Full Sail Partners Blog | Ryan Felkel (8)

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Premier Partner, announces that Tanya Drake has joined the firm as Technology Consultant and will manage vendor relationships for the newly formed Technology Solutions Division. In this capacity, Mrs. Drake will provide assistance to professional services firms to identify technology gaps and support IT needs. This strategic hire strengthens Full Sail Partners’ technology group to provide clients’ hardware, software and technical services to support their goals and needs outside of their Deltek Vision software.  

Throughout her career, Tanya has held several roles with various business-focused technology solution companies where she has worked with clients to identify areas of opportunity for process improvement. 

“My past experience working with vendors allows me to expand Full Sail Partners capabilities to be a one-stop shop for technology needs,” said Tanya. “Having worked with their staff in the past I knew they were the type of company that is truly in business for the right reasons. I am proud to work for a company that is passionate about helping their clients.”

Tanya has more than 15 years of collaborating with professional services firms providing them insight to navigate the decision making process from inception to implementation on technology solutions. Her vendor agnostic approach to identifying solutions for clients ensures that the best fit and most practical solutions are implemented.

“Tanya has a passion for solving problems. With her addition we are excited to offer both stand-alone technology solutions and integrated solutions to support our core services for the Deltek Vision product,” stated Wes Renfroe, Vice President of Technology Solutions Division at Full Sail Partners. “Her desire to help clients combined with her past experience working with A/E/C industry positions our firm to provide even greater flexibility and choices for our clients.”

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

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Premier Partner, announces that Matt McCauley EA, MS has joined the firm as a Principal Consultant. Mr. McCauley’s hire expands the Full Sail Partners’ team to more than 30 professionals focused on technology solutions. His extensive knowledge of the Deltek product set and proven consulting expertise are an ideal match to help clients streamline business processes and achieve greater efficiency from their Deltek Vision ERP system.

With more than 20 years in the professional services industry, Matt has the insight that will allow him to identify the unique requirements of our clients. He specializes in Deltek Vision’s Core Applications, Resource Planning, VPM, and most recently, Fixed Assets.

“My prior experience as a CFO and a Deltek Vision client will help me bring a client-based end user approach to Vision consulting,” said Matt. “I’m excited to work closely with clients to implement Vision in a way that complements their business processes and to improve operational efficiencies.” 

Throughout his career, Matt has worked as both a client and a consultant, providing a unique perspective during client implementations. As a CFO and Deltek Vision user, Matt led the Vision conversion effort for his firm and managed Vision prior to becoming a consultant. Additionally, Matt has completed the PSMJ Project Manager and Financial Manager Boot Camps, and is an Internal Revenue Service Special Enrolled Agent, a Federally Licensed Tax Practitioner.

“We are excited to have Matt join the Full Sail Partners’ team,” said Scott Seal, Vice President of Consulting. “Matt’s background in Accounting and Project Management, both as a Deltek Vision Power User and Vision Consultant, provides more depth and expertise to our collaborative consulting team. Matt’s extensive 20+ years’ of experience in the professional services industry allows him to provide unique insight that will help our clients to better leverage their Deltek Vision systems.”

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

Garbage in, garbage out! Believe it or not, this is a real term in the field of computer science and it has an acronym, GIGO. More importantly, this theory can be applied to the data integrity in a client relationship management (CRM) software. Marketing decisions are only as good as the data used to make them. If the data in a CRM are incomplete and erroneous, developing strategic decisions becomes nearly impossible. In other words, it’s like throwing ideas at a wall and waiting to see what sticks. According to data experts, many businesses are struggling to maintain a CRM database with consistent and usable information about their clients. Look below to see what these experts have to say about client data integrity.

Often times, upper management views the proposal process as a “cost of business” and don’t put forth a concerted effort to control proposal related costs. There are several ways to increase the cost-effectiveness of your proposal process, and starting with a bid/no bid process is the first step.

