Full Sail Partners Blog (40)

Almost all businesses utilize key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify trends and to measure performance against set goals. KPIs can fall into one of two categories: drivers and outcomes. Drivers measure current and future activity whereas outcomes measure the success of past activity. Furthermore, powerful KPIs should have some key characteristics to ensure they are clear and easily measurable.

Characteristics of Powerful Key Performance Indicators

1. Simple – KPIs should be simple to understand and to measure. It is extremely important that employees know what a KPI is measuring and how it is being calculated. KPIs should also be concise so that are manageable and do not overwhelm employees with too much information.
2. Relevant – KPIs need to be relevant to the organization. This can be done by making the KPIs for employees relate to the strategic goals and objectives of the company.
3. Measurable – Employees need to be able to analyze their performance which is the goal of using KPIs. Therefore, KPIs must be measurable but not all will have a quantitative goal.
4. Actionable – KPIs should prompt decisions and not create more questions. In other words, KPIs cannot be effective if employees are unsure of what to do with the information.
5. Timely – KPIs should be reported frequently enough to allow employees to make timely decisions. However, avoid having the reporting too frequent as this can overwhelm employees with too much information.
6. Visible – KPIs should be visible across the entire organization. This allows employees to see how their work is helping achieve the goals of the entire organization. It also provides incentives to employees to work harder and be more productive.

Using Key Performance Indicators to Drive Success

For a business to be successful, it must have goals it wants to achieve. These goals are a way to measure the performance of the company and its employees. Lastly and most importantly, a KPI is useless if the objective and the result cannot be reported on. Thus, KPIs must be meaningful to be powerful.

For professional services firms, having the right project lifecycle is essential to having a profitable company. Even more, the processes that drive your firm’s project lifecycle must be in sync with the systems you use to manage them. There are several stages in the project lifecycle and evaluating your processes requires breaking down the steps. In this blog, we’ll look at the initial and most overlooked phase of the project lifecycle…winning the work.

Leads and Opportunities

Here’s where many firms go wrong when examining their project lifecycle…to start a project, you must first win the job. So, evaluating the lead to opportunity process is an essential component and must be considered in the project lifecycle.

When a new lead is acquired, it needs to be captured in a system that provides visibility to the entire company. As a business development person learns more information from the lead, it is input into the system and analyzed to see if the firm can meet the requirements to win the project. Once the decision is made that your firm can win the work then the lead becomes an opportunity.

If you are using Deltek Vision or Deltek for Professional Services (DPS), it is recommended that you create a “proposal project” to track the time to prepare the proposal. By using a proposal project, your firm will have the analytics regarding the cost of winning and losing work as well as the total cost of the business development efforts.

Fee Proposal Development

Developing the fee proposal is another important step to the business development portion of the project lifecycle. The fee proposal will eventually become the basis for the project budget. It will include what your firm is being paid for the various stages of the project. This may also include bonuses or penalties for meeting or failing to meet certain milestones.

It is recommended for Deltek Vision and DPS users to develop the fee proposal using the resource planning module. This will allow you to incorporate previous performance from similar projects to ensure you are charging the right amounts and including the correct milestones. Additionally, firms should continuously check the scope of work and make sure it’s in line with the fee proposal you are developing.

Fee Negotiation and Finalizing a Budget

Once the client indicates it has a desire to move forward with your firm, the fee negotiation and budget finalization phase of the project lifecycle begins. Things to keep in mind during this stage are possible changes to scope, schedule and fees. The budget created during this process will serve as the guide for the project manager to execute the work.

Next Steps to the Project Lifecycle

This blog discussed the business development piece of the project lifecycle. Remember that periodic reviews of your firm’s project lifecycle are a must to ensure that the process is still in line with how your firm has evolved. Stay tuned for more blogs about project execution and project closeout.

On May 28^th, 2014 the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) jointly issued the Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 606, Revenue from Contracts with Customers. At the end of 2018, the way professional services firms recognize revenue from contracts with customers will be significantly impacted. ASC 606 will require firms to recognize revenue when goods or services are transferred to the customer in an amount that is equivalent to the goods or services delivered at that point. Let’s break this down into layman’s terms.

Basics to Revenue Recognition

The revenue recognition principle is an accounting guideline that requires revenue to be shown on the income statement in the period in which it is earned and not in the period when payment is collected. Furthermore, payment can be received prior to or after the delivery of a good or service, but the income statement must reflect the payment for the period in which it was billed. This is part of the accrual accounting basis as opposed to cash basis of accounting.

