Full Sail Partners Blog (36)

In today’s world, data lives everywhere! Reducing duplicate data in the entry and maintenance process can be a time-consuming effort. The Blackbox Connector leverages the robust APIs available in Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision to automagically bring together data from your Deltek solutions and other best of breed 3^rd party solutions you use to help run your business. 

The Blackbox Connector vastly reduces manual, error prone, data import/exports between systems by directly speaking the language of each endpoint and making the translations between them instantly and accurately every time. As the Blackbox Connector keeps them in sync, changes made in one system just appear in the other. Let’s check out what types of Blackbox Connectors are available.

Concur Blackbox Connector

It begins with the realization that there must be a better way to manage business expense. Give your employees their own personal assistant by combining the power of Deltek Vantagepoint or Vision and Concur. Improve efficiency for employees, allowing them to focus on core business goals.

Concur reduces mistakes and fraud with built-in controls and duplication verification. Your business can lower costs by implementing company-wide policies to control expenses enabling accounting staff to better manage expense processing, from approval to payment posting. Enjoy shortened payment cycles along with improved payables and consultant accruals with invoice. Learn more about Concur here!

Constant Contact and Mailchimp Blackbox Connector

With the Constant Contact and Mailchimp Blackbox Connector for Vantagepoint or Vision, your business can utilize emails like never before. Both solutions have many different features that make things simple while still being effective. Both reduce duplication of entry while maintaining consistent and accurate marketing data.

With either, you can leverage email results to further segment and target contacts and leads. You can track performance of email campaigns and receive insight on the latest email statistics. These connectors will save you hundreds of hours each year by consolidating disparate systems. Get the facts about email marketing and why your firm should be using Constant Contact or MailChimp. 

Client Feedback Tool Blackbox Connector

Reliable feedback is essential to understanding your client’s goals. Integrating the Client Feedback Tool with Vantagepoint or Vision ensures you can gather client feedback throughout the entire lifecycle of a project. Firms can fine-tune their performance to achieve maximum benefit for their clients and ultimate satisfaction. Find out how client satisfaction can be improved!  

Informer Blackbox Connector

The most recently introduced Blackbox Connector brings business intelligence and Deltek data together. Instead of wasting time on reviewing black and white spreadsheets of data, you can now visualize it with this connector. With customized dashboards, all members of your firm will have access to graphics available in real time so you can keep your finger on the pulse of your business. Learn how a good business intelligence solution can improve your firm's performance! 

HubSpot Blackbox Connector

The next Blackbox Connector in the works is HubSpot. With Hubspot, you can track performance of inbound marketing campaigns directly in Deltek Vantagepoint or Vision. With the ability to link your HubSpot inbound marketing tool with your Vantagepoint or Vision, you can maintain consistent and accurate marketing data and reduce duplicate entry.

With the HubSpot Blackbox Connector, you will be able to create a real-time information hub in Deltek CRM with the latest customer behaviors and activities. Share marketing awareness insight on your inbound marketing efforts to your entire organization. This connector will be available in fourth quarter 2019.

Bringing it all Together

Professional services firms have faced many data challenges, but the innovative solutions developed to bring data together with Vantagepoint or Vision from Concur, Constant Contact/Mailchimp, Client Feedback Tool, Informer, and HubSpot can make a huge difference. You can automagically synchronize your data between systems without human interaction or transcription errors. You can read, write and transform data to your specifications to a variety of end-points. The Blackbox Connector is the future for connectivity for Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision users.

Business development is crucial to the future of any company. Therefore, efficiently tracking it should be a top priority. So why are so many firms still using outdated spreadsheets that require so much effort to review? Well, once they get their hands on the Informer business intelligence (BI) tool, executives, business developers and marketers alike will be asking themselves that very question. Let’s see how the Informer BI solution will add value to your firm.

Colorful Graphics Save Time

The days of having to spend hours reviewing the specifics of opportunities and the sales pipeline on black and white pieces of paper are over. With Informer, colorful graphics draw attention to the information you seek. Essentially, you can set up your graphical dashboard using whatever dash parts you feel are the most important and drill down into the details as needed. These dashboards refresh automatically to keep your data up to date.

