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

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

Backup Mistakes

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

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

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

Server and Hardware Failure

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

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

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

Avoiding Updates

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

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

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

The take away here is that using supported and current software versions might seem expensive, but in the long run, it pays to stay up-to-date. By not being on the most current software, your firms' productivity and efficiency can greatly deminish.

The Big Picture

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

Introducing the Deltek Vision Constant Contact Connector! Full Sail Partners unveiled a new breed of Deltek Vision connectivity at the Deltek Insight Conference.These ready-to-go solutions included an integration to Constant Contact. This cutting edge technology allows firms to integrate to Constant Contact at a fraction of the development time and cost needed to build out a similar solution from scratch. Any Deltek Vision user can utilize this solution no matter if they are in the cloud or on-premise.

When developing the solution, our own team was challenged by the manual process we had to go through on almost a weekly basis and heard of many other Deltek Vision users faced with the same challenge. During the development of the solution the Full Sail Partners team sought to:

Allow users to utilize the existing Marketing Campaign functionality to associate contacts and leads
Eliminate the manual push of contact and lead data to Constant Contact
Provide visibility and searching capabilities to unsubscribe, open, clicks, forwards and bounce data in Vision
Report on single email lists in one Marketing Campaign for all email mailings or single mailings, i.e. newsletters
Weed out duplicates and poorly formatted email addresses prior to mailings

We invite you to view our video to learn more about our Deltek Vision Constant Contact Connector. Additionally, Full Sail Partners has partnered with Constant Contact to also offer new Constant Contact clients a discount off your subscription. Happy marketing!

Interested in Connecting Your Deltek Vision System to the Outside World?

Want to learn more about this new breed of API connection tool that can be used on-premise and in the cloud? Full Sail Partners the first and only solution provider to bring you applications that can immediately connect to your Deltek Vision product with little to no effort from your IT department. Start doing more with your Deltek Vision system!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn More

Ready to learn more about the features offered in Deltek Vision CRM? Sign up for our virtual webinar:

Full Sail Partners unveils new custom solutions and integrated offerings for Deltek Vision® ERP at Deltek Insight 2015. The Vision Connector Suite includes ready-to-go solutions focused on keeping professional services firms centered on efficient production by connecting their critical business systems.

The Full Sail Partners Vision Connector Suite allows quick connections from Deltek Vision to other API capable applications. This next generation framework allows both Deltek Vision cloud and on-premise systems to seamlessly integrate with best-in-class cloud applications like Constant Contact, MailChimp, SharePoint for Office 365, Client Feedback Tool, and more. This cutting edge technology allows firms to integrate critical business systems at a fraction of the development time and cost needed to build out similar solutions, with none of the traditional network topology restrictions. Solutions include:

Automated Feedback Process

Full Sail Partners is releasing version 2.0 for the Client Feedback Tool, a cloud solution built to help firms collect and incorporate feedback from their clients throughout the project life cycle. Leveraging the Vision Connector between these two systems was ideal for a prebuilt integration. A team of experts developed an automated process to reduce redundancy and improve efficiency while adhering to the feedback philosophy set forth by the Client Feedback Tool. Full Sail Partners integration with the Client Feedback Tool allows Deltek Vision clients to deploy surveys on-demand or through a batch process, as well as, view the survey response status directly in Vision.

Email Marketing Connectors

Deltek Vision now integrates with Constant Contact enabling firms to populate data directly to their email marketing tool from Deltek Vision CRM in a matter of minutes. The Connector maintains consistency between the two applications and eliminates manual importing and exporting of data. This mutual relationship between data will save marketing teams hundreds of hours each year. The solution provides tracking capabilities through the Deltek Vision Marketing Campaigns Info Center providing visibility that can be leveraged throughout the system.

Deltek Vision Meets SharePoint Office 365

The SharePoint Connector is a quick and easy way to bring data in Deltek Vision and SharePoint into harmony. Beyond basic connectivity, the SharePoint Connector also integrates with Gig Werks’ ProjectReady Suite of Applications’ best in class SharePoint solutions built for the AEC industry. This bi-direction data synchronization ensures data accuracy and consistency across all of your projects.

“We look forward to expanding our investment in business productivity and integration offerings,” said Peter Nuffer, Director of Solution Development at Full Sail Partners. “We’ve effectively established a layer of functionality on top of the Vision API that will allow Deltek Vision administrators to setup easy point and click ready-to-go solutions with low costs and high tech results.”

