Full Sail Partners Blog (48)

In the Deltek world, the Blackbox Connector is the trending topic. From marketing professionals gaining insight within Deltek Vision from their Constant Contact mailers, to finance managing risk and controlling expenses through Concur, people are asking about getting more out of their Deltek Vision system. Have you heard the buzz surrounding the Blackbox Connector? If you haven’t, your first question might be, so “what is the Blackbox Connector?" If so, then this blog is for you!

What is the Blackbox Connector?

The Blackbox Connector is a no-code, low cost, integration solution for your Deltek Vision system with an easy to use API wizard. The purpose of the solution is to eliminate data silos by providing a better and more powerful way to create, update, reference and report on critical business intelligence across multiple platforms using Deltek Vision as your master record set. Our goal is to bring data together in a low cost, easy to maintain manner.

What Makes Blackbox Different?

Historically, integrations meant ‘expensive’ and required a lot of technical involvement. Not anymore. So what are the key differences between a custom integration and the Blackbox Connector?

1. IT teams are no longer bogged down with costly development cycles or constant evolving maintenance updates.
2. Users can utilize Blackbox’s drag-and drop mapping wizard to link critical fields across systems to synchronize the two systems in a manner consistent with your business.
3. Data accuracy improves across your entire organization by eliminating manual imports and duplicated efforts because the integration is automatic.

The results? Providing a low, yearly cost that includes continued upgrade for both solutions and a seamless connection to Deltek Vision.

How Does the Blackbox Connector Work?

The Blackbox Connector’s API Wizard enables you to easily connect Deltek Vision to third-party software. The configuration is as easy as setting up your phone to your Outlook email. Users will need access and links to both solutions and in minutes your software is connected. IT is provided scripts and user documentation through our Blackbox Connector portal. Standard mapping is pre-configured and users can further configure their field mapping using Blackbox’s drag-and-drop mapping wizard. The Blackbox Connector portal handles the behind the scenes data processing, including advanced error handling and testing of your connectivity scenarios. 

The connections are all made over web secure communication channels using web services to feed data to and from Deltek Vision – whether you host your Vision system locally or in the cloud, the Blackbox Connector platform can help your firm bring data together.

Why Blackbox?

The Blackbox Connector is a critical game changer with how organizations work within their Deltek Vision system. Our programmers are continuing to invest in commonly requested integration programs and your feedback can impact the next solution. Combine the best features of Deltek Vision with your other critical business systems to save significant hours for your staff and provide them with the tools needed to make faster, more-informed decisions.

Learn More.

Could the Blackbox Connector bring data together for your firm? Check out our website or schedule a demo to see how Blackbox can help your firm save time and money, while improving your overall experience in Deltek Vision.

Knowing how your AE firm compares to your peers is critical for evaluating the health of your business. Fortunately, regularly monitoring your firm’s performance doesn’t have to be a challenge for Deltek Vision users. In this article, we’ll take a quick look at the background of the AE Clarity study and introduce the Vision Performance Management (VPM) interactive dashboard.

What is the Deltek AE Clarity Study?

Each year, Deltek works in conjunction with the American Counsel of Engineering Companies (ACEC), ACEC Canada and the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) to gather and benchmark key performance metrics for the AE industry. The study draws from over 250,000 data points provided by 386 US and Canadian AE firms of every shape and size.

As the oldest and longest running study of its kind, Deltek AE Clarity report is the authoritative industry standard and the 37^th annual Deltek AE Clarity Study is out and available for download. This report is a comprehensive summary of performance results for 2015.  Additionally, these results include several key statistics that are easy to calculate and monitor, plus allows you to compare your firm’s performance against your industry peers.

How Can Your AE Firm Use the Results?

Having measurable insight into the key performance metrics of your firm plays a vital role in strategic planning and decision-making. The Clarity report shows a number of measurements, and all are important items to track. However, every firm should track several key measures regularly such as:

• Operating Net Profit on Net Revenue
• Utilization Rate
• Net Labor Multiplier
• Total Payroll Multiplier
• Overhead Rate
• Net Revenue per Employee

Some of these statistics can be calculated in Vision, but they are not encapsulated into one comprehensive report without extracting individual measurements into a summary table like Excel. However, the spreadsheet will need to be a manual update for ultimate presentation to firm stakeholders. Surely, there’s got to be an easier way, right?

