  

Don’t Forget About Email Marketing 

Part of every online marketing program should include an email marketing component. AEC firms have hundreds, if not thousands, of contacts in their databases and should be communicating with those contacts (with proper permission) on a regular cadence. This is even more important for a specific marketing campaign, like the one they are trying to optimize.  

Here are just a few email marketing tips to get great performance: 

• Make sure the marketing emails are coming from a person, not a generic email address like “Info@company.com” 
• Write clear and clickable subject lines. Take time to develop the subject lines. Don’t wait to just write something to get the email sent. Use this tool to test each subject line. 
• Limit CTAs to only one per email campaign, especially if it’s part of a specific marketing campaign. Make sure every link in the email goes to that specific landing page or CTA.  
• Segment and personalize as much as possible. 

• Optimize for mobile.   

Watch this replay where an email marketing expert shared even more email marketing advice. 

Always be Adjusting and Refining 

Once you begin your digital marketing program, start to analyze results and then optimize, it doesn't end there! Marketing is ever evolving with new interests, new content formats and new preferences in which our targeted audiences like to consume our content. So as marketers we constantly need to be keeping up with trends, especially out of our industry, looking at our metrics, and adjusting our marketing efforts. The good news is that this is fun and creative, and our job demand will remain high.  

Having now partnered with hundreds of architecture and engineering firms to upgrade from Deltek Vision to Vantagepoint, Full Sail Partners has gathered a treasure trove of lessons learned and best practices. While professional services firms can certainly benefit from what has been discovered by Full Sail Partners, in this article, they can also hear directly from different engineering and architecture firms about their own experiences. Once again, firms looking to make the Vantagepoint transition can get advice as well as discover lessons learned and best practices from their counterparts’ Vantagepoint upgrade experiences. 

This is the third article in the series where professional services firms can “hear from their peers” who have either made the upgrade or talk about experiences during the upgrade process. The first article focused on preparing for the upgrade and the second article shared their users most loved new features of Vantagepoint. In this final article, the participants will share some best practices from their Vantagepoint upgrade experience. 

Featured Firms

The clients that are featured in this series are a mix of small, medium, and large firms. Also highlighted are specific contacts who serve in different roles within their firms. They each were in a different phase of the upgrade process when we met with them. The clients providing their feedback include the following:  

Argus Consulting, Inc. 
Nancy Smith, Project Controls  
Karen Pattison, Controller   

CSHQA  
Andrea Kier, Business Development   

RIOS  
Jessamyn Davis, Chief Operating Officer  

Structural Integrity Associates, Inc.  
Paul Arnone, Applications Support Manager  

Ware Malcomb  
Brad Mathias, Director, Financial Planning & Analysis  

Treat the Upgrade Like a Project 

Karen and Nancy from Argus Consulting approached the upgrade like a project. They assigned a project manager, in their case Nancy, to lead and she was the one person to be in charge of the efforts. Nancy also was sure to engage the end users, and she coordinated with people from marketing, project management, etc. She particularly worked hard on having a lot of interaction within each group along the way. 

Structural Integrity Associates took a similar approach in their upgrade. They established a task group to evaluate the entire upgrade. However, their task group was about 15 people who were on weekly calls including vice presidents and other executives. Paul now thinks it might have been more beneficial to have had smaller groups made of targeted areas depending on the meeting topic for that week. It might have helped the process move quicker and maximize everyone’s time.  

Communicate and Prioritize Across Departments 

Andrea from CSHQA recommends communicating and understanding what the users need from Vantagepoint and to ask a lot of questions. It is also important to realize that everyone is busy and that the upgrade tasks might not be their main job. So, it might take longer to review information and make decisions for the different end user groups.  

Remember, it’s Just an Upgrade, not a New ERP Implementation 

Jessamyn’s big take away from RIOS upgrading to Deltek Vantagepoint is to remember that this is just an upgrade. It’s not a migration to a new system. Most of Vantagepoint works the same as Vision, except that it’s in the browser. She wants firms to not be intimated by upgrading to Vantagepoint. While it is a lot of work, it is definitely nothing compared to migrating to an entirely new ERP system.  

Utilize the Expertise of a Trusted Partner & the Vantagepoint Readiness Report 

The best practice that Brad from Ware Malcomb recommends is to get the help of a trusted Deltek Partner. In his case, they used the services of Full Sail Partners and the Vantagepoint Readiness Report. The Vantagepoint Readiness Report identified everything that was needed for their upgrade instead of having to figure it out on their own.  