Different Visual Options

With Informer BI, there are different visual options available. Based on the fields selected, Informer automatically creates different visuals and you can choose from a saved list. You can customize your chart visuals depending on what you would like to see and how you would like to see it. Chart types vary from trends to pie charts to bar graphs to scatter plots. There are even geographic heat maps that show where your core opportunities are and where your firm needs to do more business development.

Keep a Finger on the Pulse of Business Development

Business developers are concerned with the health of the sales pipeline. They, of course, want opportunities sold as fast as possible and a way to track the win rates. Another great feature of Informer BI is the option to set up alerts when opportunities are closed. When an alert comes in, you will be drawn back to your dashboard to see what has changed. Informer even allows you to set up comparison boards with side by side displays. You can track win rates from month to month, year to year or even by location.

Get Informer Now

There is no need to waste any more time with those old fashioned and dated spreadsheets. Informer BI shows you exactly what you need to know about your business development as the opportunities unfold. Even more, Informer integrates with Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision. So, what are you waiting for?

Digital marketing, which includes email marketing, is a very effective strategy to growing your business. Most significantly, email marketing and outreach allows you to gain valuable insights into what information and messaging is important to your prospective and current clients. With each email sent, marketers can see open and click rates, and who opened and clicked on a link in the email. As a result, prospects can be easily identified, and messaging modified to grab the attention of other targets.

Email Marketing is Alive and Well

For many people, mainly the non-marketing folks, understanding how email marketing is effective can be difficult. In fact, many believe that email marketing is ineffective since they get so much spam and find it to be an annoyance. However, this is not the case. Email marketing actually has a very positive impact on your business. Here some are staggering facts about email marketing:

• There are 3.7 billion email users in the world and that will increase to 4.1 billion by 2021 (Statista)
• Email marketing has a 28.5% ROI compared to snail mail which has a 7% ROI on average (Chief Marketer)
• 59% of marketers agree that email marketing generates their biggest source of ROI (Emma)
• Email marketing is 40 times more effective at acquiring new clients than Facebook or Twitter (McKinsey)
• 72% of people prefer to receive promotional information via email compared to 17% who prefer social media channels (MarketingSherpa)
• Email marketing is 6 times more likely to result in a click-through than a tweet (Campaign Monitor)
• 90% of people said they will opt-in to receive a newsletter to obtain updates about a company while 10% elected Facebook (Nielsen Norman Group)
• 70% of B2B marketers agree that increasing their email list quality is their top priority (Delivra)
• The average office employee checks their email 30 times per hour (Marketing Insider Group)
• Checking email is the number 1 activity on the internet (Marketo)
• Companies in the United States will spend more than $350 million dollars on email marketing in 2019 (Statista)
• Email marketing drives on average $44 for every $1 spent (Campaign Monitor)

Email Marketing has a Bright Future

With all of these facts about email marketing, it is evident that the strategy works. While your firm is probably using email marketing as part of your overall digital marketing strategy, are you seeing the ROI and maximizing the benefits? Learn more about tracking and measuring email marketing success rates here!

Deltek Talent Management is a powerful set of tools for firms to manage the complete employee lifecycle. It offers an extensive product line to handle acquisition, learning and development, performance and compensation. With such a robust HR system, there are many notable features - some of which are underused. Let’s check out these hidden features and see what benefits they provide.

Employee Recognition

Employees really enjoy being recognized for their accomplishments and want to feel as if they are contributing to the business. Deltek Talent Performance allows employees to submit recognition for other employees in their firm. Recognitions include specifics about each situation such as competencies that the employee has showed. Both the manager and employee can access these recognitions as part of the performance review. Such recognitions go a long way to create a positive culture within the organization.

360 Reviews

360 reviews expand the performance evaluation from just managers to others, both inside and outside of the organization, who have information about employees. Employees can recommend people that they would like to participate in the review, and managers can stay on top of the process. All completed 360s can be viewed by the employee and manager then stored in the employee’s appraisals section for future reference. Feedback from a variety of sources gives employees the chance to see how impactful their work has been.

