Deltek Vision Myths Are you thinking about needing a new accounting system or ERP? If your firm is still on Deltek Advantage, Sema4, or FMS or even on Quickbooks, Protrax or another system, you might be evaluating options to figure out which solution is right for you. We receive questions from prospects asking about the differences between Deltek Vision and some other product. Additionally, during our conversations over the years, we have heard many myths about Deltek Vision and we thought it was time to set the record straight, as we see it.

To start, what we have found is some software providers say they have a feature, but the quality and capabilities are completely different. Some people might say we are biased. You know what, we probably are, but for good reason:

We use the product we sell. We know Deltek Vision inside and out. Can our competitors say that? Ask them.
We aren’t just sales people. We care about the success of our clients and that’s not just rhetoric. We’d rather turn a sale away then have an unhappy client.
We have done extensive migrations of all kinds of software. What we have found is many of our competitor’s software are done on the cheap or just completely leave out industry standard capabilities.

Below are the top 4 Deltek Vision myths:

Myth #1 - Deltek Vision is only for large firms.

Fact #1 – The numbers don’t support this claim. As a Deltek Premier Partner, the majority of the firms we serve are under 50 employees. Of those firms on Deltek Vision, 57% are under 50 employees; 33% are 25 employees or under; and 17% are 15 employees and under. Most importantly, the size of your firm should have no bearing on the solution you choose. What is more important is choosing a solution that fits your staff’s needs, the information you need to make business decisions and your firm’s growth plans. Deltek Vision fits firms of any size. Additionally, in 2012, Deltek came out with a cloud option (SaaS) for Deltek Vision that made Vision simpler to deploy at a lower entry price for any size firm. Check out this 10-person firm’s story.

Myth #2 – Deltek Vision is so expensive.

Fact #2 - A recent 20-person firm looking at another AE ERP product was surprised to find that Deltek Vision’s cloud software option was less expensive. In fact, Deltek Vision has had a very comparable software pricing for small firms ever since the SaaS option became available. Additionally, the basic package of Deltek Vision’s SaaS offering includes 5 users of CRM for marketing and business developers and 5 users of Resource Planning for operations. The choice for us seems simple. For about the same price you get a much more robust system with Deltek Vision. Where the differences in pricing may come is with the services that are provided. Here are some key items to keep in mind when receiving an implementation quote to ensure you are getting the same level of service:

Does the quote include migration? Our experts have been doing migrations for almost 30 years and we are proud to say we probably have some of the best in the business. When it comes to migrating your data, we highly recommend importing your historical data. The level of import can vary, but it’s important to make sure you are comparing apples to apples. Will bringing over the beginning balances be enough? This is only a question you can answer, but our experience has been firms rarely want this option unless that is their only option. Do you really want to lose all of your historical information?
This is more than a transaction. You are not just buying software, you are buying a solution that needs to address the specific capabilities your firm’s needs. More importantly, you are buying into a relationship. From our perspective, we aim to make sure the software is the right fit. If it isn’t Deltek Vision, then we will raise our hand and tell you. That is why we take a consultative sales approach and conduct a discovery to uncover what is working well and identify if there are bottlenecks or inefficiencies that could help you improve your business. The discovery process should identify the output needed. More specifically, what data (reports, alerts, dashboards, etc.) is needed to make business decisions? These specific capabilities should drive what you are looking for. Make sure you are talking to a consultant during the process, not just a sales person and take time to establish a relationship. We are here to help you today and tomorrow as your firm grows.

Myth #3 - Vision is complicated.

Fact #3 – This fact is easily debatable. Driving a stick shift is difficult for some people, but for others it is simple. So the word itself is relative. We argue that Vision is not complicated, but rather it’s scalable. What can’t be debated is that Deltek Vision is great for growing businesses. Businesses are constantly changing and no one has a magic ball to predict when these changes will occur. Here are some key points to keep in mind if you are a growing firm looking for a new solution:

