Full Sail Partners Blog | CRM (4)

There has been an uptick in interest recently from C-Level financial leaders to become more involved with the CRM functions within Vision. You may ask yourself why this new trend is occurring since the CRM module of Vision is for marketing and business development functions. The reason must surely be based on an informational need so that actionable decisions can be made.

CRM Information for Financial Leaders 

CRM databases are full of information to help the marketing and business development team drive new business. So, what information can provide financial leaders the insight they need to make better decisions?  

1. The Life Cycle of Projects – More often than not, a project is born during the opportunity stage. More specifically, the opportunity can trigger a promotional project and/or a resource plan. As a result, there are financial considerations that must be taken into account: 

• The numbering of both the promo project and the plan
• Determining when the pursuit trigger will need to include resources in the staffing heat map
• Figuring out the rate tables and a multiplier that are going to be used in the plan 

2. Pipeline and Backlog – A conversation that often occurs between a CFO and director of business development is about the movement of future revenue from the pipeline to soft backlog to hard backlog. This can result in some level of double counting and is especially prevalent in task ordering agreements or infinite deliver/infinite quantity (IDIQ’s). C-Level financial people need to be involved in the definition stage of how future revenue is separated and quantified.
3. Cost of Winning and Losing Work – Opportunities afford us the ability to track hit rates. These are metrics showing win/loss ratios and can be filtered by unique attributes that are meaningful to your organization. One suggested attribute to track separately is sole source versus competitive wins. From this metric, financial managers can begin to quantify and measure the effort that goes into these wins and losses. However, this requires creating a promo project once the decision is made to bid on an opportunity.
4. Utilization – Having the fluidity to evaluate time spent on a proposal is a value add. Moreover, C-Level financial types are also aware of utilization. By moving time from a promo project to a regular type project, the time moves from non-productive to productive. When we use Vision functionality to isolate proposal time on utilization reports, it provides insight into why employees are not being productive. 

Sharing Information Firm Wide

It’s always best practice to share important firm data with key individuals from all teams, but those people should also be able to find the information on their own. Like this new trend for financial leaders to learn more about using the CRM module in Vision, marketing and business development people also need to know how to access information from the financial side of Vision. Most importantly, everyone should be involved in the implementation of all Vision modules to ensure the initial setup, data structure and reports are valuable to the firm.

“I can’t find anything in our CRM system.”

“Our CRM system isn’t user friendly.”

“Our CRM system doesn’t provide me the data I need.”

The statements above can apply to any Client Relationship Management (CRM) system. Yep, you heard me right. These comments are shared with me daily by prospects and clients alike. These complaints may seem valid, but the truth behind why your CRM system sucks is much harder to swallow and admit. Deep down inside, you know the real reasons. Today I’m going to share with you why your CRM system doesn’t work and what you can do about it.

The main reason why CRM implementations usually fail isn’t because of the system, it’s because of you. I told you this was going to be hard to swallow. A CRM system is meant to provide a place to house all of the important information about your clients and opportunities. However, many firms purchase a CRM system thinking it will miraculously do the work for them with no effort required. 

A CRM system can work for you, but not if you haven’t set it up or implemented it with forethought. More importantly, it can’t work for you if you don’t actually touch or use it. So stop pointing your finger at the CRM system and placing the blame. As the saying goes, when you point one finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you. 

If you want a successful CRM implementation, here are some things to consider. 

Stop Focusing on the Wrong Things about Your CRM 

Your CRM system should focus on a few reports to make sure sales people are generating business for your firm. Each of those reports need to be automatically sent to you at the same time every week, month or quarter. As a Sales Manager, you need to know: 

1. Do we have enough pipeline?
2. What opportunities require follow-up?
3. How are we getting new deals?
4. Why are we losing deals?
5. Who previously spoke with the client?

No system in the world can save you if you haven’t set up a way of monitoring these core activities. No bells and whistles of a new system will accomplish this essential task. Stop whining and making excuses. The fact is, if you don’t have these key reports, you haven’t established your processes. Take a step back and identify what really matters first.