Introducing Deltek Vision Performance Management

With Deltek VPM, these statistics incorporate easily into an interactive Vision Dashboard. As a result, executives can simply view these vital statistics on the screen and use built in filters to “slice and dice” the numbers as shown below.

But wait, there’s more! With VPM, you also have interactive graphs to monitor performance. These graphs allow users to transform rows and columns into bars and colors. VPM will also enable users to see performance using visual metrics. In other words, Vision Performance Management is more like Visual Performance Management as demonstrated below.

Start Monitoring Your AE Firm

Staying ahead of the competition requires knowing where your firm matches up in terms of these key performance indicators. Luckily, VPM allows Vision users to see where their firm stands on a regular basis.

Document management in the AEC Industry is more critical than most. Union Square can help your firm integrate all relevant data, allowing you to spend less time organizing and more time executing projects. Union Square enables your firm to store and access critical firm-wide and project information, including documents, financial information, drawings, images, and emails in one central repository. As a result, your firm has the ability to:

• Ensure team members are working on the most up-to-date files
• Eliminate inconsistent file structures or displaced files
• Keep drawings, correspondence, submittals and more in one central location
• Log incoming documents from any source
• Provide auto-matching suggestions to improve the quality of records
• Document register that gives you all the answers you might need about the state of the project from anywhere

Email

Email easily represents the greatest volume of documents and must be managed effectively or your firm will be left with an expensive archive full of duplicates, difficult if not impossible to retrieve information, and significantly slowing down your ability to send critical information to your clients. Union Square will ensure no email can ever be lost and there are no duplicates by allowing your firm to:

• Save emails from Outlook in just two clicks
• Save just one copy of an email and avoid duplication of email storage
• Store all project correspondence and attachments centrally and permanently
• Strip attachments from email and log appropriately

Document Management

Union Square, combined with Deltek, now offers truly the most integrated platform in the world, reducing operational risk and increasing efficiency.

Other solutions simply are not complete and cannot provide adequate risk reduction and efficiencies. With the varying documents involved in the AEC Industry, basic document sharing provided by SharePoint does not offer a construction issuing system and has no integration with industry design packages. Custom development can be costly and virtually impossible to manage and keep up with future upgrades. A DMS overlay doesn’t provide true risk reduction and access to emails, client reports or company finance all in one location. Union Square will do all of the above and more:

• Documents, emails, finance, and design files all cross-referenced for rapid retrieval
• Detailed document audit and full history
• Documents stored in their native file formats
• Cache services keep documents local to each office to give a single virtual office across the company without compromising performance

An interactive drawing register provides version control, including:

• Links that allow the issuing of process control and distribution of drawings throughout their lifecycle
• Read and write access that provides version control to users based on security permissions

External File Sharing 

The exponential growth in file sizes has made sharing drawing packages a time consuming exercise which lacks company transparency. Manually uploading files to a client extranet or third party file sharing location is slow and requires keeping both an internal and external record of the documents.

Union Square’s design register, issue sheets, document packages and official company records are all exemplar quality and ISO 9001 compliant, fully automated and recorded. The system is unimpeded by file size limits, and documents can be shared internally and externally from the same location with specific user rights for read and write access of only the files or folders chosen. No more worrying about setting up dated FTP sites or emailing large files. Everyone is finally on the same page with one version of the truth.

Contract Administration

Contracts should be easily traceable to reduce the risk of costly legal disputes. All emails, queries, questions and responses are all legally admissible in court. By bringing together the contract communications with the Document Management System, your firm has better visibility of project issues before they arise. Union Square provides enhanced foresight and project management, mitigates risk, and enables your firm to offer detailed status updates to your clients.

Remember, just because you may be required to use someone else’s external system on some projects, these are your client’s records and not your own! You own internal records will be necessary in any legal dispute.

Revit Integration

Union Square has developed a bridge to integrate with Revit. With the industry’s move towards BIM (Building Information Modelling), the way information is exchanged with clients and project partners has to change. Information sharing can sometimes include everything from the native model or IFC file, COBie file to traditional 2D formats like PDF, DWG, DDWF, DWFX and DGN.

