Full Sail Partners Blog (51)

Full Sail Partners Named as a Deltek Business Partner – Focused on Extending the Deltek Vision Product to Support Future Growth.

Full Sail Partners has been recognized by Deltek as member of the Million Dollar Club and a Premier Partner for 2016.  As a Premier Partner, Full Sail Partners is not only required to meet and maintain a number of standards for sales and marketing goals, but also provides implementation, consulting, support and customization services for project-focused Professional Services organizations. 

Deltek is the leading global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for government contractors, professional services firms and other project- and people-based businesses. Deltek Vision is a leading enterprise software solution designed for project-based professional services firms to improve business performance, streamline operations and win new business. Deltek Vision uniquely integrates end-to-end business processes by automating the marketing, financial management, planning, tracking and administration of resources and projects.

“We are proud to represent Deltek products,” said Sarah Gonnella, VP of Marketing and Sales from Full Sail Partners. “We believe this year will be even more successful with the release of our BlackBox Connectors, focused on connecting Deltek Vision to the outside world. This new connection tool allows firms to extend Deltek Vision’s already robust ERP solution, to maximize our client’s investment.”

In 2016 Full Sail Partners will continue to partner with Deltek to help businesses integrate their process in to one singular system, better understand and retain current customers, increase market share, and differentiate through targeted relevant and consistent conversations across systems and channels.

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

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

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

Real Results Your AEC Firm Needs to Know

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

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

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

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

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

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Premier Partner, announces that Jennifer Wilson has joined the firm as a SQL Developer. Ms. Wilson’s hire bolsters the Full Sail Partners’ team of solution developers. Jennifer will collaborate with clients and key stakeholders to help provide enhanced analytical insight into the information that impacts their business.

Jennifer joins Full Sail Partners with a strong background and acumen of database development and management. She brings with her the experience needed to successfully architect, design and populate business solutions that rely upon complex data sources.

“I enjoy the challenge of translating business processes and concepts into reports and visual aids in order to better assist clients with their analytical needs,” said Jennifer Wilson. “Professional services firms face unique challenges and requirements; I look forward to working with Deltek Vision users to streamline solutions.”

With a decade of experience in programming, reporting, product development and designing process automation, Jennifer’s background will provide valuable expertise to Full Sail Partners' customers in meeting their design, process and system improvement initiatives.

“We are thrilled to have Jennifer join the Full Sail Partners’ development staff,” said Peter Nuffer, Full Sail Partners’ Director of Product Development. “Jennifer brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to the team. Her approach and work ethic has made the rollout of Deltek Vision custom solutions seamless, helping create a better experience for our customers.”

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!

Using a third party email suite such as Constant Contact or MailChimp to power your email marketing campaigns is a huge step in the right direction. These types of email suites can greatly improve the productivity of email campaigns, while also providing insight into revenue generated from these efforts. The right technology is essential in achieving marketing goals, but technology is not a silver bullet.  Tech solutions must be accompanied with an effective overall strategy that takes into account systems and processes.

Below is a simple 8-step email marketing guide. Follow this list of do’s (and don’ts!) and start crafting more effective email campaigns!

How to Manage Email Marketing Campaigns in Vision

Looking to capture all of your email marketing campaign data in your Deltek Vision CRM? Not sure where to get started? Vision Marketing Campaigns are the go-to place to manage all of your campaigns!

Full Sail Partners and Planifi announced their recently formed strategic partnership. This alliance brings together Full Sail Partners’ world-class consulting services with Planifi’s industry-leading resource planning software “Project Analyzer” to provide architecture and engineering firms with a better way to manage their resources.

Project Analyzer is a visual resource planning software that enables project managers to quickly schedule, budget and staff projects. This graphic project management tool empowers firms to improve project planning by focusing on predictable and profitable delivery.

“We are excited to introduce Project Analyzer to our clients,” said Scott Seal, Full Sail Partners’ Vice President of Consulting. “We believe that Project Analyzer aligns with our core principals of helping professional services firms improve their business processes. Our clients will benefit from the increased visibility needed to make informed decisions around firm staffing, performance and revenue forecasts.”

Additionally, Michael Kessler, Principal Consultant at Full Sail Partners who successfully helps firms implement and utilize resource planning said, "I am looking forward to offering a powerful new planning solution to our customers. The reporting capabilities of Project Analyzer have been on my clients’ wish list for years."

This partnership will focus on enabling architecture and engineering firms to center their business on the project performance analytics that support better decision making by project managers and firm executives.

“This is a big day for Planifi,” said Tom Vandervort, Planifi founder. “This partnership will enable a whole new group of architecture and engineering firms to choose Planifi for their resource planning needs. Customers will benefit from the ability to select the solution that best works for them, all guided by Full Sail Partners’ expertise. Planifi customers will also benefit; as we are now able to offer enhanced consulting capabilities and solutions to our customers through Full Sail Partners.”

Most firms that I work with utilize independent contractors to supplement their workforce. This isn’t a blog about “walks and talks like an employee, must be an employee.” For that, I recommend a good labor attorney. However, what I am going to clue you in on is about the proper way to track and account for independent contractor’s time in Deltek Vision.