Whip It! Whip it Good!

Every system needs someone dedicated to managing it. In the AEC industry, QA/QC is a must with projects to avoid potential failure. Your CRM system is no different. Make sure each area of the system has someone that “owns” it to ensure there is integrity with the data. Give these people some whipping power! Management must stand behind them, it is expected that everyone will update their own clients, contacts and opportunities. Above all, these system “owners” should know the system inside and out and take full responsibility for its success.

Making Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

Firms that are successful at CRM make it a part of their culture. It’s not an option to use the system, but rather a requirement. Don’t let excuses stop your team from using the system. Provide them training and support to learn the system and expect in return that employees use the system as designed. Anyone can find a reason why they can’t or won’t. However, accepting excuses won’t provide your firm the information needed to make informed decisions about sales pursuits.

Don’t Let Your CRM Suck

So what are you going to do? Are you going to keep making excuses and blaming the system or are you going to take the necessary steps to whip your system into shape? We at Full Sail Partners are available to help firms successfully implement their CRM. We expect all of our employees to practice what we preach and will work hard with you to ensure that your CRM no longer sucks.

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.

In this Deltek Vision How-To Video, we will demonstrate how to add custom fields to Deltek iAccess and the Touch CRM application. With Deltek Vision’s open architecture, adding custom fields is easy. While you are on-the-go, you can also access any custom field. Let us show you how.

Garbage in, garbage out! Believe it or not, this is a real term in the field of computer science and it has an acronym, GIGO. More importantly, this theory can be applied to the data integrity in a client relationship management (CRM) software. Marketing decisions are only as good as the data used to make them. If the data in a CRM are incomplete and erroneous, developing strategic decisions becomes nearly impossible. In other words, it’s like throwing ideas at a wall and waiting to see what sticks. According to data experts, many businesses are struggling to maintain a CRM database with consistent and usable information about their clients. Look below to see what these experts have to say about client data integrity.

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Vision Premier Partner, has released the Deltek Vision Connector for Constant Contact, an integration of Deltek Vision and Constant Contact.

The Deltek Vision Connector for Constant Contact allows Deltek Vision CRM users to seamlessly create targeted Constant Contact email campaigns by leveraging real-time intelligence directly from Deltek Vision CRM. Once an email campaign is active, users are then able to analyze the results of these campaigns directly in their Deltek Vision system.

“We are really excited to help professional services firms maintain consistency between their Deltek Vision and Constant Contact systems,” said Peter Nuffer, Director of Solution Development at Full Sail Partners. “Users of this integration are refining their messaging and crafting more meaningful campaigns for their readers.”

Connectivity between Deltek Vision and Constant Contact gives users the ability to create more comprehensive email marketing campaigns, reduce labor intensive manual processes and better capture marketing ROI. This mutual relationship between data will allow your marketing team to save countless hours over the duration of a marketing campaign.

“As  one of the first users of the Deltek Vision Constant Contact integration, BG Buildingworks was excited to sync our contacts between our Deltek Vision CRM system and Constant Contact,” said Karen Crilly, Director of Marketing and Client Development for BG Buildingworks. “We used the integration to setup a campaign to announce our company name change. We were able to create a Constant Contact campaign directly from our Deltek Vision CRM system to notify over 4,500 contacts. The campaign went off without a hitch and we saw nearly a 30% open rate on our mailer.”

Interested in learning more about the integration of Deltek Vision and Constant Contact? Click below to learn more.

Welcome to part two of our Marketing Automation Series. In the last blog we looked at how automation tools can impact your SMB. In part two of this series we are going to dig further and examine the Deltek Vision marketing automation tools available to you within your system.