Impacts of FASB ASC 606

When FASB ASC 606 rolls out, professional services firms that are subject to audit will be required to apply this new standard. The new guideline establishes a five-step process to govern contract revenue reporting:

1. Identify contract(s) with a customer
2. Identify performance milestones in the contract
3. Determine the transaction price
4. Allocate the transaction price to the performance milestones
5. Recognize revenue when the performance milestone has been met

Additionally, if a professional services firm is still utilizing an outdated accounting system or an internally created system, these systems may not be capable of supporting the ASC 606 guideline.

Using the Right Accounting System for ASC 606

Fortunately, Deltek Vision and Deltek for Professional Services users have the right system to accommodate the changes brought on by ASC 606. Since these are project-based ERPs, revenue generation is easily recognized by using the project management tools that are part of these systems. As a result, firms can recognize revenue when milestones are achieved. This is done by using basic revenue generation factors like:

• Job to date spent
• Percentage of completion
• Milestones or deliverables being met

Get Your Firm Ready for ASC 606

Good news! Your firm still has time to prepare for these changes. In most cases, applying the five steps mentioned above will bring your firm into compliance. However, these steps may not apply to all your contracts or for all professional services firms. If you are unsure if your firm is compliant, reach out to Full Sail Partners for more information.

Annual review time is often seen by many employees as a stressor. For even the most productive employee, the question of what hasn’t been said until this one point in the year causes concern. From the manager’s perspective, how is it even possible to clearly remember a year’s worth of employee performance? It makes much more sense to offer feedback consistently throughout the year. Let’s take a closer look at the value of continuous employee feedback especially for project-based firms.

Employee Engagement

With continuous employee feedback, managers can initiate employee engagement which leads to further discussions. The more opinions and ideas that are gathered will ultimately improve the project and ensure that it is done efficiently and on budget. If issues crop up, as they often do, engaging employees frequently will allow for proactive problem resolution instead of reactive analysis down the road. 

Good Balance

Keeping a balance between positive and negative feedback is another benefit of continuous employee feedback. While an employee’s performance may have to be corrected over some issue during a project, other things that have been done well can be provided to offer encouragement. This way, employees are still motivated to do their best work and don’t react negatively to the one matter that needed improvement.

Actionable Feedback

Continuous feedback provides actionable items that are mutually beneficial to managers and employees. Freshly addressing the situation at hand allows managers to respond and employees to correct immediately rather than reacting to what has already transpired and cannot be changed. Employees can also be given proper training to improve their efficiency and the outcome of the project. 

Goal Setting

Talking regularly about performance allows employees to set goals for themselves. When employees see how they are contributing to a project and know they will be a part of the positive outcome, they are inspired to perform better than before. Goal setting benefits managers and employees alike. 

Learn from Feedback

Offering continuous feedback is a way for employees to learn, grow and develop. It is a much better strategy for project-based businesses than annual performance reviews. Consistent feedback encourages conversations, goal mastery and efficiently run projects which is a win for everyone in your firm.

Many Deltek Vision users are unaware of the vast capabilities of workflows. From managing repetitive tasks to ensuring information is updated, workflows are extremely versatile and easy to setup. Let’s take a look at some Vision CRM workflows.

Workflow Examples for Deltek Vision CRM Users

Contacts - Track companies where your contacts have previously worked and automatically update a user defined grid when the Client field is changed on the contact record allowing information to stay up-to-date.

Marketing Campaigns – Automatically add predefined activities for Marketing Campaign follow-ups to ensure follow-through on your marketing efforts.

Opportunities – Make sure the business development team is following up on opportunities by creating Actions and Alerts that are prompted when an Opportunity is opened, a stage is changed and when the Opportunity is closed.

Warning Notifications - Give a gentle reminder to fill in a field value using a workflow to display a warning message. When a user changes the value of one field, a workflow can trigger a warning to indicate another field requires more information only when a specific value is chosen.

Error Notification - Use a workflow to display an error message instead of making all fields required. When a user changes the value of one field, a workflow can trigger an error message requiring an update to another field before being able to save when a specific value is chosen.

Contact Record Verification - Provide employees further insight on the validity of contact information by creating a workflow using custom fields. Employees simply check a checkbox, and through a workflow, the modified user and the date the checkbox was checked can populate reducing the number of fields the end user has to fill in.

Let Deltek Vision Workflows Work for You

These are just a few examples of things you can do with CRM workflows in Deltek Vision. Setting these workflows up is actually easier than you think and will save you and your firm lots of time. Checkout “Navigating Workflows: Standard and Advanced” and “Oh the Places You Can Go with Workflows, Alerts, and Stored Procedures” to learn more about workflows!