Firm Evolution - Should your firm have different contract work types; need to expand your business; or face evolutionary life cycle challenges, like ownership transition and retirement scenarios, Deltek Vision can easily accommodate growing firms. It has all the utilities, under the hood to handle these contingencies.
Acquisitions – Should you acquire a new firm, all of the data can be accommodated in Deltek Vision. The same cannot be said about our AE ERP competitors. In fact, in addition to a push button conversion for Advantage users, Full Sail Partners has created push button conversion tool for Ajera. Additionally, we have a very streamlined process and economical migration price for Quickbooks. The same cannot be said of our AE ERP competitors. Because Deltek Vision has the ability to create custom fields, tabs, grids, and User Defined Info Centers (UDIC), all data can be represented. To put it simply, Deltek Vision can represent all data from other databases. However, if a firm was on Deltek Vision and tried to migrate to our competitor’s software, you would in fact lose data.

Myth #4 – Other AE ERP Solutions have the same capabilities as Deltek Vision.

Fact #4 – The differences between Deltek Vision and other AE ERP software are vast and go beyond just multi-currency capabilities. Here is a breakdown of some of those differences:

Audit Trail - Deltek Vision has an audit trail. When changes are made in Deltek Vision, all changes are tracked and you know who made the change and when. This is not only important from an accounting perspective, but very important for firms that have government compliance requirements.
Multi-Company - If this capability is needed, Deltek Vision allows the set-up of multiple companies including reporting with a single sign-in. One financial report can be run to see how each company is doing. Other solutions have tried to resolve this issue on the cheap by creating separate database instances requiring multiple logins. Keep in mind, you will not be able to share financial reporting for all companies and there is no automated Inter-company billing process, therefore, each company reporting is separate.
CRM - If this capability is needed, Deltek Vision has an integrated, seamless CRM and proposal automation module that has a single sign-in. Additionally, Deltek Vision integrates into other marketing tools, including Constant Contact, MailChimp and Hubspot. Other AE ERP solutions may integrate with other CRM solutions. Because of that you will have a separate system that requires two separate logins. The process is far from seamless and none of them integrate with other marketing tools.
Security – Deltek Vision provides the ability to lock down any field in the system and make it read only. Unfortunately, security in other AE ERP solutions are not as robust as Deltek Vision.
Built-in Capabilities – Deltek Vision contains tools that provide flexibility and allows users to streamline processes and clean up data on the fly without any programming knowledge. Because of the open architecture, the system is built to grow with your firm. Here are some examples of some of the built-in capabilities that can be utilized:
- Custom Fields – Deltek Vision provides the ability to create user defined fields, tabs, grids and info centers as your firm sees fit. As your firm grows, you may need to track further information.
- Workflows – Deltek Vision provides the ability to streamline processes through workflows. For example, sometimes data needs to be represented in two locations. However, you never want to a have dual entry process. In Vision, you can have data entered into one location and the data flows to the other location. View this webinar, to learn more about the power of workflows.
- Utilities – Vision has built-in utilities to handle contingencies to easily clean-up and move data without a migration or custom expert.
  - Need to move billed time to a new phase? There’s a button for that.
  - Need to combine two clients together? There’s a simple to use conversion tool to do that in seconds.
  - Need to move data from one location to another? There’s search and replace utility that is simple to use.
  - Have more than 999 projects and need to add another digit to your project number structure? There’s key formats for that.

Choosing the Right ERP

Finding the right ERP solution for your business is not an easy process and is full of misguided information. Therefore, asking the right questions is imperative to get clear answers. Formulate your questions based on the needs of your firm. Then find out and compare how each ERP solution manages these requirements. Make sure there is substance. Those shiny features might just be an illusion to distract you from the lack of robust capabilities. Some AE ERP solutions try to act like Vision, but they don’t perform like Deltek Vision.

iMac Monitor v2 Sometimes life’s not fair. We’ve all been told this before, and if you are part of the human resources (HR) department, I’m sure you hear about fairness all the time. But what about you - the HR professional performing manual processes and navigating through a sea of paper work. Why do the accounting and operations departments have sophisticated software to make their lives easier? It’s just another one of life’s injustices, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s right, talent management systems are now being integrated into those awesome Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions your counterparts in other departments are using and are changing the way companies manage their human capital.