Deltek Vision Marketing Automation: Marketing Made Easier

1) Merge Fields & Templates

If you produce a lot of proposals or documents that follow a defined format (think SF330!), you will love merge fields and templates. Use this functionality to merge data directly from your Deltek Vision system to Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Word. Not only will you greatly reduce the time dump required to create these documents but your marketing efforts will gain a level of accuracy and consistency.

Use merge templates to create:

• Statement of qualification responses
• Letter proposals
• Resumes
• Cover letters
• Project cut sheets
• Reference pages
• And more!

Check out this webinar to learn more about creating proposals with Deltek Vision and Adobe InDesign.

2) Workflows

Deltek Vision workflows can greatly reduce the manual processes you manage in Deltek Vision on a daily basis. Workflows are a series of actions that your Deltek Vision system will execute based on events and triggers that occur within a specified Info Center.

For example: A workflow could be used by a proposal manager to notify a project team when a new project has been created in Vision.

Check out this webinar to learn more about Deltek Vision workflows.

3) Integrations and Connectors

Allow your marketing efforts to go further than ever before by opening your Deltek Vision system to outside software and applications. Eliminating manual processes associated with disparate systems allows your marketing team to focus their efforts on creating a quality client experience for each customer.

For example: Integrate your Deltek Vision system with your website Content Management System to capture valuable lead and customer data in your Deltek Vision CRM. Once a website contact fills out a form on your website they will be automatically added to your Deltek Vision system. Your marketing team can then implement a series of workflows to generate a personal email follow-up note a week later. Additionally you may want to consider scheduling a workflow to notify your sales team of lead activity on your website.

View this webinar to see how Deltek Vision users are creating User Defined Info Centers to create dynamic workspaces within Vision CRM.

Learn More About Deltek Vision Marketing Automation

Want to see what real users are doing automate marketing and streamline processes with their Deltek Vision CRM system? Sign up for our webinar, ‘Let’s do this!’

2016 seems to be the year of the buzzword. Everywhere you look you see a new trendy term: Contextual marketing, growth hacking, marketing automation... the list continues! This blog is here to clear up the confusion and help your SMB get started with marketing automation.

  1. What are Marketing Automation Tools?

Marketing automation tools streamline tedious procedures, eliminate manual processes and give the entire organization insight into results of marketing efforts. Marketing automation tools allow us to find out more about our audience and enable marketing teams to create more impactful campaigns. Additionally, automation tools enable SMBs to do more with less resources.

  2. What is the Value of Marketing Automation Tools?

One thing to note is that marketing automation by no means replaces your marketing staff. These tools simply allow them to do more for your organization; providing your team intelligence and time saving mechanisms to make a greater impact on your organization.

Marketing can often be a love-hate relationship for many SMBs. Many firms view marketing as a hit-or-miss type of function. Either marketing positioned the firm to win the job, or they failed – there is often very little grey area. Marketing automation tools introduce a level of analytics and metrics associated to the cost of marketing efforts… bringing everything back to the almighty dollar!

  3. Won’t Automation Remove the Personal Touch?

Understand that there are varying degrees of marketing automation that can be established, and It’s important to take things one step at a time. 

Some people fear that marketing automation tools are going to remove the personal touch from marketing campaigns. Marketing automation tools often add MORE personalization to marketing efforts. These tools simply remove the time intensive processes out of the way, allowing you to spend more time creating a dynamic experience for each customer.

  4. What are Some Examples of Marketing Automation Tools?

These days there are dozens of marketing automation tools. HubSpot, Act-On, TweetDeck, Hootsuite… the list goes on and on.  These tools can help you manage tasks ranging from social media publishing to inbound lead scoring. But to get the most out of these tools you need to make sure that they connect and talk to your CRM system. Doing so will give you one centralized location to manage all of your marketing tools.

As you can see, it is important to invest the proper time and planning to think through your marketing and sales process and develop an automation plan that fits your organizational goals.

We would like to learn more about what your firm is using for marketing automation. In exchange, we will provide you a free download of the Vision Mail Management Info Center. Also, be sure on the lookout for our next marketing automation blog.

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!