Each year Deltek conducts a survey of firms in the architecture and engineering industry to identify key issues impacting the market, highlight bright spots, and forecast future trends. Guided by industry experts, the survey focuses on financial statements, business development, project management, human capital management, and technology trends. This year, in total, 952 individuals took the survey, and nearly 450 companies provided input. Firms in this study are of varying sizes and headquartered across the US and Canada.

Key Findings in This Year’s Deltek A/E Clarity Report

Financial Statements

Firms’ financial statements reveal year-over-year stability in the industry, with most impacts appearing to be driven by talent management and staffing changes.

• Average operating profit on net revenue was 13.2%, up just slightly from last year’s 13% and the previous year’s 12.8%.
• Utilization rates dropped slightly to 59.4% from 60.0% last year.
• The net labor multiplier saw a decrease to an average of 2.96, down quite significantly from a spike of 3.02 last year and back in line with 2015.
• Firms reversed a five-year decline in overhead rate, increasing from 154% to 155%.
• The average collection period dropped by one day to 71 days, although high performers increased by two days to a 67-day average.

Business Development

Firms are looking to diversify opportunities and their business development efforts to stay ahead in a competitive market.

• Net revenue growth forecast was 5.2%, down just slightly from last year’s 5.3%.
• Firms are using a diverse array of staff for business development, with 19% of firms using dedicated business development staff only, 31% sellers/doers only, and 50% using a mixture of both. However, only 46% of firms had a formal business development process for their staff.
• Win rates improved to 50.0%, rising 9.8 percentage points from last year’s 40.2%.
• The percentage of firms with a formal go/no-go process decreased from 75% last year to 67% this year.
• More firms expect growth in surveying/geographic information systems (GIS), transportation, and commercial markets than any other industry, whereas nearly 60% of firms expect their position to stay the same or decline in the residential, education, and hospitality markets.

Project Management

Firms need to continue to focus on improving the project management discipline and increasing client satisfaction.

• Two-thirds of all firms have a high level of visibility on cost variance, whereas more than half of all firms stated that they had low or moderate visibility into schedule variance and client satisfaction. Compared to last year, client satisfaction visibility decreased from 53% to 45%.
• Firms this year reported that 20% of their projects were over budget and 25% of their projects were behind schedule.
• Sixty-one percent of firms had high confidence in their overall project reporting abilities, down from 72% last year. More than 90% of firms felt confident they were accurately reporting the actual cost and budget of their projects, whereas only 69% of firms felt the same about the accuracy of their schedule reporting.
• In terms of discipline maturity, only 47% of firms used a formal project management process for three-fourths or more of their projects. Overall, 18% of firms had a PMO or center of excellence. Additionally, only 39% of firms have less than one-quarter of staff with formal project management training.
• Eighty-one percent of firms are measuring client satisfaction, and of these firms, 45% are conducting these measures for all projects and 49% for strategic projects only. The majority are measuring client satisfaction irregularly, compared to 22% of firms that do so at key project milestones. 

Human Capital Management

Firms are experiencing growth, but employee turnover—particularly voluntary turnover—has increased, making staff retention and improved talent acquisition imperative.

• Staff growth is 4.3%, declining from 6.9% last year.
• Employee turnover increased to 12.8%, up from 11% last year.
• 34% of firms had more open positions, compared with only 15% with fewer open positions.
• The average time to fill positions was 31–60 days, although for 15% of firms, it takes an average of 90 or more days to fill positions. Compared to last year, there was a 7-percentage-point decrease in firms that filled positions in less than 30 days.
• Of all firms, 43% have a formal succession plan. For 68% of firms, their succession plan applies only to current leaders and next-in-line leaders, whereas for 7% it applies to all employees.

Technology Trends

In the first year tracking technology trends, firms are looking for better ways to collect data that can be leveraged for strategic decisions.

• Geolocation and the Internet of Things (IoT) were the most important technology trends.
• Most firms did not rank artificial intelligence (AI) or wearable technology as technology trends they are focused on, but it can significantly change the way we run our businesses when the time is right.

Benchmark Your Firm with the Deltek A/E Clarity Report 

While these are the highlights of the 39^th Annual Deltek A/E Clarity study, the report goes into much more detail. Using these results, you can see how your firm has been doing not only compared to your previous year, but also to other comparable firms in your industry. With these industry insights, you can develop future goals to help your firm stand out against the growing wave of competition. For an in-depth view of everything included in the 39^th Annual Deltek A/E Clarity report, download your copy today.

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

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

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

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

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

According to the 39^th Annual Deltek A&E Clarity Industry Study, one of the top three firm initiatives to address financial challenges is managing growth. Firms are needing to quickly expand departments, hire and train new employees, and find ways to retain them to prevent turnover. Not only are project managers dealing with staff shortages, but inexperienced project managers ultimately lead to client dissatisfaction and poor perception of firms in the marketplace. Firm financials are being directly impacted by issues with human capital management.