Project-Based Appraisals

Deltek’s strong focus on projects means that project team members get project-based appraisals. Within Deltek Talent Development, project teams can be set up and team leads determined. Team leads launch the project-based appraisals which may include goals, achievements and competencies that can be later reviewed. Employees get relevant and timely feedback from project managers which can be applied to the next project. Doing project-based appraisals improves performance and drives employee engagement.                                                                                        

Job Seeker Certifications

Today, job seekers have many options, and leveraging technology is a necessity to acquire top talent. Deltek Talent Acquisition makes it easy to view job seeker professional certifications and licenses which can be uploaded during the application process. Candidates can be sorted through efficiently and those with the qualifications needed can be recruited faster. Additionally, with Deltek Talent Learning, those hired will have their certifications automatically added to their learning record which will streamline the onboarding process.

Do Even More with Deltek Talent Management

These hidden features of Deltek Talent Management provide the means to engage quality employees and ensure top project performance. Recognition for valuable work, positive feedback from many different sources, specific project appraisals and assurance of certifications all promote a productive work environment leading to well-run projects. Are you ready to experience what Deltek Talent Management has to offer?

With the start of the new year, it is a perfect time to focus on areas of improvement. Along with making resolutions personally, many people see this time of year as one to revamp their workplace strategies. To support you in this process with your workplace resolutions, we have put together a list of tips and tricks.

Top Tips for the New Year

1. Make sure you reopen a new benefit year to roll over previous benefits from the past year. If you are not manually adjusting, you should be initiating a new 1099 for the payment roll over.
2. Adjust your multiplier in the beginning of the year so you can get a good look at your net profit.
3. Make sure you prepare a new year budget so the monthly reconciliation for the bank is correct at the end of each month.
4. Go through projects and vendors to make sure that the projects you have completed are set to dormant along with the vendors you no longer work with.
5. Do not leave things to the last minute. If there are any errors, make sure you get them fixed immediately so they do not pile up later in the year.
6. Make sure you log into Vision more often than just to complete timesheets. Frequently logging on to Vision is a good idea to make sure things are up to date and correct.
7. Start using iAccess for your business development/CRM activities as well as time and expense.
8. Commit to regularly updating your marketing content by spending one hour every Friday revising your projects and resumes with the information from the latest proposal. Put it on your and your marketing team’s calendar to make the time.
9. Save consulting expense by not making journal entries to AR, AP, Revenue or Cash Accounts.
10. Make sure, when billing, you resolve to post every transaction that you have and never undo posting.

Do More with Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision This New Year

With each new year comes both potential opportunities as well as challenges. Following these tips and tricks, you will get this new year off to a great start. Do more with Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision and help your firm run efficiently and effectively in 2019.

Need help reaching your goals this year? Click the link below to see how Full Sail Partners can help you achieve your goals.

With the shift to an employee-centric marketplace, it has never been more important to focus on talent acquisition and retention. With Deltek Talent Management, you can manage the entire employee lifecycle in one built-in platform. You can efficiently handle acquisition, performance, learning development and compensation. By managing talent, you can retain the best workers, drive employee engagement and ultimately deliver more successful projects. Let’s see how Deltek Talent Management will help your firm be a winning player in the war for talent.

Acquire Top Talent

Deltek Talent allows you to build high performance teams while reducing the time to hire and to reach productivity. There is total visibility into talent acquisition with trends to see what positions are open and how quickly they are hired and onboarded. Using this talent management solution, you can also make sure you offer the most competitive compensation packages to candidates guaranteeing that top talent will join your firm.

Retain Talent

With thoughtful performance management that matches the way project teams work, Deltek Talent offers an effective way to keep the top talent you worked so hard to acquire. Included in the solution is a comprehensive incentive system aligned with performance. This ensures employee compensation transparency and consistency. Deltek Talent additionally comes with the option to build and store unlimited staff learning and training opportunities to keep employees engaged.

Optimize Your Workforce

Deltek Talent Management helps your firm strategically analyze the workforce and predict future needs. This solution allows managers and employees to work together to develop career paths and long-term development plans. Using Deltek Talent, your firm can even create succession plans which work for each unique business.

Manage Talent More Efficiently

Deltek Talent Management provides firms with a unified HR system. This solution is both mobile and flexible and will meet the needs of any firm no matter the size. Acquiring and retaining top talent ensures superior projects are delivered. Are you ready to prevail in this competition for the best employees? Get Deltek Talent Management today.