So how does managing talent with an ERP benefit your company? Let me explain. The purpose of a talent management system is to attract, retain, and develop a skilled workforce to ensure a company has the talent needed in order to grow in the future. More specifically, these systems are integrated software suites that address the three core areas of managing talent: recruitment, performance tracking, and employee development. Let’s look at how a talent management system can ease headaches for the HR department and can increase workforce engagement.

Recruitment – Talent Acquisition

Admit it, the recruitment process is a daunting task and selecting the best candidate isn’t easy. One job posting can generate hundreds of responses from candidates with varying levels of skills, and reviewing all those resumes is a time consuming process. Why continue spending precious hours on the tedious recruitment process when a talent management system can reduce these headaches.

Talent management systems can eliminate several of the time consuming and tedious tasks related to the recruitment process. For starters, advertising new positions over multiple job board sites and social media sites happens with just one click, therefore reducing the time to advertise new positions. Speaking of saving time, the most time consuming component of the recruitment process is reviewing numerous cover letters and resumes. Quickly reduce the resume review time by eliminating underqualified candidates using pre-screening questions, and using standardized resume templates to enable an apples-to-apples comparison of qualified candidates.

Performance Tracking – Employee Acknowledgement and Engagement

When a company has an inconsistent appraisal processes, employees have a tendency to lose motivation. It’s human nature to desire to achieve goals and receive recognition for their accomplishments. Even worse, no one likes giving or receiving an unexpected poor review. Put an end to the inconsistent appraisal processes and create a process that motivates employee improvement.

By utilizing a talent management solution, the employee performance tracking program can increase accountability and the entire process is documented within one system, which ensures that the appraisal process is consistent across all departments. Talent management solutions are also designed to make sure the business goals align with employee goals and these individual impacts on the company bottom line are measured. Additionally, goals are tracked throughout the year enabling a multistage approach to the appraisal process so employees are aware their performance throughout the year.

Employee Development – Succession Planning and Workforce Motivation

There’s nothing more demotivating at work than feeling pigeon-holed into a position. Sure, that recent raise was nice and even the bonus. But let’s get real, no one wants to be doing the same task day-in and day-out for an eternity and employees have aspirations of climbing the corporate ladder. Furthermore, employee development is a critical factor in succession planning. How does senior management identify the skills and talents of individual employees in rapidly growing organizations?

The employee development component of a talent management system is critical for identifying top performing talent. For starters, these systems allow employees to build individual talent profiles where they add their skills and career goals to ensure alignment with their development plan. These profiles allow managers to create individual development plans based on the employee’s personal goals, strengths and weaknesses. As a result, employee learning and development are tracked within one centralized database where the employee and management can see their progress.

Conclusion – Managing Talent by the Numbers

How important is it to have an effective talent management system in place? According to Josh Bersin, “Organizations with superior talent management practices generate 26% higher revenue per employee, 40% lower turnover among high potential employees and 29% higher employee engagement than their peers.” (Bersin by Deloitte 2013) Based on these stats, it only seems fair for HR to have a sophisticated ERP system.

vision7.4 The much anticipated wait for Deltek Vision 7.4 is finally over! To kick off 2015 on a high note, Deltek is releasing the most powerful version of Vision ever. So what features and enhancements are included with the newest version of Vision? Let’s see!

Deltek Vision 7.4 Features and Enhancements:

Increase project management accuracy with new task dependencies | Plan projects with Task Dependencies, change dates and choose the Predecessor and Successor date changes along with it. Additionally, added right-click functionality to easily move dates.
Deliver consistent opportunity estimates even faster with the new fee estimate tool | Standardize the way professional services firms develop fee based scopes:

Create Fee Estimate for the Opportunity based on templates
Create reports to include with proposals
Create projects from the Fee Estimate mapping compensation values and Work Breakdown Structure
Project Fee estimates stay intact in Project Info Center

Manage your purchasing approvals in Vision with new workflows as simple or complex as you need them | The new Approvals workflow engine in Vision has been applied to the Purchasing module! Utilize new workflow capabilities to automate your approvals.

Customize your invoices with enhanced invoice template editor | Ensure that the details you and your customers need most are always included.