Turnover and Talent Acquisition

The results of this year’s Deltek A&E Clarity study show that human resources (HR) professionals are seeing higher voluntary turnover, more open positions with longer average time to fill plus difficulties with talent acquisition. Turnover has increased by nearly two percent compared to last year, and the percentage of firms that take 31–60 days to fill an open position went up by four points. Regarding talent acquisition, many firms are not focused enough on improving the efficiency of the talent management process. The majority are still using outdated HR systems with 63% of small firms having not updated their HR systems within the past five years making it a challenge to track KPIs. Talent acquisition remains the most expensive business process facing HR.

Drop in Utilization Rates

Additionally, firms have seen utilization rates drop slightly for the second year in a row, declining to 59.4% from 60% last year. This may be due to firms having a harder time recruiting, onboarding, and retaining talent this year and leading to higher employee salaries to attract the best talent at lower billable utilization. This shift in utilization rates is also reflected in the small increase in overhead rates. Firms should develop a strategic onboarding process to reduce the time it takes to get new hires assigned to billable projects. Another issue affecting financials is that increased turnover means senior staff are pulled to train new employees pulling them from their current tasks.

HR Stuck in Recruiter Mode

This year’s Deltek A&E Clarity report also noted that with growth management, HR professionals tend to get stuck in recruiter mode leaving little time to focus on other essential tasks to help keep staff engaged. Firms need to first properly train their staff, so they are productive. They must then find out what professional development and learning opportunities their employees are looking for to ensure retention. According to the study, only 13% of firms said they have a learning management system (LMS). This is down two percentage points from last year, when 15% of firms reported having an LMS.

Succession Planning and Retention

Another key aspect to employee retention is succession planning. The Deltek A&E Clarity study showed that of all firms, only 43% have formal succession plans. Therefore, firms need to focus not just on identifying tomorrow’s leaders, but also on engaging high-potential employees in a way that keeps them at the firm and lets them know that the firm is invested in their success. For 68% of firms with a succession plan in place, it only applied to current leaders or those next in line. Only 7% had plans that applied to all employees. Regardless of size, without a succession plan, the future of the firm is especially at risk if something happens to its current leaders or key staff.

Future Human Capital Management Strategy

Of particular interest, the Deltek A&E Clarity study suggested that to develop an effective future human capital management strategy, firms must evaluate what different generations want and need. With baby boomers voluntarily retiring, firms must change their approach to new hires by offering tailored benefits such as tuition reimbursement and the ability to work from home. Overall, firms that offered these and the more traditional benefits, including stock ownership options, medical, 401(k) or retirement plans, performance bonuses, or paid overtime, do have higher total employee costs. However, firms that did so would have higher employee retention rates, thus reducing the financial burden of turnover.

Clarity Outlook for Human Capital Management

Firm financials are being impacted by challenges in human capital management. In the next year, firms should focus on updating outdated human resource systems, appealing to the new workforce generation, providing strategic onboarding, offering top professional development and learning opportunities, and creating succession plans for all employees. For the future, financial leaders must manage growth by tracking the costs of talent acquisition and investing in their employees to prevent turnover. To really understand the true cost savings of employee retention, HR must continue to work closely with financial professionals. Lastly, make sure to download your free copy of the 39^th Annual Deltek A&E Clarity Report now.

If you’re a marketing professional that uses Deltek Vision, you should definitely be taking advantage of the marketing campaigns Info Center available in Vision. First and foremost, any marketing effort from email blasts to clients to attending a conference can and should be tracked in a marketing campaign. Also, marketing campaigns in Vision provide visibility into the success of your marketing efforts and people within your firm can see prospects that were targeted for a specific campaign. Here are some ways you can use marketing campaigns to improve your firm’s marketing efforts.

Targeted Marketing Campaigns

Let’s say you have a segment of an industry you want to market your services to - how does Deltek Vision and the marketing campaigns help you? Using Vision’s advanced search functionality, you can drill down in your CRM system to identify prospects you want to reach with your campaign. Even more, you can associate them to a marketing campaign in Vision to allow you to track these prospects and easily create lists.

Want to create an email blast to send to your identified prospects to promote your services? If you use marketing campaigns in Vision and a third-party email marketing platform like Constant Contact or MailChimp, there’s an integration to make this happen. You create the email in the automated marketing platform you use and then quickly associate the targets in your Vision marketing campaign to the email you created. The need to export and import contacts is eliminated.