Did you know that 40% of AE firms have no formal bid/no bid process? This is according to the 36^th Annual Deltek Clarity AE Report. For that reason, I’m going to focus on the importance of the bid/no bid process. More specifically, why the decision can be made during any phase of the proposal process. 

Notification of New Opportunity

Let’s start by saying that if you’re receiving notification of a new opportunity within your industry when the request for proposal (RFP) is issued, your business development team is already crippling your chances of winning that opportunity. This is a huge red flag to include in your bid/no bid process. On the other hand, if they have a great relationship with the prospective client, they probably have a decent understanding of the scope of work and the project requirements. Either way, this is the first opportunity your company has to decide whether to bid or not to bid.

Honesty is the best policy, so be honest with yourself! If you specialize in building parking garages and the RFP is for a bridge, your chances of winning are already slim. Sure, you want to branch out and do more than build parking garages, but is this client the one that’s likely to give you that chance? Odds are, probably not.

Release of the RFP

Now you have the RFP that in a perfect world has a detailed scope of work and all the requirements. This is when the page turning begins with a detailed review of every word. Does your proposed solution work within the stated budget? Have you revealed any obscure requirements that are red flags? When evaluating your solution and the requirement, create a risk management plan and think about how your company has managed similar risks in the past. 

There’s the old adage, you can’t fit a round peg in a square hole. In other words, if you can’t provide a solution within the requirements of the RFP, your chances of winning are already greatly diminished. Instead proposing on this opportunity, utilize your resources on an opportunity within your company’s skill set.

During the Proposal Preparation Process  

As you begin to develop your solution, keep in mind that it’s still not too late to abandon the RFP. In some cases, the client may issue amendments or provide clarity that changes the scope of work. Other times, the proposal preparation team may find that the proposed solution has become more complex than originally thought or certain costs were overlooked. 

Usually people say “better late than never” as an excuse. However, in this case, it’s absolutely honorable to walk away from an opportunity before committing your company to something it might have difficulty delivering. In the end, winning the work doesn’t guarantee a profit or a happy client. 

Winning with a Bid/No Bid Decision

In the proposal world, there are always two winners for each RFP. Obviously, the company that wins the bid, but the less obvious is the first company to decide to focus their resources on other business opportunities. As a proposal manager, you want to increase your win rate, and at the same time, upper management has the need to win more revenue. While this puts the two sides at odds, agreeing to an effective bid/no bid process can significantly increase your proposal cost-effectiveness and possibly increase revenue for the company.   

 

    

 

 

Full Sail Partners, a Premier Partner for Deltek and the Client Feedback Tool, is pleased to announce the hire of Amy Balassone in the role of Direct Marketing Associate. In this role, Amy will work with the marketing and sales team to communicate the value of Deltek Vision to the professional services industry. With more than 12 years of customer service, sales, and marketing experience, Amy will conduct market research on management consulting firms to extend the Full Sail Partners brand beyond the AE industry.

“What has impressed me most about the company is their customer service and dedication to their clients, “ says Amy Balassone, Direct Marketing Associate. “I feel privileged to be a part of a company that takes a consultative sales approach to ensure prospects are the right fit for the software. That customer focused mentality is what makes this company great and easy to work for.”

Amy will support the company’s growth goals and provides the firm with the brand awareness development experience needed for Full Sail Partners to help project-based firms develop their systems and processes.

“Amy’s tenacious, yet easy-going personality combines the right touch needed to target new verticals,” said Sarah Gonnella, Full Sail Partners’ Vice President of Marketing and Sales. “We are extremely honored to have Amy join our team. What is most impressive about Amy is her drive and resourcefulness. Her varied experience with marketing and sales along with her previous experience in the Navy as a data systems technician brought the right mix for this position.”

How did your firm perform last year? Did you do better than the prior year? I’m sure the majority, if not all AEC firms, evaluate their performance in comparison to prior years, but do they evaluate how they performed against similar firms within their industry? Fortunately, the Deltek AE Clarity Report provides unique insights into the AEC industry that make an accurate comparison possible.