Together with the Union Square drawing control system, the Revit integration will help your firm realize significant efficiency gains and see improvements in quality of output and practice-wide consistency with document production through to distribution. Included in the Revit integration is:

• Bi-directional drawing register
• Revision and versions management
• Document issuing and rendition management
• Hard copy batch print control

With Union Square, your firm will finally have synchronized model sheet information with a live drawing register and the ability to monitor approval/issue status at the click of a button.

More Mobility with Union Square 

No more clipboards! With on-site mobile technology, Union Square automates the process of site data capture, task management and reporting. You can finally achieve a bulletproof audit trail and strengthen your position in contract disputes. With Union Square you will have also have access to Mobile Custom Forms which you can customize to comply with quality assurance processes and integrate your site processes.

Full Sail Partners today announced it joined the Concur Solution Provider program and can now refer clients, including those using Deltek, to Concur, the leading provider of spend management solutions and services.

This partnership expands the Full Sail Partners offering to include Concur solutions and allows Concur data to flow into Deltek Vision, helping professional services firms create a better expense reporting experience for their employees and also enable the firms to realize significant cost savings.

“We are ecstatic to introduce Concur to our clients,” said Tanya Drake, Full Sail Partners Technology Division’s Technical Consultant. “This partnership gives project-based clients the most efficient expense reporting solution ever. Our clients will experience firm-wide cost savings and eliminate mistakes and fraud with the automated controls and duplication verification. Employees will love the automatic pull of data to their expense reports, virtually eliminating manual entry of expense reports. It’s a win-win for both the firm and employees.”

Concur Travel, Expense and Invoice are the industry’s leading solutions to help businesses manage spend and gain insights that drive savings. Concur has more than 40 million users globally, and in 2015 the company processed transactions worth more than $70 billion in travel and expense spend.

Kelly Duquette, Principal Solutions Consultant at Full Sail Partners who has worked with the Concur product at a previous firm said, “We believe this is a great opportunity for the Deltek Vision community to leverage Concur to create a fast, efficient process that allows employees to spend less time on tedious tasks and more time focusing on their billable work.” 

Together, Full Sail Partners and Concur will enable HR and accounting professionals to better manage expenses and invoice processing from approval to payment posting. The expanded capabilities offered through Concur will enable professional services firms to capture paper and electronic invoices, enabling efficient, automated processing – from purchase request through payment, including 2-way and 3-way match capabilities. 

“Travel and expense is the second largest area of controllable business spend – a challenge especially significant to SMBs. With a partner-focused initiative like the Concur Solution Provider program, we can help partners like Full Sail Partners expand the value they provide SMBs while driving business growth and profitability,” said Christal Bemont, SVP and GM of SMB and National Accounts, Concur.

To receive details about this partnership and the Concur solutions offered through Full Sail Partners, please visit http://www.blackboxconnector.com.

Full Sail Partners provides technology services and solutions for more than 1,000 professional services firms nationwide. Blackbox Connector, a division of Full Sail Partners, helps bring data together with a no-code, low cost, integration solution connecting Deltek Vision users to any API-powered application within minutes. Full Sail Partners represents project-based products focused on integrating business processes by connecting front-end and back-end systems. We seek to help organizations identify the critical resources needed to create a faster, more efficient, and cohesive business infrastructure.

This year’s Deltek Insight Conference is in Washington, D.C., from November 14th to 17th. Are you still undecided about attending? If you’ve never heard of Deltek Insight, no problem! Here’s a quick rundown of the information you need to know about Deltek Insight 2016.  

Sessions with Deltek Vision Experts

Attending sessions at Deltek Insight is a great way to have that “aha” moment. Especially when you realize Deltek Vision can do more than you ever thought. Whether you are rookie user or are a Vision power user, there are sessions for you. Why should you attend sessions? Sessions are expert-led classes by peers designed to provide Vision users with continuing education so they can further harness the power of Vision.

Additionally, experts from Full Sail Partners will lead several sessions. Do you understand how to use Vision Marketing Campaigns? Join our client Karen Crilly from BG Buildingworks and our very own Graham Gardner as they review the fundamentals and best practices of Vision Marketing Campaigns. Are you curious about using Vision’s Approval Engine? Kelly Duquette will cover five critical areas you need to know before you start. Check out the whole list of Full Sail Partners led sessions here.