Include User Defined Fields on Invoices
Control your Invoice Subtotals
Group your billing phases for your fee invoices

Much, much more | In addition to the above enhancements, there are dozens of additional features and improvements, including:

Associate All button - Quickly associate a supporting document with all voucher lines
Key Convert and Combine Records even if they have planning data.
Audit Trail for Closing/Opening Accounting Periods
Create and schedule recurring/reversing Journal Entries

Have questions about the newest enhancements and features included in Deltek Vision 7.4, or looking for information on how to upgrade to 7.4? Reach out to us below, and we will be happy to help you get a grasp on all of the new functionality available to your firm!

My momma was always full of advice. Some I took with great results, but others … well let’s just say I had to learn the lesson the hard way. At this stage in our lives, we’ve all moved on from those tender years where momma was our greatest guide, but we are all still attuned to receiving advice from those more experienced. Or at least we should be. Take for example, the ERP Implementation process:

Most savvy business professionals know the ERP acronym, but not all have taken the advice. But why? What’s keeping some companies from “pulling the trigger” and bringing this all important piece to their success puzzle – especially when their competitors are? In my years talking and working with a variety of firms, I have gathered the top five fears why companies, like yours, haven’t completed an ERP Implementation.

1) You say: “It’s going to cost too much.”

We hear: Fear of Being Out of Control

We solve: An ERP system will address this fear by managing costs and stopping financial leaks.

Problem: The industry says that ERP implementation can be expensive and many companies wonder where the money is coming from. Many function under the notion that it’s easier to just do the quick fix and move on.

Solution: The right ERP system, implemented correctly with the aid of the right consultants, will fix those expensive leaks in processes. Furthermore, with a detailed IT growth plan and the information from the new ERP, the initial costs will be recouped and you’ll be well on your way to a better financial and technologically focused picture.

2) You say: “I don’t have the time to research an ERP.”

We hear: Fear of Where to Start

We solve: Taking the first step with an ERP and controlling your future will eliminate this fear.

Problem: It can be daunting to think about the work it will require to research and discover the right consulting firm who will help find and implement the right ERP. But, in this scenario, consumers are being reactive rather than proactive - spending days living those old clichés “with your head in the sand putting out fires.”

Solution: It’s time to take action - focus on goals and the future. An ERP is a planning, forward-looking mechanism designed to give control over an organization’s future. If the research and work is done at the beginning of the ERP implementation, energy will be focused on the future.

3) You say: “It’s going to take too long to implement.”

We hear: Fear of Failure

We solve: An ERP system helps you succeed by pulling together all your information for a clear picture of your newly improved organization.

Problem: When you run a lean organization, all internal resources are at full capacity unable to see the big picture which makes for silo’d company data inhibiting the ability to see the big picture. Not having a clear picture serves only to stunt a firm’s growth: it’s this lack of encompassing visibility which keeps a firm from being able to make intelligent decisions or to understand trends, because they are lacking departments and systems that are connected to each other.

Solution: A good ERP system will pull together all this disparate data giving users the clear picture they need to move forward and giving everyone the gift of time. Yes, ERP implementations require some work and time to evaluate and establish new processes, establish goals, and get everything running smoothly, but the more attention is focused on the consultants and the implementation, the faster you will reap the benefits and feel the relief.

4) You say: “It’s going to require too much change in my current processes.”

We hear: Fear of Change

We solve: An ERP consultant will guide you through change.

Problem: Even a bad process can feel comfortable, familiar. And in the fast-paced business world, we all have to find comfort where we can. It’s understandable to want to avoid the work, unfamiliarity, and making changes to numerous business processes. But what’s more important is that your competitors are already using their ERP systems. They will be on “the latest and greatest” while you are still floundering with “this is the way we’ve always done it.”

Solution: Here’s where the right consultant can really help. Someone who knows their way through the maze of settings; who knows the latest and most relevant business processes; and who, most of all, knows YOUR business and YOUR industry. Once the consultant tailors the ERP implementation to what are now highly efficient business processes, you’ll be able to appreciate the value of the phrase, “change is good.”

5) You say: “No one will use the system, anyway.”

We hear: Fear of Unknown

We solve: An ERP is such a supportive tool, it will quickly become a familiar part of your world.