Start Cleaning Data, Even if the Upgrade is Far Away 

Another important thing that Brad always recommends is reviewing the data in Vision, especially if the firm has been using the system for a long time, like Ware Malcomb. Their data wasn’t necessarily bad data but there was a lot of duplicate data. Having the data as clean as possible will make the upgrade process go even smoother.  

Want to Hear More From Your Peers?  

As this article is the last one in a three-part series, be sure to check out the other “hear from your peers” topics.  In part one, different project-based firms shared their Deltek Vision to Vantagepoint upgrade experiences. Then in part two, the same firms shared their most liked new features of Vantagepoint. Hearing from peers is a great way for professional services firms to get comfortable with the transition from Deltek Vision to Vantagepoint. Take advantage of their experiences and learn how to make the move go smoothly. 

To listen to their upgrade experience, watch the webinar that is linked below.  

While A&E firms are struggling with staffing challenges, business process automation, and managing a strong backlog pipeline, the discipline of project management and project delivery performance has improved. According to the 43rd Annual Deltek Clarity A&E Study, more firms are increasing internal project financial reviews and installing a project management center of excellence.  

How does your firm compare to the A&E industry when it comes to project delivery? Below is a summary of the findings from the study and read to the end to find out how to get a free copy of the report.  

Staff Shortages Affecting Project Management 

Looking at the challenges, especially compared to the prior year, it’s not surprising that staffing shortages and competing priorities are high on the list. However, staffing shortages were 40% last year and now are at 64%.  

The respondents were asked to rank their top three challenges. Those top three centered all-around staffing – 1) staffing shortages, 2) competing priorities, and 3) inexperienced project managers. These challenges may lead to burnout, more frustration or other challenges for the teams. Project managers are not focused on proactively managing their project because they are spending time figuring out how to get the work done.  

Improved Project Delivery Performance, in Some Areas 

Project delivery performance has improved with projects that are at or under budget. Those projects currently being reported as under budget went up almost six percentage points from prior year to 67.8%. However, the eight-year trend is showing a move in the wrong direction. Plus, on the schedule side, things aren’t looking as great with a decrease of more than six percentage points from prior year. The common theme from the project managers seems to be they are struggling the most when it comes to managing schedules. Schedule is the metric that is tracked the least and doesn’t have much visibility.  

These gaps in staffing and lack of visibility into project performance are affecting not only project managers, but the firms’ bottom lines. What new challenges are your project managers facing today? What’s being driven by clients and what internal processes or technology can be deployed to improve visibility and efficiency? 

Increased Emphasis on Project Management as a Discipline 

There were huge gains in the percentage of projects that follow a clearly defined project management process. In this year’s report, 44% of the respondents indicated that 75%-100% of their projects used a clearly defined project management process. Whereas, last year only 14% were in that upper tier of the majority of their projects.  

Another item the Deltek Clarity Study looks at is the project management office (PMO) or center of excellence. This year’s report indicates that this trend is moving in a positive direction. Overall, 15.4% of respondents have a PMO and that’s an increase of 5.4 percentage points over prior year. Leading the way are the large firms with 50% of them indicating they have a PMO up 20 percentage points from prior year. Though at 15.4%, that’s still less than a quarter of the companies that are using some kind of PMO or center of excellence to treat project management truly as a discipline. 

One of the things that’s important when it comes to project management is to celebrate when projects are going well. Firms often get wrapped up in the projects that get off course or fall behind schedule. Fortunately, the study does measure what’s going well in project management, and at the top of that list is managing client relationships with collaboration and communication.  

However, there’s still a majority of the respondents that don’t have a clearly defined project management process for all or even most of their projects. It’s a good opportunity to ask internally why aren’t processes being followed? Is there not a clearly defined process? Are the processes not aligned with the different types of projects the firm does such as small vs. large or task-order vs. lump sum? 

Proactive and Accountable Project Management Metrics  

What gets measured gets done, correct? The Deltek A&E Clarity report asks what project management KPIs are being tracked at the firm.  

At the bottom of what is being tracked are some of the scheduling metrics including estimate at complete, on-time delivery, and earned value management. At the top of the list are those KPIs often tracked by the financial leaders and include net revenue, profitability, average collection period for A/R aged and multipliers. Yet the financial metrics are retroactive. This might indicate that the lack of visibility or tracking for schedule and schedule variances might correlate with the increase in projects going behind schedule.  

Firms should be asking what metrics they should be tracking that can help them to right size or fix what may be going wrong in a project. How can firms make sure the project managers have the information they need to see where their projects stand at any given time? How can the information be visible and accurate? 