With the new Deltek Vantagepoint, Vision is re-imagined. Not only has the look and feel been improved, but there are many new enhancements that all users will love. This new browser-based solution helps your firm deliver more successful projects and grow your business. It’s built around the project—from finding, pursuing, winning, and delivering them. 

In the last quarter of 2018, Full Sail Partners’ consultants participated in early adopter testing of the Vantagepoint 2.0 solution. To say we are impressed with the new features and streamlined design and framework is an understatement.

In this article, three of our consultants share what sets Vantagepoint apart from Vision and why you should be excited. We will go into detail from Employee Scorecards and Project Plans to Multiple Dashboards and Milestone Dashparts.

While change can be scary, we assure that you will fall in love with the Vantagepoint enhancements we have seen so far, just like we did. 

Intuitive Business Development

Lindsay Diven, CPSM is a Senior Consultant for Full Sail Partners. Below are just a few of my new favorite features of Vantagepoint.

• All Companies in One Place – The previous Clients and Vendors has been combined to form a new hub called Companies.
• All People in One Place – The previous Leads and Contacts info center has been combined to form a new hub called People.
• Easily See All Associations for People and Companies – With streamlined hubs, you can easily see all the projects a company is associated with – either as a subconsultant or a prime.
• Easier Searching – You can easily build searches on the fly. You can add a field quickly and instantly preview results.
• Milestones Dashpart – A place to track and display all your CRM and proposal deadlines.
• Visual Dashboards by Function – You can easily toggle between Business Development, Project Management and Executive/Owner level dashboards.
• New Drag and Drop Proposal Builder – Long gone are the days of coding and testing merge templates! You can now see what your proposal looks like as you are building it.

Efficient Project and Resource Management

Below Principal Consultant, Matt McCauley, shares some of his favorite new aspects of Vantagepoint for creating and managing projects as well as managing resources.

• Create a Project and Plan Simultaneously – When you create a new Project Record, a Project Plan is automatically created.
• Add Multiple Resources to a Project at One Time – Quickly add multiple resources to a project with a few clicks.
• View Resource Management by Employee or by Project – Gain greater visibility into resource utilization.

Streamlined Accounting Functions

We sat down with Scott Gailhouse, Principal Consultant, to ask what his favorite new features of Vantagepoint are. He listed the following:

• All Reports in One Place – Get the information you need to make actionable decisions easily and quickly.
• Best of Both Worlds: Batch or Single Entry – Save time with easy functionality that allows for processing multiple transactions with a click of a button.
• Expanded Approval Center – New Approval center includes absence requests, expense lines, expense reports, timesheets and timesheet lines. You can also view the progress of the approval workflow.
• Update Fees in Interactive Billing – Update project fees while processing invoices.
• Employee Cards and Timesheet Calendar – New Outlook integration that allows for timesheets to be updated from a user’s Outlook calendar.

Learn More about Deltek Vantagepoint

To learn more about these new features and see examples, make sure to watch our webinar Things We Love About Deltek Vantagepoint So Far. This is the first in a series of webinars on how to prepare for Vantagepoint.

2018 was a banner year for mergers and acquisitions (M&As) across the A&E industry. If trends continue, 2019 should be even better. So, what is the driving force behind this increase in deals? Let’s check out why firms want to make these big changes.

Buying for Geography

Firms are wanting to expand their footprints. In many cases, a firm entrenched in a state or region has a desire to expand its services and brand to new territories. In some instances, this is driven by their clients who insist on a physical presence in order to win work. Additionally, there is an advantage to acquiring a firm in a desired territory since it comes with a backlog to help in absorbing the cost of becoming established and selling new work.

Buying New Disciplines

Often in tandem with geography there is a desire to grow a firm’s offerings and skill sets. This can be addressed in one of two ways:

1. Acquiring a firm with parallel disciplines that are in different market sectors
2. Acquiring a firm with a completely different discipline base

Both instances provide the opportunity for cross selling and talent development.

Acquiring the Competition

Another common occurrence in the M&A world is acquiring competitors. Simply, it’s a great way to see immediate market growth. When acquiring the competition, there is the option to absorb staff into your firm’s current workforce. Therefore, the need for acquiring resources can lead to buying the competition.