Problem: So after all the trouble of researching and implementing and ERP; the real fear is, “Will I really use it or just revert back to our old ways?” Once the shine wears off of a new ERP system, there will be some effort every person will have to make to make the changes permanent. HuffPost Healthy article, “How Long Does It Actually Take to Form a New Habit? (Backed by Science)” tells us that, “On average, it takes more than two months before a new behavior becomes automatic -- 66 days to be exact.”

Solution: That’s great news, because in a little over two months, with a focused effort, everyone, including you, will have turned these new processes into automatic actions. What’s more, the new processes will have included regular reviews of data giving a clear picture of the entire organization allowing responsible action for your future. We also recommend understanding more about the 8 key ways to make your implementation a success.

ERP Implementation Fears Laid To Rest!

Some (or all) of these fears may have indeed been on your mind as you contemplated your company’s future success. To learn more about ERP implementation, the benefits and the return on the financial and time investment, check out Full Sail Partners’ whitepaper, “Could Your Firm Benefit from an Enterprise Resource Planning System?”

In the end, while momma’s advice may not have included an ERP implementation, her wise words still resonate and are perfectly applicable to this journey “Nothing tried, nothing gained!” Obstacles are just opportunities waiting to be discovered!

Project Based ERP Tackle Project based ERP. You’re probably wondering to yourself, “what is this anyway?” We’ve all heard of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, but now the industry added the words “project based.” It probably feels like they are just layering more words … and difficulty. So let me make some sense out of this for you.

Project Based ERP Straight Talk

Traditionally, ERP’s have primarily been associated with companies manufacturing products: a key factor in ERP is the merging of IT, HR, Finance, and Marketing data with product operations and inventory management.

In services firms and consulting businesses like yours, however, some alterations must be made for the ERP system to show the data they need to achieve their goal – high profit and high revenue in a skills based environment – hence the addition of “project based” to our discussion about ERP systems. Your services business deals with a model where intellectual property is what you produce. You don’t have the evils of shelf life, production lines, or parts departments. Instead, your lives are geared toward a consistent evaluation of process, of skill, and of running the perfect project.

Get Down to Business

Project based firms are exceedingly good at running projects. They can create a GANNT chart that’s a thing of beauty, they can set achievable deliverables, and they meet or exceed every deadline. But finding an ERP system that’s attuned especially to services and not manufacturing – now that’s tougher. It takes dedication, knowledge and the focused energy of the right team to get it all together.

An ERP Consultant whose job is to master-mind all the necessary pieces to banish redundant, useless old processes and make your project’s business goals a realty.
A Project Manager focused solely on gathering and maneuvering all the professionals to make achieving your project goals a success.
Your IT, HR, Marketing/Sales, Finance as the true heroes to making things happen.

So What Are You Going To Get Out Of It?

I know, I know. “It’s expensive to add new software.” “It’s a lot of work and we’re already pretty busy.” I’ve heard this and more. But let me tell you – you can’t afford NOT to add a project based ERP system! The table below details those differences:

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Brass Tacks

Still need more? Here’s the slam-dunk. According to “Managing Your Consulting Firm for Growth,” an IDC Info-doc, ERP systems built from the ground up with projects as a core process give firms the tools to make the most effective decisions in these critical areas:

• Lifecycle process across customers, projects and employees.

• Details on projects that help optimize profitability and lower risks.

• Manage and optimize an integrated portfolio of services – using data to learn how to do more of what “works” and eliminate what isn’t “working” (i.e. what’s not profitable).

• Find the “right” customers and have the data to eliminate unprofitable customers.

• Manage the future by understanding the past and using data to make fast, accurate course corrections.

A project based ERP system will combine the
strengths of Marketing/Sales, IT, HR, Finance together with
project management software to help eliminate project waste.

Bottom Line

Your dedicated employees joined with the support of organizations like Full Sail Partners, Inc. will make your project based firm as successful as possible by using your greatest resource – a specifically designed project based ERP system. And while it’s rad here in California to just “ride the waves,” when it comes to running your project based firm, using a project based ERP is your best choice. Dude.