Making the Case for Project Management Technology 

While firms are moving more and more towards technology, the reliance of manual data entry and spreadsheets is going in the wrong direction, specifically when it comes to project management. At the top of the list of departments relying on manual entry is operations and resource management.  

The Clarity Study found that 61% of firms say that they’re still using Excel for planning projects and resources. 75% are using email as their primary project collaboration tool, and 88% are still using email as a primary method to share large files both internally and externally. 49% are not using construction specifications technology.  

All of these are ripe for business process improvement and better leveraging of technology for efficiency, but just where are firms planning to invest in this technology? Project management is at the top of the list, with nearly half of the respondents indicating that they will invest in project management technology in the next 12 months. 

Top Initiatives for Project Management 

When you look at the challenges and top initiatives for project management at A&E firms, issues such as hiring more qualified staff, defining capabilities and responsibilities as well as defining internal best practices and investing in internal project manager training are not surprising. Firms know they need to have great project managers.  

Use These Findings to Improve Your Firm 

The immediate next step is to download the full Deltek A&E Clarity report. Click the image below to grab a free copy of the report along with a scorecard to chart the firm’s results. Then use that to begin discussions around the firm’s net revenue forecasts, project budgets and schedules, etc. Ask about where the firm is struggling, where it’s doing well, and what are the opportunities for improvement. Finally, make sure that you’re reaching out to a Full Sail Partners’ consultant so that we can help you keep your business on course. 

With Vantagepoint, Deltek has completely reimagined Vision, but what truly are the most liked features of Vantagepoint? Don’t just rely on the thoughts of Full Sail Partners, hear directly from your peers about what they consider to be the best features. In this second article of a three-part series, architecture and engineering firms were asked what their most liked features of Deltek Vantagepoint are for their firm’s users.  

Featured Firms  

The clients that are featured in this series are a mix of small, medium, and large firms. Also highlighted are specific contacts who serve in different roles within their firms. They each were in a different phase of the upgrade process when we met with them. The clients providing their feedback include the following: 

Argus Consulting, Inc. 
Nancy Smith, Project Controls 
Karen Pattison, Controller  

CSHQA
Andrea Kier, Business Development 

RIOS 
Jessamyn Davis, Chief Operating Officer 

Structural Integrity Associates, Inc. 
Paul Arnone, Applications Support Manager 

Ware Malcomb 
Brad Mathias, Director, Financial Planning & Analysis 

Easy-to Navigate, Modern User Interface 

A user interface (UI) guides users – it’s a chain of screens, pages, buttons or any visual element that interacts with a user. Having a good user interface can ultimately change the way users work and process information for the firm. With Vantagepoint, Deltek completely re-imagined the Vision interface making things more efficient, quicker, and it easier to find and analyze information. It’s not going unnoticed.  

Andrea – What I noticed right away [in Deltek Vantagepoint] is there’s a much more user-friendly, visual with the interface. It seems more appealing. I think a lot of our staff were avoiding Vision because it looks like something that’s difficult to figure out or something that is, you know, very techy. Vantagepoint now is a web-based interface. It just changes the feel of what you’re dealing with. For me, that was really encouraging.  

Jessamyn – For some reason for the casual user, it being a web interface really changes how often they’re willing to jump in Vantagepoint. I can’t relate to that, but it’s really made a huge difference rapidly.  

Intuitive Dashboards 

Dashboards are one of the most beneficial and functional parts of an ERP system, like Deltek Vantagepoint, and yet are often the most underutilized. As part of Deltek’s re-imagination of Vision, a lot of thought was placed into the ease of use and design of the Vantagepoint dashboards including pre-built dashboards ready for new users. Here’s what a peer had to say: 

Jessamyn – For our everyday users, the visual nature of the dashboards and how easy it is to create and customize them from the dashboard library is a great feature. It’s just fantastic. It’s a total game changer for getting people in the system and using it every day. 

It’s not just dashboards but saved searches and reporting that gets improved in Deltek Vantagepoint. Watch this webinar to explore the changes related to the system visuals and what firms should do to prepare for the change.  

One Project Record for the Entire Project Lifecycle 

For project-based firms, managing the project lifecycle efficiently is essential to having a profitable business. Even more, the processes that drive the firm’s project lifecycle must be in sync with the systems used to manage it. Deltek Vantagepoint meets this challenge with the creation of the Projects hub, which allows firms to track everything from project identification through project closeout in one record. Users agree this process is simpler and more efficient when managing their project lifecycles.  