Each year, Deltek working in conjunction with ACEC, ACEC Canada, and SMPS, conducts an industry study that draws from over 250,000 data points provided by more than 350 US and Canadian firms of all sizes. This one of a kind study provides real insight into the AEC industry to enable firm leaders to make strategic decisions to increase their competitiveness and help their firm’s growth. As part of this study, Deltek takes an in-depth look and analyzes participants’ financial condition and market outlook, including:

• Operating Profit
• Net Labor Multiplier
• Staff Growth Rates
• Backlog
• Utilization Rate
• Net Revenue Per Employee
• Current Ratio
• Other Key Financial Metrics

Real Results Your AEC Firm Needs to Know

Prior results from AE Clarity Reports provided industry-specific insights about the most profitable trends in the AEC industry. Some key findings from the 36^th Deltek AE Clarity Report were:

• Firms that work on water, wastewater, and storm water projects, expect their work in the market to grow by 59%, the highest percentage of all surveyed markets. Additionally, markets in which more than half of respondents work in expect their business to grow. These include commercial sector respondents who expect a 58% increase, roads and bridges markets with an increase of 57%, and surveying and GIS sector with an increase of 55%.
• Markets in which respondents are least optimistic for growth are public facilities with an increase of 38.4%, the hospitality sector with an increase of 38.5%, and a 45.4% increase in the residential sector. Nonetheless, these are still encouraging numbers!                                                                                                                                                        
• AE firm leaders reported that the top three factors influencing the success of their companies are the right people, which was cited by 75.7% of respondents, long-term relationships with clients was by cited by 74.7%, and 65.5% of respondents said their firm reputation influenced their firm’s growth. How does client retention affect your profits? Learn the formula to calculate this here!
• There’s even more positive news in last year’s AE Clarity Report. Of the AE firms that participated in the survey, they responded that they had a proposal win rate of nearly 50%. Further positive news is that 42.9% of respondents reported that their win rate has increased either slightly or significantly in the past two years. On the other hand, 12.3% reported that they experienced a drop in their win rate during the same period.
• The top choices for business development responsibility were the executive team that drove 84.7% of their efforts and project managers who drove 68.6% of the business development efforts. One might suspect this comes from developing meaningful relationships with existing clients.
• Overall, about 60% of AE firms said they employ a go/no-go process in at least some situations. Of these, 29.2% said the employ process for all opportunities, and 30.6% for specific cases, especially “strategic” opportunities.
• Top ranked project management challenges included accurate project cost forecasting, and difficulties with collaboration and communication. On the other hand, one statistic showed that 75% of projects were currently on or under budget for the majority or survey respondents.

So how did your firm stack up against these results from the 36^th Deltek AE Clarity Report?

What’s New in the 37^th Annual Deltek AE Clarity Report?

Great question! But just as important, what do you do with this information? Learn what Deltek experts think and how they use this information at an upcoming AE Clarity Tour stop near you. The 37^th Annual AE Clarity Report will be out soon!

Employee engagement is currently a hot topic in the realm of Human Resources. As a result, the enterprise software industry has responded and created a plethora of solutions to address this growing demand. The era of Talent Management Systems is upon us, and these systems are becoming a vital role in supporting business growth and increasing employee productivity.

Talent Management Systems enable the automation of the recruitment process, performance monitoring, and implementing employee training and development. Additionally, they also enable the performance tracking of your Human Resources department. So how can your firm benefit by implementing a Talent Management System?

Click the infograph below to download the whitepaper on the "Top 10 Recruiting Metrics HR Should Care About." 

Ready to learn about the much-anticipated release of Deltek Vision 7.5? With each new version of Vision, Deltek strives to include new features and enhancements to help your firm know more to do more! Let’s take a look and see what’s new with Deltek’s newest version of Vision.