As a fan of zombie movies, you can probably guess that The Walking Dead is one of my favorite shows. If you’ve never watched it before, it’s a series that follows a group of survivors as they learn to adapt in a world overrun by zombies. Now, I’m going to let you in on a secret – don’t become attached to any of the main characters, because they are more than likely going to die. It’s the unfortunate reality for any zombie themed flick. Although your firm isn’t facing a zombie apocalypse, they do face several threats that can affect profit margins on fixed fee projects. Let’s find out if any of these classic zombie types are lurking in your fixed fee projects.

The Runner Zombie

Runner zombies are always sprinting after survivors, and often only injure the victim as they frantically run to attack another survivor. You can probably identify these frightening zombies and know how hard it is to avoid them.

These are clients with awesome project opportunities, but they rush to send out multiple request for proposals (RFPs) in a relatively short amount of time. As a result, each RFP contains incomplete plans and poorly explained specifications that go unnoticed until the project has launched. These overlooked mistakes often result in change orders and unpaid work time as these zombies take bites out of your profit.

The Surprise Zombie

The surprise zombies hide in the shadows and pop out periodically throughout the movie or show for quick surprise attacks on the survivors. They appear randomly in order to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. In a project management scenario, this zombie type may sound like subcontractors who love to surprise you and keep you on the edge of your seat.

The fact is, your firm develops project proposals and budgets based on the estimates provided by the subcontractors. But far too often, these estimates contain errors due to omissions and incorrect assumptions. Now the overlooked permit fee or low estimate on a materials allowance increases the budget and eats away at your profit.

The Exploding Zombie

All of a sudden, boom! It’s the loud explosion of a zombie exploding, or was that the cost of the materials pricing for your project skyrocketing? The cost of materials changes and we all understand this, however the supplier is supposed to be the expert.

Some RFPs are for projects that start right away and in other cases, some RFPs are for projects that won’t start for over a year. Even more, project durations can be as short as a month to multiple years. Knowing what the materials are going to cost at the time of the project and throughout the project lifecycle is essential to making a profit. Not being able to predict these changes can cause your materials costs to explode.

The Crawler Zombie

Crawler zombies are more of a nuisance and like to cause disruptions to the survivors as they escape to safety. These zombies are the slow movers and the problem with them is they lurk everywhere, from within your own firm to the subcontracted help.

Every project plan is susceptible to these slow movers who can’t complete a task within the designated time period. Consequently, another task can’t start until the crawler zombie finally completes their task. This sets off a chain reaction of delays that eventually affects the entire project timeline.

The Spitter Zombie

This is a total different type of zombie than the others. What makes them unique is their ability to attack from medium to long range with their toxic spit. Since they attack their unsuspecting victims from afar, the survivors must rely on their reflexes to survive. You might not see the spitter zombie often and that’s with good reason. The spitter zombie in your project is the micro-managing client who doesn’t have a pulse on the project since they are not on site.

These clients present two types of threats to the project. Firstly, these types of clients might be slow to respond to approvals and requests since they are not on site and easy to find. Secondly, they inject slight modifications to the plan without understanding the real effects of those changes. Working with off-site clients isn’t always horrifying, as long you’re able to react fast to minimize the damage to your profit, and keep an open and effective line of communication with the client.

Protecting Your Profit

Like the survivors in The Walking Dead, you can never let your guard down when taking on a fixed fee project. Protecting your profit starts during the proposal process and doesn’t end until the project is complete. Every project faces several threats to the bottom line, but learning to adapt to changes can increase your firm’s survival chances if you should ever encounter an apocalypse or in your case, a daunting project.

DELTEK MULTICOMPANY According to PWC, “M&A activity accelerated sharply in the second quarter of 2015 with substantial increases relative to the prior quarter in both volume and value of transactions.” As consultants assisting firms with merging their databases, we have seen this up tick too and firms involved in mergers or acquisitions are finding great value out of Deltek Vision’s Multi-Company feature. Some firms don’t know that Multi-Company is included with their Vision Core Finance application. It just needs to be enabled and configured when your firm is ready to add another
company to your current Vision database.

What is Multi-Company?

Vision Multi-Company allows a firm to manage multiple legal entities in a single Vision database. There is no limit to the number of companies that can be maintained in Vision. Multi-Company streamlines the process of managing accounting functions between companies when resources are shared. Once Multi-Company is enabled, it is easy to switch between companies. Just like changing periods in Vision, a simple utility selection will move you between companies.

Each company operates as a separate entity. Info Center records, such as clients and contacts, can be shared across the enterprise (the “enterprise” encompasses all companies managed in Vision). However, other Info Center records, such as employees, are company specific. Projects and phases can be owned by a single company or set up so that individual phases can be owned by different companies.