Selling to Private Equity

Another trend is selling to private equity.  This allows the firm being acquired to continue operating as is and use the infused capital to hire new talent or purchase assets, or to buy out members of the existing ownership looking for an exit strategy. Selling to a private equity group doesn’t come without its challenges though. These purchases often require a material change in accounting practices and reporting, and new ownership doesn’t always understand the operation or industry. In addition, follow on sales between equity firms are always looming.

What’s Your Firm’s Reason to Go Down the M&A Road?

Each firm has its own reasons for choosing to go down the M&A road. Is 2019 going to be the year your firm makes a move to gain a better hold in the A&E industry? If so, remember that it is always recommended to seek outside parties to help with the technical aspects of the M&A process.

As a small to medium business owner, IT management can be a big headache. Your real work is often disrupted by IT issues such as adding new employees, getting your staff’s machines and apps running, and updating software and support. Moving to the cloud with hosted apps and desktops is the best solution for your firm. Let’s look at the benefits of cloud hosting.

Mobilize the Workforce

With a hosted virtual desktop service, employees have access to apps, documents and other resources from anywhere. All that is necessary is an internet connection and an end point device. Employees can get work done on the go and feel like they never left their workstations.

Business Continuity

Data is safe and always available with a hosted service. If there is a power outage or natural disaster, the offsite data center provides firms with no disruption of service. Data is always secure in the virtual data center which ensures protection with built-in data encryption.

Reduced IT Costs

With a hosted solution, no IT expertise is needed by the firm. Firms will end up spending less on licensing fees and off-site data storage and backup. Anti-spam and virus management is also provided in addition to 24x7 help desk support.

Focus on Growing Your Business

Moving to the cloud with hosted apps and desktops leaves time for your firm to focus on your real work and growing your business. Using the cloud solution, the days of having to manage apps, desktops and servers are in the past. Instead, all the updates and patches are handled for you. Are you ready to move to the cloud?

Professional services firms focus on specific industries and provide a plethora of knowledge to their clients in the projects they undertake. For existing clients, professional services firms must continue to stay abreast of the most recent events or rules impacting that industry. They must also continue to build their client base with business development. There are numerous organizations available to professional services firms and many benefits to join them. Let’s take a look at some.

SMPS

The Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) provides a creative and inspiring community to exchange ideas. Members can connect with A/E/C professionals from other firms and disciplines across the country. The information gleaned from networking with like-minded professionals can be applied to your firm’s business. Also, sharing your firm’s best practices can establish your company as a thought leader in the A/E/C industry. Additionally, the new connections in the A/E/C community that you make from SMPS can lead to future business opportunities for your firm. 

PSMJ Resources Inc.

The mission of PSMJ is to improve the business performance of A/E/C organizations worldwide. Membership in this organization provides several advantages. First off, member firms are offered advisory services from expert consultants who serve as coaches pushing firms to achieve greater success. Next, these experts annually conduct hundreds of bootcamps, workshops, roundtables, and networking conferences which provide industry education and a chance for business development. There are also numerous publications available such as articles and books which give solutions to A/E/C challenges. Finally, surveys are performed presenting accurate and relevant industry metrics that firm leaders rely on in making decisions. 

ACEC

The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) is another organization providing great value to professional services firms. ACEC’s mission is to strengthen the business environment for member firms through government advocacy, political action and business education. This organization addresses key issues impacting A/E/C firms and provides online classes and seminars. Additionally, there are networking conferences for firm leaders to develop relationships. ACEC communications cover important legislative matters, and a magazine with thought provoking articles on advocacy and other business interests is published bimonthly. 

Deltek User Groups

There are many Deltek User groups offered across the United States. The Large Firm User Group (LFUG), the Power User Group (PUG) and regional groups by state are ideal networking environments for all Deltek users. These venues provide great opportunities for users to network, trade Deltek experiences and examine best business practices. In these forums, users can grow both professionally and personally gaining information on industry trends, new product features and business processes. 

Join Some Organizations

Professional services firms have much to gain by signing up with a variety of organizations. From firm leaders, to marketers to regulatory specialists, everyone can benefit from being members of these groups. Take some time and think about which organizations are the best match for your firm needs. Once you know, joining is just a click away!