Deltek Vision 7.5 Features and Enhancements:

• Focus to Client Nurturing | The new Client Activity Status Report allows users to quickly and visually identify clients that need attention. Add a touch of color! The new feature allows you to highlight your activities by color to easily identify clients that need follow-up.
• Proposals Made Easier | Sometimes it’s the small things that make a big impact. Deltek has made the proposal process easier. The improved proposal module allows users to apply the selection criteria to all projects and employees at the same time. Users can also choose default graphics and have an easy-to-select graphic option. Even more, users can select project experience based on actual hours worked and merge service estimates totals. Lastly, InDesign users now have the ability to display multiple records on one page. All of these little enhancements save time during the proposal creation process.
• Newly Created Asset Management Module | Now all of your fixed assets are in one place to increase tracking and decision-making. The New Vision Asset Management Module is integrated with the purchasing and accounting functions within Vision to enable you to create, track, manage, depreciate, and dispose of your fixed assets in one central location. Be sure to inquire about Q1 2016 incentives.
• Manage Employees with Ease Across Multiple Companies | Vision Multi-Company just got way better! In 7.5, Multi-Company Employees can be associated with more than one company with a designated “home” company. More importantly, employee specific data carries over to each company allowing for company-specific and system-wide reporting. Find out more about the new Multi-company features here.  
• Approvals Simplified | Stop with the endless email chains full of approval requests. In the version of Vision, absence requests and accounts payable invoices can be approved by designing simple or complex workflows to automate the approval process.
• Better Forecast Revenue and Expenses | In Vision 7.5, the general ledger (GL) enhancements allow users to consolidate budgeting into a single view allowing for better insight into your business. This new functionality allows you to create, manage, review, edit, and approve multiple GL budgets from a single view. Learn more about these enhancements here.
• Save Time Reconciling Bank Statements | In this latest version of Vision, users can import bank statements, automatically match records, and review records to manually match any remaining transactions.
• Smarter Project Planning | Building on the power of task dependencies in 7.4, project managers now can effectively manage project schedules and closely track a project’s critical path and identify schedule risks. Additionally, color-coded predecessor tasks, expanded right-click functionality, and better integration with iAccess are just a few highlights to enable your project managers to make smarter decisions.
• Keep Up with Project & Business Development On-The-Go | Obtaining the information you need on-the-go just got better. iAccess 2.2 enhancements now provides users the ability to create saved custom searches on any field, including custom fields. With an improved interface and screen designer settings enhancements, iAccess is becoming the go-to tool to access project metrics and business development updates anywhere at any time.
• Improved Touch Capabilities | Deltek Touch now supports iPhones & iPads with iOS 8+, Android Phones and Tablets with OS 4.1+, and Windows Phones with OS 8.1. Building upon timesheet and expense capabilities, users now have timesheet auditing available on their mobile devices.
• Much More | Deltek Vision 7.5 provides even more enhancements for accounting and project management with greater connectivity and better user interfaces.

I came across an article the other day written by ASCE Past President, Andrew W. Herrmann on the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary celebration. The article Celebrating ‘Built to Last’ – Which Actually Demands a Lot of Maintenance, discussed the investment of on-going infrastructure maintenance and it got me thinking. The AEC industry touts about the government investing in infrastructure and how neglecting airports, highways, and bridges is more costly if it isn't maintained. The IT world has been saying the same about IT systems and databases. Is your firm guilty of not maintaining your IT infrastructure?  

Let's take a look at some on-going maintenance that your firm may be overlooking:  

Backup Mistakes

Unfortunately, for municipalities and governments, there is no backup for when a bridge or building falls apart. That is to say, there is no way to restore the bridge with a click of a button in the same way your firm can to restore lost data. Preparing for failure and implementing a reliable backup plan is essential to maintaining the integrity of your data.

The problem is many people believe this is an easy and mindless task, but often make some very common mistakes.