Brad – The combination of opportunities and projects into one project lifecycle is an insanely great improvement.  

Jessamyn – The combination of opportunities, projects, and project plans into one record and not constantly trying to link one thing or a project, etc. has been a big change. It’s a very big improvement in logic of the system.  

Nancy – The new Projects hub is different than in Vision. Projects are now in their own hub with everything in the same project record.  

See how Deltek Vantagepoint supports the entire project lifecycle from lead identification to pursuit and final project execution in this webinar.  

Full Sail Partners’ Input on Best Features 

Even though this article focuses on what peers most liked about Deltek Vantagepoint, we couldn’t leave you without sharing the Crew’s most liked features. Check out this webinar to see what sets Vantagepoint apart from Vision and why you should be excited. It covers the Top 10 features along with some honorable mentions.  

Want to Hear More From Your Peers? 

This article is the second in a three-part series, so be sure to check out part one where different project-based firms share their Deltek Vision to Vantagepoint upgrade experience. Whereas the first article covered how the firms prepared for the upgrade, the last article in the series will share some of their upgrade best practices.  

To listen to their upgrade experience, watch the webinar that is linked below. 

The Deltek Clarity report is the longest running, most comprehensive study in the architecture and engineering (A&E) industry for North America. The report digs into benchmarks, market outlook, and industry trends to help A&E firms identify where they are and how they compare to other firms in the industry. The 43rd Annual Report provides both surprising and not so surprising findings, as well as positive firm indicators for financial strength and project management excellence.  

Deltek Clarity has participation from more than 540 companies and delivers more than 100 benchmarks and industry insights across the business. The study focuses specifically on architecture and engineering firms and other firms who support the design firms. The 43rd Annual Deltek Clarity Study collected responses from A&E firms of all sizes in North America based on 2021 fiscal data. Here is an overall look at what was reported this year, but for more detail, the 43rd Clarity Study can be reviewed in its entirety. 

Consistent Challenges Across Departments 

This was one of the report findings that was not surprising. The two biggest challenges across company departments were related to staffing and time. Business development is challenged to find the time to nurture client relationships while technology departments have a lack of time to invest in learning. Moreover, project management, human resources, and finance departments all cited staff shortages, finding, and retaining qualified staff as their top challenge.  

In fact, 78% of the financial leaders identified that finding and retaining qualified staff is the number one financial challenge. This has been very different than what previous Clarity reports have shown in the past few years. In addition to staffing challenges, other consistent themes included business process automation and managing strong backlog and pipeline. All of these have an underlying theme of technology and how best to leverage technology to address some of the challenges companies are facing. 

Purposeful Investment in Technology 

This begins by measuring the digital transformation and maturity levels now and in the next five years, and how this aligns with the goals of the business. Then aligning business goals and IT goals to have that culture of efficiency and culture of innovation. According to the report, most firms identify themselves in that early or exploratory phase of maturity but nearly 70% of firms expect to be mature or advanced within the next five years. This is less optimistic than the previous year’s study. Some factors attributing to this may be that the pace of technology is moving so fast that the ultimate end goal seems to be constantly changing and/or not attainable.  

The top three challenges related to technology were lack of time to invest in learning, cost of technology, and prioritizing which trends are most applicable. Companies are struggling to understand not only what the new technologies are, but how to apply them in projects and business improvements. Top emerging technology cited by the firms were geolocation, augmented reality, and Internet of Things.  

These are often externally focused and can be leveraged in managing and executing projects. Not far behind in the cited top technology was big data and data science. Both can help firms to provide greater visibility and insight into what’s happening inside the firm.  

What this all leads to is purposeful investment into technology. Firms are looking to invest in the right technology to meet firm goals, not necessarily the newest technology. Deltek calls this purposeful investment. It’s critical, with the challenges of lack of time and resources, to look at the firm’s current systems with the technology in place and make sure it’s using them to their maximum capacity.  

Strong Market Forecast 

As noted earlier, the report indicates a really strong market forecast for the North American A&E industry. However, there are limited resources to both pursue and perform work. With these issues in mind, firms are going to have to be more strategic about how best to capitalize.  

Fortunately, the report does show a net revenue growth forecast of 17.6%. This is the highest that growth has been in the last ten years, and this is very optimistic over last year at an increase of 13.4 percentage points. Small firms were drivers for a lot of this positive push. In last year’s report, small firms had a negative forecast but now are rebounding back to a 14.6% net revenue growth forecast.  