Network with Other Deltek Vision Users

Let’s take a minute for some self-reflection. Do you find yourself thinking about Deltek Vision when you’re not at work? Have you found yourself chatting away about Deltek Vision with people who don’t share the same amount of enthusiasm? Wish you could find others firms like yours somewhere else in the country? If you answered yes to any of these questions, Insight is the place you need to be!

Insight provides a prime environment to meet and network with Vision users from across the United States. At Insight, you can hang out with other like-minded Vision geeks to share tips and tricks, and to have a great time.

Insight Kickoff Night  

Deltek Insight will begin Monday night with a welcome reception in the expo hall. At the welcome reception, Insight attendees are able to mingle with other attendees and learn more about the planned events and projects for Insight 2016. Additionally, Deltek organizes a charity project each year for Insight. This year’s charity project will involve the assembly of toiletry kits that Operation Gratitude can include in their care packages that are sent to deployed troops, veterans, new recruits, first responders, and Wounded Warriors. You can volunteer to help during the welcome reception.

The welcome reception also provides a great place to meet with your Deltek partner. Make sure you stop by our booth in the expo hall during the reception and find out what we are doing to make Vision better!

Celebrate Insight

After several days of Deltek Vision information overload, Insight concludes with an exciting party and live concert. Celebrate Insight is on the Wednesday night of Insight and kicks-off with a variety of food and dessert stations. After you have filled yourself with all you can eat, the entertainment begins.

If you have been to previous Insight’s, it should be no surprise to you that the Deltek house band, LoCash, will be headlining the night. Before LoCash takes the stage, enjoy a jam session with the lead signers of Sugar Ray, Tonic, and Better Than Ezra. Don’t miss out on the most exciting A/E conference of the year!

I don’t know anyone that actually enjoys completing their expense report. The process is arduous, and steals valuable time from your already hectic day. The fact is, if you want to get reimbursed for a company expenditure, you have to take the time to complete your expense report. No ifs ands or buts about it.  Luckily, Blackbox’s Deltek Vision and Concur Integration eliminates this pain staking process for your employees and frees them up to concentrate on client-focused, billable work.

So, how can the Blackbox Concur Connector help you combine the benefits or Concur's expense controls and management with Vision's financial and project management tools? Easy! See how below.

The Deltek Vision and Concur Integration Made My Life Easier:

As someone who travels a fair amount, the Deltek Vision and Concur integration has allowed me to get the most out of my business expenses. Before, I was overly focused on diligently taking a picture of every receipt and documenting every incurred cost. Now, when I am out with a client, I can focus on listening and cultivating our relationship.  Here is how:

No more expense report time dump! Concur’s credit card integration is freakin’ awesome. I’ll admit it, I am terrible at manually documenting receipts and deciphering between my credit card charges vs. cash expenses. I used to stress out when thinking about the time dump required to complete my expense reports. Now, the Deltek Vision and Concur integration allows me to complete and submit my expense reports faster, rather than waiting until the end of the month to begin the process.

User protection / fraud prevention. Recently after traveling in New York City, I submitted an expense report with duplicate charges for an Uber ride. This minor mistake held up the processing of my expense report as we internally worked out my error. Concur allows me to eliminate this time consuming process of going back and forth from submitter, management and accounting. Additionally, these controls protect the company from accidental or direct fraudulent activity.

Mobile is where it’s at! I’m constantly on the go and I rely on my smart phone for just about everything. I can honestly say that Concur’s mobile app has been a big reason that I have been more diligent with completing my expense reports.

The app utilizes OCR technology that allows me to automatically pull all relevant information off of receipts, including:

• Vendor
• Date
• Dollar amount
• And more

Additionally, the mobile app sends me alerts when I have new charges, reports to approve or notifications.

Real-time, Automatic, Transaction-based Integration.  No more waiting for new projects to show up so I can associate expenses.  No tedious manual uploads to share information between the two systems.  No more having to input the same information in multiple places.  The bi-directional connector allows the information I and my accounting team need to be available where and when it is needed.