Before Enabling Multi-Company

There are several factors to consider before enabling the Multi-Company feature. One primary factor to consider is how your companies will interact with one another. When resources are shared, how will the company loaning their staff or paying expense on behalf of another company be compensated? This is done through intercompany billing.

Definition: Intercompany billing is defined as, internal transactions between two associated companies who file a consolidated tax return or financial statement.

There are several approaches to intercompany billing that should be a part of the planning discussion during the implementation process. These and other questions should be addressed during the planning process and will help you determine if Multi-Company is a good fit for your firm.

Considerations When Setting Up a New Company in Deltek Vision

When acquiring a company to be added to your Vision database as a separate company, there are a number of enterprise-wide requirements to consider. For example, the fiscal calendar, work breakdown structure and organization structure must be the same across all companies, as well as, key formats such as project numbers, vendor numbers, employee numbers, etc. All of these items must be consistent across all companies.

After the initial planning meeting, if your firm determines that Multi-Company is not an option, you can always explore the alternative of using Organization reporting within Vision. Organization reporting gives you the ability to manage separate business units within a single company environment. The “maintain separate balance sheets” feature in Vision could also be used if needed, as well as, the labor cross charge feature to move revenue, labor and cost between organizations.

Final Thoughts

A well thought out, carefully planned implementation is essential to a successful Multi-Company implementation. Once the final implementation plan is in place, the creation of a test Multi-Company environment before the final configuration in your live Vision database will go a long way in preparing your finance staff and the rest of your employees for the new Multi-Company environment and all of the new features a Multi-Company database has to offer. For more information on Multi-Company check out this previous blog on how it works.

Project Planning Blog Graphic Congratulations! Your firm just won the largest project in its history and it’s time to celebrate, or is it? Unfortunately, winning the big project doesn’t guarantee success and big profits. For project-based firms, project management is synonymous with profit management, but many projects start in the red making it nearly impossible to make a profit. Here’s a look at some common pitfalls project-based firms face before they ever start a project.

Accurate Job Costing

If you have been on a proposal team, you know the feeling of relief that overcomes you once you finally submit the proposal. Weeks of working long hours reading and writing exhilarating technical content and attending meeting after meeting. All this work and time exhausted by several people when in reality, your final price is the biggest factor in winning. But, can your firm deliver the project on the proposed budget?

Accurate job costing requires accurate information, and most firms believe they have the right systems for their business model. Excel sheets and the time clock work, but these systems don’t communicate very well. Even more, consider the unreported overhead time to reconcile these systems and the mistakes made during this process.

“If it works, don’t fix it” doesn’t always apply, and information in more than one system doesn’t work when trying to maximize profit. When it comes to job costing, you already have to worry about inaccurate estimates from suppliers. These are costs you can’t control, so be sure to take control of your internal cost monitoring to create profitable bids you can deliver.

Establishing Key Performance Indicators

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are various quantifiable measurements used for determining the success of the project. The KPIs establish a guide to the project and are used as the basis for critical decision-making. More importantly, not executing on a specific KPI can affect the project’s profitability for your firm and your client’s satisfaction.

Here’s where some project-based firms struggle. In many cases, several of the KPIs are destined for failure before the project starts. The problem is that defining KPIs is truly challenging and your clients usually lack experience with the process. All too often, this results in KPIs that are unrealistic and unmeasurable.

Establishing realistic KPIs is the first step to managing the profit of a project. As the project manager, it’s in your best interest to have a strong role in creating the KPIs. Good project KPIs have values that can be accurately measured and clearly reported on. Further, they need to be understood and agreed to by all parties. To learn more about project KPIs, click here.

Risk Management

Projects are full of unforeseen obstacles and predicting these is not always possible, but this doesn’t mean your firm can’t minimize the impacts. They just need to have a formal risk management strategy. Although this might be a time consuming process, it’s a necessary process required to protect your profit.

A study by Info-Tech Research Group found that organizations with a formal risk management strategy are more than half as likely to have project management success than those with a reactive approach. To put it another way, having a risk management strategy before the project gets started is critical to the project’s success and profitability.

A risk management strategy starts with identifying common risks such as unrealistic schedules and requirements that fail to align with the strategy of the project. Once these risks are identified, evaluate the impact each risk will have on the project. From there, make a contingency plan that has a pre-planned response to the unexpected event.