The overall percentage of firm revenue from the top three clients has decreased slightly from the previous year to 35%. This could show good or harmful trends. Firms may be strategically and purposefully diversifying their client base or competition may be winning work away from the top clients. This is a great time to lead these types of discussions internally to see how the firm compares. 

Thus, while the forecast remains optimistic, it doesn’t come without challenges. About half of the firms said they are struggling to find the time to nurture client relationships. Combined with increased competition, firm leaders are trying to keep existing client relationships healthy and strong while looking for new prospects and revenue sources.  

Project Delivery Keeps Improving 

Projects are the core of what architecture and engineering firms do. The 43rd Annual Deltek Clarity Study indicates that, overall, A&E firms are becoming more confident in their project performance. 67.8% of projects are on or under budget, more companies (59%) are doing internal performance evaluations based on projects not waiting for an annual review, and 15% of firms are sharing their best practices through either a center of excellence or a project management office. Firms are focusing on project management as a discipline.  

While more projects are staying on track or ahead when it comes to budget (67.8% of projects), they aren’t performing as well from a scheduling perspective. Just over half (58.5%) of projects are on or ahead of schedule according to the report. This number decreased by 6 percentage points from the previous year. These are areas that both firm leaders and project managers should evaluate to strategize, understand, and determine what is happening. Does the firm need additional training for project managers or is the schedule being driven by the clients but at the cost of the firm’s profitability? 

One challenge could be access to timely data around projects. When asked about visibility around schedule variance, half the firms report low or very low visibility for project managers and principals. It’s challenging for project managers to proactively manage and keep the project schedule on track if there is a lack of visibility. This is a good opportunity to ask the firm’s project managers how visible their project schedule variance is and how better to improve that visibility.  

Similar to other firm departments, top project management challenges include staff shortages, competing priorities, inexperienced project managers, and accurate project cost and timeline forecasting. When it comes to project management, how is the firm handling project schedules, are the schedule changes internally or client driven, how quickly can the firm train new project managers, how can technology improve the project delivery gaps, and do the project managers need more visibility and access to project data? Discussing these internally will help to continue to improve the firm’s project performance. 

A&E Talent Staying, but Not Enough 

While the talent shortage is not new news, the Deltek Clarity Study digs in a little deeper to see what’s exactly happening in the North American A&E Industry. One surprise finding was the employee turnover rate. This was expected to be high, but it’s 13.6% which is low compared to the 18-19% that is shown in the Deltek Clarity Global report. Additionally, the findings show that talent isn’t necessarily leaving the industry but rather moving to other A&E firms. This might be good for the industry, but maybe not for the firms struggling to refill the positions. 

Medium-sized firms experience the highest turnover at 14.7%. Large firms are just below at 14.4% with small firms even lower at 11.9%. This lower turnover might be because smaller firms could have better employee engagement or be able to give different opportunities to grow.  

Nonetheless, with the high turnover, firms are experiencing the biggest challenge with filling open positions. The majority of firms are seeing more open positions than they had last year (65% of firms) while a third (30%) have about the same number of open positions. For nearly half of the firms, it’s taking 60 to 90 days to fill a position.  

With this talent challenge, it might be a good time for the firm to look at external factors such as candidates available in the market. Firms could also look internally to make sure their processes are as efficient as possible. This would include leveraging technology to streamline the recruiting process.  

The top talent acquisition challenges noted in the study were the availability of good candidates in the marketplace, ability to offer competitive compensation to candidates, and matching qualified candidates to open positions. This is even trickling over to the finance department. Finance leaders are feeling the increase in labor costs, higher salary demands for candidates, and additional costs to keep employees engaged. These higher labor costs could affect the future profitability of projects.  

In last year’s Deltek Clarity Study, succession planning and performance management were the top human resources’ challenges. This year, the challenges and priorities have changed. Now the top challenges for managing human resources are retaining employees, employee engagement/experience, and workforce capacity and planning.  

Relatively Stable Financial Statements 

The financial management section of the Deltek Clarity report is the longest running section of the report, with many findings showing a 10-year trend line. Firm financial leaders should review this section and analyze the trends and changes. For this year’s report, the financials are relatively stable but there are a few noticeable declines to note.  

Operating profit on net revenue declined after a decade of growth to 12.8% from 19.0% from the previous year. Deltek Clarity sets a threshold of 15% operating profit on net revenue for its high performing firms. In this year’s study, high performing firms had 23.9% operating profit on net revenue and large firms were near that threshold at 14.6%.  

Net labor multiplier is another key financial metric of the Deltek Clarity Study. This year’s multiplier increased just slightly to 2.99. The high performer firms had an average of 3.41 net labor multiplier. Something also to note is the top quartile net labor multiplier of 3.36. 