1. Many firm’s only test their backups periodically, and it either becomes a forgotten task or done improperly. Verifying backups is a useful practice to ensure data is intact, readable, and can be restored if data is ever lost.
2. Many firms that have their own servers tend to only backup data and not the server’s operating system and applications. While this practice saves time and valuable memory on the server, it can often be more costly in the future if the server itself fails. For example, it is much easier to restore the operating system, the applications and then the data than it is to manually install the operating system and setup the applications.   

Server and Hardware Failure

Normal wear and tear of the roads and bridges is the primary reason for the need to perform ongoing maintenance. It is required to ensure physical integrity for years to come. Likewise, many firms overlook the parts of their IT infrastructure that are prone to wear and tear. Although most of the components of servers and hardware are electrical, they also contain a few mechanical parts that tend to be more prone to failure. The reality is, as these components age, they tend to experience wear and tear that will inevitably result in a failure.

Interesting enough, failure can be avoided if you’re aware of common warning signs.

1. Servers and hardware are designed to operate while creating minimal noise. If you start hearing a clicking or grinding sign coming from your server or computer, it’s likely you’re going to experience a failure soon.
2. Mechanical failure is the result of wear and tear, plan on replacing servers and hardware more frequently to avoid the unexpected and dreaded failure.

Avoiding Updates

An ACEC whitepaper titled, Our Infrastructure Crisis – Your Turn to Act noted that one of the consequences of under-investment by municipalities and governments is an aging and outdated energy infrastructure. Aside from the inefficiencies of using outdated technologies, the cost to update the energy infrastructure is going to be massive. The problem is that the energy infrastructure has to work in sync, therefore updating one component means other key components will need to be replaced so the overall system can continue to work in harmony.  These same consequences can affect a firm using outdated software.

When deciding to update your antiquated software, you may also have to update other enterprise software your firm uses and maybe some hardware as well.

1. Firms using older software that runs on unsupported operating systems, such as Windows XP, will have to update their hardware to support the new software.
2. Also, even if your operating system may support some newer software, those can potentially impact other software that are reliant upon them.

The Big Picture

Just like municipalities and governments failing to maintain the roads, bridges and airports, AEC firms can experience significant costs for failing to maintain their IT infrastructure. The big picture is that maintaining your IT infrastructure requires you to ensure you backup your information, proactively prevent server and hardware failure, and most importantly, stay-up-date.    

Full Sail Partners is proud to announce that Anderson Hallas Architects, PC was a finalist for a 2015 Deltek Project Excellence Award in the Biggest Business Impact Category. Deltek specializes in providing project-focused enterprise software and information solutions for professional services firms and government contractors.  

Deltek’s annual Project Excellence Awards recognizes firms that use Deltek products to achieve remarkable success in various categories. This year, Deltek honored selected firms for five categories, and Anderson Hallas Architects was a finalist for the Biggest Business Impact award. This award recognizes organizations who received the biggest benefits and ROI using a Deltek solution.

During 2014 and 2015, Anderson Hallas Architects migrated to Deltek Vision with the assistance of Full Sail Partners. This migration from their existing disparate systems to Deltek Vision allowed them to centralize and integrate their financial, operations, marketing and business development, project data, and human resources into one system.

“We used to track everything in separate places (timesheets, marketing, labor utilization, weekly status, personal project memories, etc.). Each category of information had its own ‘home’ – a custom program, an Excel spreadsheet, a Word document or our individual brains – there was a lot of time, effort and duplication in updating and retrieving information. Now, it’s literally the click of a button,” explained Nan Anderson, FAIA, LEED AP, Principal with Anderson Hallas Architects.

As a result, Anderson Hallas Architects now has increased visibility into firm-wide metrics, improved cost control and resource planning, and delivers more projects on time and on budget. The implementation of Deltek Vision has influenced their thinking about how to approach marketing and business development and provided a centralized and integrated business better able to serve and respond to clients. 

“For a firm their size, Anderson Hallas aimed for massive transformation in information management, and achieved it,” stated Sr. CRM Consultant, Kevin Hebblethwaite, FSMPS, CPSM. “They demonstrated what is possible with unified goals and commitment - working with them was a blast.”