Processing Contractor Time in Deltek Vision

In most situations, the desire is for the contractor to complete a timesheet and submit an invoice for processing by Accounts Payable (AP). There are two prevailing methods within Deltek Vision to process these types of situations:

1. Zero Job Cost Rate

The contractor is set up as an employee, but doesn’t have a job cost rate only a billing rate. When time is posted there is no entry to the General Ledger (GL), but both the Time and Materials (T&M) invoice and project ledger reflect a billing dollar value. As a result, the AP invoice creates the GL entry reflective of the true cost of the contactors time

2. Job Cost Variance

For this option, setup the contractor as an employee with a job cost rate. When the timesheet posts, the cost gets booked to a unique GL code reflective of contract labor. Additionally, this cost can also be included in the base for an overhead calculation. The credit end of the timesheet posting goes to Job Cost Variance similar to all other timesheets. As a result, the AP invoice is booked to an overhead project using the Job Cost Variance Account and thereby clearing it.

That Seems Simple…Right?

This is where the accounting can start to go awry. If method one is used and care isn’t taken to ensure the AP doesn’t also create a bill extension (effort) then the potential for exposure can be:

1. Double counting of effort in project reporting leading to an understatement of profit or positive variance.
2. Double earnings of revenue if the method is associated to effort.

To alleviate these concerns, apply the following workaround in Deltek Vision:

1. Create an expense GL code table under Billing/Billing Rate Tables.
2. Enter the AP GL code used above and attach a “0” multiplier.

By following these steps, the AP billing value will not be included in project reporting and you will not experience the effects of doubling down on your effort.

Last week while attending a conference I had the chance to talk to dozens of Deltek Vision CRM users. These advanced users wanted to discuss everything from user adoption to InDesign integrations with custom proposals. I was stoked, these Vision rock stars were making my job easy. However, very few of these users said that they use Deltek Vision Marketing Campaigns. WHAT?! I couldn't believe this:  How are all of these marketers surviving without utilizing Marketing Campaigns? Marketing Campaigns are the lifeblood of my marketing efforts!

So when I got back to my room I quickly did a google search, "Deltek Vision Marketing Campaigns". Results were limited. Well… what better place to get the conversation started than this blog?

Let’s jump right in!

What are Deltek Vision Marketing Campaigns?

Any marketing effort can be created in to a Marketing Campaign. From client mailers to sponsoring a trade association event - these efforts are all marketing campaign worthy!

Think of Vision Marketing Campaigns as the central repository for all of your marketing intelligence. Campaigns enable you to:

• Document pertinent campaign information ranging from critical dates to revenue targets
• Track lead and customer involvement with your promotion
• Assign activities to team members or document interactions with contacts
• Organize document and track critical event specific tasks
• Store campaign documents and graphics
• Schedule contact follow-ups with members of your organization

Looking for a way to track your marketing pipeline and track your customer lifecycle? Associate leads, opportunities and projects to your Marketing Campaigns to better understand the value of your marketing efforts.

3 Examples of Marketing Campaigns for Professional Services Firms.

The targeted list | Let’s say you want to go after a targeted list of municipalities to target in an upcoming content marketing effort. Utilize Vision’s advanced search functionality to drill down in your CRM system to identify the pertinent contacts for your campaign. Track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts among this group. Doing so will allow you to refine your messaging over time and identify opportunities generated from your efforts.

Throw a world class client appreciation event | Building on top of the previous example, why don’t we target our top clients and throw a special event for them? It can often be crazy to plan this type of event – You’ll constantly wonder if your staff has followed up with their clients, and your staff will constantly wonder if their clients have responded. Eliminate all the unneeded confusion by creating a central information hub for your event! By creating a Marketing Campaign for this type of effort we are able to track our labor and expenses tied to the event.

Become a conference super star | Do you ever wonder what to do with all of those business cards you collect at conferences and networking events? Enter these contacts directly in to your Deltek Vision Marketing Campaign. Enroll these contacts in a lead nurturing campaign to start creating further interest among this group.

Pro tip: If you create your marketing campaign before the conference, you can start with a leg up on the competition and start reaching out to attendees in advance. Schedule meetings, send out a pre-event email and start creating a game plan before the conference begins!

Ready to Learn More?

Now that you are familiar with the basics of Deltek Vision Marketing Campaigns, it’s time to go out and start equating more value to your marketing efforts! I hope by utilizing these campaigns you are able to concentrate on the efforts that move the needle for your professional services company.

Interested in learning more? Register for our webinar The 411: Deltek Vision Marketing Campaigns.

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

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

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

Did you know you can quickly update data in seconds with Deltek Vision’s Search & Replace feature? The search and replace utility makes it possible for you to update fields globally for multiple records. Some examples of using the search and replace utility might be:

• Making project records dormant on all levels
• Inactivating contacts that have bounced emails 
• Moving data from one field to another

The possibilities are endless and great for data clean-up. Be sure to check out our video demonstrating an example of using the Search and Replace Utility in Deltek Vision.

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

Deltek Vision 7.5 Features and Enhancements:

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

Have questions about the newest enhancements and features included in Deltek Vision 7.5, or looking for information on how to upgrade to 7.5? Reach out to us, and we will be happy to help you get a grasp on all of the new functionality available to your firm!