Overall, the utilization rate has decreased but is hovering close to 60% at 58.5%. This is not a surprising finding because of the increased labor costs, number of open positions, and maybe the increase in business development or other non-billable activities. Small firms saw the biggest decrease from 63.9% last year to 60.9% this year.  

Firms are seeing a strong backlog of nearly nine months. Large firms saw the biggest increase last year from 8.3 months to 9.94 months, and the top quartile is nearly 12 months of backlog. So, this is positive news for firms, if they are making sure that they can actually deliver on the work with the right resources.  

44% of the reported top financial challenges listed finding and retaining qualified staff as the top challenge. This was a big jump from the prior year’s report. Other challenges for financial leaders were managing firm growth and increasing profitability. These top challenges are interdependent. Finding qualified staff and having to compensate for that top talent will affect the firm’s ability to increase profitability and grow the firm.  

Diving Deeper 

This has just been a glimpse of some of the findings in the 43rd Annual Deltek Clarity Study. Firms should download the report (click the image below) and dig into it to understand what’s happening in their business, how they are leveraging technology, and where there are opportunities for additional training and awareness. This will allow these firms to better educate their teams, make sure they understand what their process is, and how they contribute to the overall success of the firm. 

So far in the “Driving Revenue Growth with Digital Marketing Series,” firms have developed their content plan and created content. However, creating great content simply is not enough. AEC marketers need a promotional plan that strategically shares content with the people that benefit the most from it. This article shares some common and uncommon promotional tactics.  

Search Engine Optimization 

Search engine optimization or SEO is a series of techniques firms can deploy for their content and on their website to rank higher for certain keywords on search engines like Google. Click here for a basic introduction to SEO. 

SEO should be the first strategy to be used as part of the promotional plan and should be considered when the content is being created, especially if that content is a blog article. Marketers should optimize the piece of content for the specific topics or keywords it wants to be found for. Another way to look at it is to think about the person that marketers want to read or consume that piece of content. What types of phrases or questions would that person be typing into a search engine as that person searches for answers? Make sure that marketing content has those phrases and key words included naturally throughout the content piece.  

Email Marketing 

This is the most overlooked and underutilized promotional tactic in the AEC industry. As a Premier Partner for Deltek Vision and Vantagepoint CRM, Full Sail Partners works with hundreds of AEC firms across the country specifically advising them on CRM and marketing strategies. So many of these firms have databases full of thousands of contacts but fail to have a consistent email marketing strategy.  

By using email marketing, there is a real opportunity for AEC firms to easily, affordably, and routinely get in front of clients and prospects with the content that is often difficult and time consuming to create. With tools like the Blackbox Connector for Mailchimp or Constant Contact that connect Deltek Vision and Vantagepoint to those email marketing services seamlessly, AEC marketers can get a leg up on their competitors just by using email marketing.  

Social Media 

This is probably the most popular and utilized promotional tactic. AEC firms often promote blog articles, white papers and case studies through their social media channels including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Each social media channel has its own pros and cons in terms of reach and engagement as well as best practices when it comes to getting in front of the preferred audiences.  

Finding out the social media channels where the ideal clients and personas spend the majority of their time is key for AEC marketers to develop the content, and they should focus their time on that channel first. Once that channel or channels are identified, marketers can research hashtags to utilize and optimize the visual content plus write engaging captions that keep both the tone of the social media channel and the brand voice.  

Live Events 

With a digital marketing campaign, often the content that is created is online. This includes blog articles, videos, case studies or white papers, for example. So, it isn’t a surprise that promoting this type of content is often forgotten when attending or presenting at live events. If the firm has technical experts or subject matter experts (SMEs) who present or speak at industry events, it’s a great opportunity to also promote the online content.  

Most recently, presenters have been including a slide at the end of a presentation with a QR code. The audience can snap a photo of that QR code, and it takes them to either a specific piece of content or to a webpage/landing page that has links to several pieces of content. Below is an example of a slide with a QR code from a recent conference. 

It’s not just for in-person conferences or events either. If the firm’s SMEs are guests on podcasts or webinars, those can be other great opportunities to promote marketing content. AEC marketers should help SMEs prepare for these appearances, including identifying what marketing content to promote.  

Creating Great Marketing Content Simply Isn’t Enough 

Thinking about the content promotion while developing it is a great way to make sure that content performs well and meets the digital marketing goals. The content promotion plan should list the ways in which the content will be promoted including SEO, social media, email marketing, and live events.  