Become a Profit Manager

Don’t start your next project in the red. Project management starts with project planning, and not having the right systems and processes in place can hinder the success of the project. If your firm is falling into any of these pitfalls, consider the changes that you can make to become an effective profit manager.

michael kessler Cropped Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Premier Partner, announces that Michael Kessler has joined the firm as a Principal Consultant. Mr. Kessler’s hire bolsters the Full Sail Partners’ team to 25 professionals focused on accounting and technology solutions. Michael’s extensive knowledge of the Deltek product set and proven consulting expertise will be an ideal match to help clients streamline business processes and achieve greater efficiency from their Deltek Vision ERP system.

As Principal Consultant, Michael brings 30 years of experience working in and around project-based accounting in both the Government Contracting and Professional Services industry. His extensive background includes overseeing accounting, auditing and finance operations.

“I am really looking forward to the opportunity to work with such a diverse set of clients,” said Michael Kessler. “I have a passion for helping finance departments utilize Deltek Vision and Resource Planning to their fullest capabilities to reach maximum productivity. I believe that processes designed under the guide of best practices, which work in tandem with system configuration, result in meaningful reporting and the ability to evaluate key performance indicators.”

Michael Kessler has spent the past nine years actively involved in the Deltek community as a member of the Deltek Direct team where he assisted hundreds of US and international clients with system implementations and application support. His keen understanding of the Deltek Vision product, previous industry experience, and his passion for helping clients brings a strong player to the Full Sail Partners consulting arsenal.

“We are honored to have Michael join the Full Sail Partners’ team,” said Scott Seal, Full Sail Partners’ Vice President of Consulting. “Michael’s vast knowledge of Deltek Vision ERP and Resource Planning adds additional depth and expertise to our collaborative Consulting Team. Michael has a proven track record with offering exceptional client services and we are excited to have him help our clients better leverage their Deltek Vision systems.”

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

Are you responsible for handling client complaints? As an Owner of a firm, I know that figuring out a way to proactively identify issues before they become bigger is a key concern for most executives. The Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) conducted research on this topic and found that the average business never hears from 96% of unhappy clients. Businesses dedicate money to attracting new clients each year, yet a key area that is overlooked is developing a client retention plan.

How Do You Calculate Client Retention Rates?

It seems like almost every firm I speak with in the AEC industry states their client retention rate is 80%. However, is that a good or bad rate? Let’s breakdown some definitions:

Attrition rate is the percentage of clients you have lost over a given period
Retention rate is the percentage of clients you have retained over a given period

So if your client retention rate is 80% then that means your attrition rate is 20%, no matter how many new clients you obtain. Here is how to calculate client retention rates:

Client Retention Rate = ((CE-CN)/CS)) x 100

Clients End (CE) = Number of clients at END of period

Clients New (CN) = Number of NEW clients acquired during period

Clients Start (CS) = Number of clients at START of period

Client Retention Impacts Profits

When you take into account that SMPS reports it takes six to seven times more effort to obtain a new client than retain an existing client. It would seem that focusing on client retention would be a no brainer. Yet does your firm even have a plan for client retention and do you track it?

A study by Bain & Company shows that even a five percent increase in client retention can lead to an increase in profits of between 25 and 95 percent. Let’s do the math. Envision the following is true for your firm:

Your firm makes $2M a year
Has a profit of 10% or $200,000 at the end of the year
Has 50 clients at the beginning of the year
Has a 80% client retention rate (kept 40 clients) at the end of the year

So, let’s say that our goal is to increase client retention to 85%. By increasing your client retention by 5% you could increase your profits to $250,000 (13%) or $390,000 (20%). Have you connected the dots? Profits increase because you are spending less time trying to win new clients and more time making sure you are managing the expectations of your existing clients.

Why Clients Leave and How to Prevent It

So now that we know why it’s important, let’s understand more about why clients leave. SMPS found that 68% of clients leave firms because of an attitude of indifference toward the client by some employee and only 9% leave for competitive reasons, which most firms think is the cause. Yet as previously pointed out most firms don’t even know there is an issue.

The obvious answer to resolve this challenge is talk to the client and obtain feedback periodically, yet few firms do it and fewer do it consistently well. Understanding what motivates clients and how to make your services relevant to them is fundamental to building strong client relationships. Obtaining feedback is important for executives and marketing to monitor, but the key way to ensure the relationship is strong is to provide a systematic way, like the Client Feedback Tool, for Project Managers to know when to reach out throughout the lifecycle of the project. Not just at the end.

Benefits of Feedback

Successful companies know the critical importance of reaching out to their clients for feedback and service firms that ARE monitoring client feedback are:

Differentiating themselves
Gaining great insight to better serve their clients
Discovering what clients find of value
Identifying clients that will pay a premium for their services
Increasing profits
Improving staff retention
and much more

Reach out to us today to find out more about monitoring feedback and developing a client retention plan for your firm.

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