Ready to See How Concur Integrates with Deltek Vision?

Are you ready to learn more about this turn-key integration of Deltek Vision and Concur? Join Pete Nuffer as he unveils how all Deltek Vision users can win with automated expense management.

Sales is a tough industry where success is measured by attaining goals and quotas. So why are some sales people more successful than others? The reality is, selling and buying are not completely an intellectual process and actually requires building an emotional relationship. In order for you to be a great seller, several of these personality traits should characterize you.

1. Visionary – Seeing the future and the big picture is a key to being successful in sales. More importantly, they do not allow where they are today to determine where they are going in the future.
2. Ambitious – Top sellers have personal drive and don’t wait for someone else to tell them to do something. They know there is no time to wait for the next opportunity to come along, but that they need to be actively seeking more opportunities.
3. Enthusiastic – It’s hard to sell anything if you’re not excited about the product. In fact, there might be some situations where your product is inferior to the competition. But if you’re more passionate about your product it’s more likely the buyer is going to be convinced to purchase from you.
4. Persistence – The length of a sales cycle is different for every product and other outside factors such as under-motivated decision makers. Top sellers are tenacious. They know how to stay top-of-mind with decision makers so that when they finally decide to move forward, they’re there to close the deal.
5. Conscientious – This is a personality trait used to describe a person that is efficient and well organized. Conscientious sales people are also motivated and able to keep moving forward after facing rejection.
6. Active Listener – It’s hard to know the challenges a client faces without them explaining them. An active listener helps drive the conversation so everyone involved is able to come to a mutual understanding about the challenge at hand. Therefore, great salespeople take the time to understand the challenge from the client’s perspective. They stay focused on the conversation and make notes  
7. Ask the Right Questions – There’s always multiple ways to ask a question, but choosing the right wording is critical to getting the right answer. “How’s business going?” will get a simple answer. Whereas, “What’s your biggest challenge this year?” can create a conversation.
8. Problem Solvers – Sales people are often called solution engineers and for good purpose. Sellers need to know how their product solves the problem or problems the client is facing. Additionally, they need to be able to demonstrate how the solution can solve a problem.
9. Assertive – When going through the sales process, sales people can become passive or overly aggressive. This is a huge mistake and can quickly dissuade a prospect. Assertive sales people use conversation to understand what’s going on so they know how to properly approach the situation to keep the sale process moving forward.
10. Create Value – There’s common saying about gifted sales peoples, “he/she could sell ice to an Eskimo.” In most terms, this means they are smooth talkers. However, what if the ice they are selling is perfectly shaped to build an igloo? Now the ice has more value to an Eskimo.

Which Traits of a Seller Do You Have?

It’s time to take your sales to the next level! Start selling more by first identifying the personality traits you already possess. Next, identify ways to improve on the traits you lack or need to hone. 

Our first inclination when the new FASB 606 was announced was this wouldn’t impact many of our Deltek Vision clients. But after more insight, we recognize this has a tremendous impact on our clients. The rule states applicability to ALL entities that deliver goods or services. Though many believe that GAAP, FASB, SOX and other guidelines are good rules to follow regardless of any statutory relevance, the reality is if we are not being overseen we tend to be somewhat lax in compliance.

On May 2014, FASB issued Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2014-09, Revenue from Contracts with Customers. As a result, nonpublic entities will be required to apply the revenue recognition standard. In the case of FASB 606, if you are subject to any audit oversight, whether it be the bank or a taxing agency, FASB 606 now becomes relevant. This is also relevant if revenue is used and or needed for verification. Lending institutions and those requiring financial statements for qualification have been requiring GAAP compliant financial statements and will likely begin to demand conformance to the new standards. Finally, CPAs offering attestation services will now give increased scrutiny to how firms recognize revenues on their contracts.

“Revenue is recognized when a company satisfies a performance obligation by transferring a promised good or service to a customer (which is when the customer obtains control of that good or service).”

Architects, Engineers, and Professional Service Firms that “sell” labor and drawings fall under this definition and will be subject to FASB 606.