This article is part of the Driving Growth with Digital Marketing and will walk through how to gather and analyze the results for the digital marketing campaigns.  

Just how was the Deltek Vision to Vantagepoint upgrade for project-based firms? As consultants, Full Sail Partners can speculate on how the process will be for firms but feel it’s better coming from the clients who have been through it.  

This article is the first in a three-part series where clients, in different stages of their upgrade journey, share different aspects including how to prepare for the upgrade, the Vantagepoint features that are most liked by users, and best practices that other firms can use as they upgrade. Hear from clients who work at small, medium, and large professional services firms throughout the series. 

Featured Clients 

The clients that are featured in this series are a mix of small, medium, and large firms. Also highlighted are specific contacts who serve in different roles within their firms. They each were in a different phase of the upgrade process when we met with them. The clients providing their feedback include the following: 

Argus Consulting, Inc.  
Nancy Smith, Project Controls 
Karen Pattison, Controller  

CSHQA 
Andrea Kier, Business Development  

RIOS 
Jessamyn Davis, Chief Operating Officer 

Structural Integrity Associates, Inc. 
Paul Arnone, Applications Support Manager 

Ware Malcomb 
Brad Mathias, Director, Financial Planning & Analysis 

When Should Our Firm Upgrade to Deltek Vantagepoint? 

A common question that Full Sail Partners gets asked by clients is when their firm should upgrade to Deltek Vantagepoint. Here are a few perspectives from Deltek clients. 

Jessamyn – We first learned about Vantagepoint and how it is a vast improvement to Vision at the Deltek conference a few years ago when it was in Florida. It was then that I realized that we needed to get on a path to upgrade. But for us, the question about when the upgrade would take place was when Vantagepoint had enough functionality to make it worthwhile, and we made the upgrade in March 2021 after working with Full Sail Partners for about four to five months to prepare. 

Karen – We started looking at Vantagepoint about three years ago at the Deltek Insight [now ProjectCon] conference. Similar to Jessamyn, we were waiting for more functionality, especially with the accounting features. We got serious about the upgrade process in 2021 and that is when I selected Nancy to be the project manager for this effort.  

Andrea – We decided that because Vantagepoint had been out for a while already, the major kinks were worked out. So, our firm made the decision to move forward.  

Paul – The upgrade was on our radar beginning the spring of 2020 and by that summer we had a test environment set up. We had established a task force and were meeting regularly, mostly weekly, to get the Vantagepoint preview environment set up the way we wanted it. However, things got put on hold when we decided to wait for newer features to be added to Vantagepoint.  

Brad – We were in a very similar situation to Paul, waiting for the features that we needed to be available in Vantagepoint. We utilized Full Sail Partners’ Vantagepoint Readiness Report to identify all the things that we needed to pay attention to. We were originally supposed to go live in April 2021 but based on that report we had a massive data issue that we needed to clean up. We decided to focus on that before the upgrade. We also decided to bring CRM into Vantagepoint after using another CRM system for a couple of years. So that combined with the data cleanup has delayed our upgrade a bit.  

Who Was Involved in the Upgrade Process? 

Once the firms decided it was time to begin upgrading to Vantagepoint, the next step was to determine who in the firm and other outside resources, if any, to involve in this effort. 

Nancy – We established a core team with a representative from each user group. My recommendation would be for each of those people to be positive and tech-savvy.  

Andrea – We have three accounting people and three marketing people. Vision wasn’t widely used by a lot of people at our firm. It was seen as more of an accounting tool and the upgrade to Vantagepoint was seen as a marketing thing because it was very CRM-focused. I would agree with Nancy to have a representative from each user group because having only accounting and marketing limited our transition to just the training on the CRM and accounting aspects. Because we were the only ones involved, we were the champions and were the people who could ask questions. So, I think the level to which our staff embraces Vantagepoint would have been boosted more if we had had project managers and principals as part of the core team involved from the beginning.  

I think our challenge is that the project managers and principals did not really use Vision before. So having them on the transition team did not really make any sense for us. However, I would recommend that if you can include them, that do you include them, especially if you are creating new processes. We basically took this opportunity to start over and do a lot of new stuff that we never really did before. So having users be able to contribute to those new processes and provide additional insight would have been even more helpful for us.  

I have been involved in migrations and upgrades in other past positions outside the AEC industry. I have seen a number of times when you do not involve the right people, you end up with this giant mess afterward. Then it takes a lot more time and money to fix and you end up getting frustrated and burnt out.  