Furthermore, in the Vision marketing campaign, you can see your email stats such as clicks, bounces and unsubscribes. All of this data allows you to evaluate the success of your effort. If it sounds too good to be true, learn more here.

Industry Conferences

At industry conferences, you’re likely to attend educational seminars and social events in the expo hall. You’ll have many opportunities to network with existing clients and prospects, as well as find new leads. So, what do you do with all those notes and new business cards? If you created a marketing campaign prior to the conference, you can simply add these people with notes to the marketing campaign in your spare time at the conference.

Additionally, if you attend the same conferences every year, marketing campaigns can track who was there in prior years. The campaign notes also show which people are consistently spoken to at each event. This allows you to preplan who you want to target and what you want to talk to them about next time.

Wait, there’s more! If you are an event sponsor, you may also be able to get a list of who is registered for the conference. These people can be added to the marketing campaign prior to the event which makes adding notes on the targets easier since they are already associated to the campaign you created. You can also choose your targets knowing with near certainty that they are attending the conference.  

Event Hosting

Does your firm host webinars or client events? If the answer is yes, you probably target a specific segment of your clients and prospects to market your events. Like the targeted campaigns mentioned above, you can quickly segment your contacts to identify who you want to invite to your event. When using a marketing campaign in Deltek Vision to assist you, you can easily add these contacts to your campaign and track who attended. This information will help your firm evaluate the success of the events you do.

More Benefits to Using Deltek Vision Marketing Campaigns

By using Deltek Vision marketing campaigns, you’ve seen that you can easily track touchpoints with leads, prospects and clients to gain visibility into the entire lifecycle of developing business. Furthermore, you can learn what works and what doesn’t work when marketing to contacts to create more business. However, once you create a marketing campaign, you can also create a project in Vision for that marketing campaign. You can bill your time and expenses associated with it to better improve your ability to track the ROI of your marketing efforts. So, what are you waiting for? Start using marketing campaigns in Vision today to show the success of your marketing efforts.

Attending a professional conference is a great way to learn solutions to obstacles you currently face, new ways to challenge yourself, and learn about trends in your industry. Additionally, you should never hesitate to ask your employer to allow you to attend a good and relevant conference on their dollar. Furthermore, managers should require employees to go to professional conferences to get out of the office and learn new things they can bring back to share with their coworkers. So, what are the benefits of attending a professional conference?

Network with Likeminded People

Sure, your LinkedIn network is huge. However, when was the last time you spoke to someone in your network face to face, or have you ever met them face to face? Professional conferences attract people from all different geographies from different continents to regional or smaller local conferences. In other words, conferences bring people together in one place in an environment that promotes talking to others. So, don’t be shy! Get out there and meet new people.

Get Fresh Ideas

In reality, you sit in our workspace and either not talk to coworkers about your ideas and their ideas because you are the only person in that role, or you’re talking to the same people about the same ideas every day. As a result, you tend to grow stale on the subject that you’re respected as an authority upon. Therefore, this is probably the number one reason to attend a professional conference.

When attending a conference, you get to attend seminars and panel discussions led by respected industry leaders and take part in roundtable sessions. Here you can get fresh ideas on challenges others are facing industry trends. Remember, you’re going to be inundated with a lot of information, so make sure to stay attentive and take notes.

Present Your Ideas to Others

In today’s age, your company’s brand is built on the brand of its employees. Prospects and clients are more likely to make a purchase from a company that they know, and trust employs thought leaders in their respected industry. This means employees must build their personal brand by showing they are a thought leader in their industry.

Becoming a thought leader requires making presentations about your ideas to peers to develop your “authority” reputation. It will also give you confidence in your work. Here’s a tip, make your presentation fun and interactive to keep the audience’s attention.  

Meet an Expert

You read their blogs and books, and if they have a television show or podcast, you probably tune into that too. Even more, their a mentor to you, but you’ve never talked or corresponded. However, that doesn’t have to be the case anymore.

Industry experts attend the conferences you should want to attend. They give presentations about their ideas, you know…the ones you read about, but now you can easily interact with your mentor and ask questions while attending a conference. Most importantly, experts also attend the conference social events, giving you a chance to have a face to face conversation. Keep in mind, they’re humans too. So, don’t get nervous when having your one on one time.

Make the Most of Every Professional Conference You Attend

Last tip! Keep a pen handy and remember your business cards at all times! Conferences are short, and you’ll be having a lot of fun. Remembering what you talked to someone about and having them remember you isn’t easy. With your pen, write notes other people’s business cards about what you talked about and make sure you have your cards, so they can do the same. There are so many benefits to attending a conference, but it’s up to you to make the most out of it.