Enter Deltek Vision Revenue Generation

Using Deltek Vision Revenue Generation was always a good idea for Project Management as it allows us to begin recognizing what we have earned as compared to what has been spent. This is done by using basic revenue generation factors such as: 

• Job to Date Spent (or as I refer to it “earn as you burn”)
• Percentage of Complete
• Milestones or Deliverables

Using Vision’s User Defined Revenue capabilities, these and other potential methods and formulas can also be developed.

Preparing Deltek Vision for FASB 606

All firms need to understand how this measure requirement relates to them and seek advice from CPAs and Tax Professionals to ensure they will meet the requirements. Our role is to work with you and your CPA to configure Deltek Vision appropriately to accommodate the methods. In advance of your discussion with your advisors, we will assist in the creation of commonly understood measures. 

To learn more about overall revenue recognition concepts in Deltek Vision, check out this past blog. For further information on how to set-up revenue generation methods related to FASB 606 in Deltek Vision, please reach out to us and a consultant will be in contact.

* Rana Blair contributed to this blog.

Recently, Beaudin Ganze Consulting Engineers, Inc. embarked on a rebranding initiative, officially becoming BG Buildingworks. A critical element of this rebranding effort was to notify the company’s key constituents to reaffirm that the rebranding was primarily a cosmetic change, and that BG Buildingworks would maintain their personnel and technical expertise.

Hear directly from Karen Crilly, BG Buildingworks’ Director of Marketing & Client Development, about this process. See how the firm was able to overcome challenges with their contact data in time to announce the rebranding prior to their 25^th anniversary.

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For BG Buildingworks, innovative solutions are at the core of their business. BG Buildingworks provides mechanical, electrical, lighting, technology, commissioning, energy analysis and LEED consulting services for projects ranging from those in higher education to government, commercial, hospitality, healthcare and more. They are experts in REVIT modeling, employing state-of-the art technology and tools to optimize energy-efficient building systems and improve the owner’s bottom line.

Through early program definition, focused project management, expert systems design and engineering and highly experienced construction phase services, BG Buildingworks provides owners with low-risk, high-return solutions for their facilities.

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Premier Partner, announces that Kelly Duquette has joined the firm as a Principal Solutions Consultant to assist professional services firms with improving their business processes within Deltek Vision. Kelly’s specialties include planning and supporting firms with migrating data during mergers and acquisitions; configuring and training of the Vision Purchasing and Asset Management modules; and building and implementing client solutions within the Vision Advanced Workflow Engine. This strategic hire expands Full Sail Partners’ consulting team presence on the east coast.

“I am thrilled to be in a client facing position that will allow me to assist clients with the use of Deltek Vision,” stated Kelly Duquette. “Full Sail Partners offers a wide variety of services and offerings that work to expand the product and make it a unique experience for each company. I look forward to engaging with clients so they can benefit from our entire team’s knowledge of the product.”

With a background in accounting, Kelly has more than 25 years of experience focused around Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system management and implementation. She holds her Master’s Degree in Business Administration and has been both a Deltek Vision user and system administrator. Prior to joining Full Sail Partners, Kelly was Vice President and Director of ERP Systems at a large Engineering/Environmental Consulting Firm, with more than 120 offices across the US and approximately 4,200 employees. With a focus on process improvement throughout her professional career, she has managed several mergers and acquisitions and led several Deltek Vision implementations and business processes initiatives.  

Kelly was the leader of the Deltek Vision Large Firm User Group and a member of the Deltek Vision Power User group. She participated in the early adopter program for the Purchasing and Asset Management modules. In November, at the Deltek Insight Conference, Kelly will be presenting on the Critical Roadmap Factors for Mergers and Acquisitions and Getting Started with Deltek Vision's Approval Engine. She will be co-presenting with Ed Zanaty for Vision Purchasing - A Project Centric Approach. In the past, she has presented at numerous user group meetings.

“Full Sail Partners jumped at the chance to bring a veteran, Deltek Vision user like Kelly on board,” said Scott Seal, Vice President of Consulting. “She has a proven track record of improving processes and creating efficiencies within the Deltek Vision system. Kelly’s extensive consulting, data migration and custom experience with professional services industry brings a wealth of knowledge to the Full Sail Partners’ consulting team and provides fluidity between the client, consultants, and the custom solutions division to ensure we are providing the right solution.”

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!