So, I would recommend involving a small group but trying to get equal representation from different user roles.  

Paul – Over at Structural Integrity, we established a task force of about 15 people representing all the different departments. We tried to identify all the processes in Vision that we have now. Then the goal was to make all those same processes continue to work in Vantagepoint.  

Brad – This upgrade was handled a little bit differently than what we did for the last upgrade in Vision. The upgrade when we went from the earlier Vision version to Vision 7.6 was a heavy lifting exercise that we did all by ourselves.  

Like a lot of companies, marketing is a very powerful piece of your operation, and marketers tend to have their own tools and software that gets connected to Vision. Part of the exercise this time was bringing marketing into Vantagepoint which brought in a whole new team and a whole lot more mojo. If you can find a way to embrace Vantagepoint as an option for CRM, in addition to your backbone of accounting, you are going to get a lot more attention and a lot more buy-in. That is what I can suggest – having marketing and accounting being on the same team and working on the same initiative was refreshing.  

Jessamyn – We had a core team that was our project accountants and our project planner because we use resource planning heavily. Since we also use CRM, we also had three people from our marketing team. We held some workshops with our project planners and project managers to understand what they would like to see out of dashboards and what they felt they were not getting now. We did not include them on our core team, and I think that was for the best. We delivered Vantagepoint to the project managers as a finished product rather than including them in the “making of the sausage.” I think it went really well. I think it was very successful, and then we did a lot of training when we went live.  

What Resources or Support Did You Need for the Upgrade? 

Having helped over 200 firms make the upgrade from Vision to Vantagepoint, Full Sail Partners understands that there can be different levels of support and resources that firms need. This can be due to the unique modules or features which the firm uses or to the amount of customization the firm has built into Vision. Hear from a few clients about what resources and/or support they utilized, if any, to make the upgrade. 

Brad – There was no way we could do this upgrade on our own. We are a large firm with over 600 employees. Accounting, marketing and HR, plus our support teams, are always understaffed. We also have customized Vision quite a bit. It would be very difficult for us to make any type of upgrade alone. We utilized the Vantagepoint Readiness Report and help from Full Sail Partners because of this. 

Jessamyn – The Vantagepoint Readiness Report shows you the exceptions or areas in your system where something is going to throw back a problem. Things like duplicate records for vendors and clients, project plans that have something wrong with them or all the customized reports and when the last time they were used - All these types of information. The first time we ran the report, it was overwhelming because we had years of data that had probably never been cleaned. We had two interns work full-time for four months cleaning up the data. Then we ran the report again and just kept doing that until we felt like we were at a manageable place.  

Andrea – We set up significant training time beforehand. We really didn’t understand Vision very well, and we didn’t use it in the way that it was designed to be used. We had years of different processes and data with different people in and out who decided they wanted to do something one way, and there wasn’t global communication. So, we had a lot of training before the upgrade. I was focused on the CRM stuff. I worked with the CRM specialists at Full Sail Partners for a while because we really needed to transform how we use the database. I wanted to make sure that I understood the logic behind how the system was supposed to work. If your organization is really organized, you have clean data, and you’ve got someone who has time to lead the efforts, then it’s totally possible to do this on your own. Yet even with the skills and having a strong foundation that would normally make this kind of transition seamless, it was helpful and time-saving (which can also be money saving) to have a team of Full Sail Partners’ people to help us.  

Just looking at the Readiness Report can be overwhelming. You realize that maybe the data is not as good as you thought. You spend a lot of time on that cleanup, and with so much time you are investing, you want to get it right. So having a team of experienced people to help guide us through was definitely useful for us.  

Paul – We are a firm of about 300 people, and I cannot imagine going through this on our own without the help of a company like Full Sail Partners. I have worked with Full Sail Partners in the past on several different customizations and we have always been happy with them. When Vantagepoint got on our radar, it just seemed like a great fit to just work with them and use the tools to help make this upgrade an easier process.  

Karen – I would highly recommend getting support. There is just no way we could have upgraded on our own even though we are only a 70-person firm. We needed the help of Full Sail Partners. We have used them a lot. We get all our questions put together. Then Nancy and I worked with a Full Sail Partners’ consultant to help us answer the questions. There are a lot of things that we just would not be able to figure out on our own to make this happen in our timeframe. 

Hear More from Your Peers 

This article is the first in this series where different project-based firms share their Deltek Vision to Vantagepoint upgrade experience. Future articles will include topics like the favorite Vantagepoint features of users and upgrade best practices.  

To learn more about upgrading to Deltek Vantagepoint visit the page linked below.