Here in the United States, our sports zealots perform crazy antics like going shirtless in freezing weather or painting their faces in support of their teams. But it’s more than the individual antics; the real difference is in the scale of extremism that soccer fans exhibit – a literal global exuberance all in support of their beloved sport. But wait, isn’t this an article on ERP Consulting?

Well, believe it or not, soccer and ERP consulting have quite a lot in common:

They both strive to achieve a very specific GOAL.
They require coordination among the various efforts of serious talent to make it all happen.
True fans are enthusiastic about the team winning.

Breaking it down: Are Soccer and ERP Consulting that Similar?

ERP

First, let’s talk about and define ERP. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the name given to the compilation of software products and/or modules. According to “Could Your Firm Benefit From an Enterprise Resource Planning Solution”

The original Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, introduced in the 1990s, were primarily designed for and used by manufacturers. Today, ERP solutions have evolved and serve as a tool to manage the project life cycle for professional services firms. These include firms involved in IT services, architectural and engineering, design and planning, system integration, and management consulting, to name a few.

Furthermore, according to CIO.com’s “ERP Definition and Solutions"

ERP’s must serve “the needs of people in finance as well as it does the people in human resources [and other departments which typically have their] own computer system optimized for the particular ways that the department does its work. But ERP combines them all together into a single, integrated software program that runs off a single database so that the various departments can more easily share information and communicate with each other.”

This sharing and communicating of information is all geared toward one, single purpose – achieving business goals.

Putting them together

Next, let’s get back to one of my favorite subjects, soccer. Soccer is a game requiring the coordination of individual players, each with their own proficiency; sometimes it involves players from different nationalities, or differences in a position focus like a goalie or halfback or a variations in specific skillsets like juggling or dribbling the ball. The players rely on the communicating and sharing of information during a game to one single, purpose – putting the ball into the net for a GOAL, a win.

So, like the soccer team with different players, ERP consulting requires synchronization of dissimilar needs, processes, and indeed functions of the software of different departments, so that the business can achieve its business GOALS, its win.

It takes the right coach to win

ERP Consulting In soccer, while the right players, good equipment, and positive fan support are unquestionably important parts of the team’s success, the keystone to an effective soccer team is, in fact, the coach. The coach’s job is to balance each player’s strengths against the combined team’s goal of winning.

The coach in ERP is the ERP Consultant. Having the right individual department software is important, but the keystone to implementing a system, evaluating business processes, and bringing all that information together in a meaningful way is the ERP Consultant. This person, like the coach, has to balance all the individual parts, i.e. departmental needs, in order to reach the business GOALS of the entire organization.

How to find the right ERP Consultant

Choosing the right ERP Coach, er, Consultant is your important first step. This person can help you determine the scope of your ERP project – including costs, size, structure, business process evaluation, and ERP goals as well as help you research and find the right ERP solution for your business. Full Sail Partners, Inc., for example, specializes in identifying the critical resources to create a faster, more efficient, and cohesive business infrastructure for professional services firms looking at ERP solutions. Ultimately, you need a consultant who

listens to you
knows your industry
understands needs beyond the tool
understands your company culture, and
knows the ERP industry.

Don’t get a red card

redcard Choosing the wrong ERP consultant or software solution can lead to significant issues penalizing you in dollars, time and public relations. Following are only two examples of many instances of what happens when ERP implementations fail:

… Knight Capital, [a financial services firm,] recently lost over $400 million in a matter of minutes because of a glitch in its trading software — trading software that wasn’t fully tested and properly deployed prior to production. In addition to the immediate impact of lost cash and profits, the software failure also caused the company’s stock to drop 68-percent the day following the glitch.

SAP and AxonCity of San DiegoThe city of San Diego, CA terminated its software implementation contract with services provider, Axon, citing “systematically deficient project management practices” and a project that was running $11 million over budget.

But be aware, an ERP Consultant cannot entirely save you from these “red card” losses. Like the soccer coach, their real purpose is more about setting realistic expectations and sound goals, as well as offering their expertise for avoiding potential issues before they occur.

In the end

Although analogous in many ways, the reality is that soccer is purely a game to most of us while ERP consultants help you achieve your GOAL – a more efficiently run business resulting in greater success for all your employees. Calling Full Sail Partners as your ERP consulting expert is your first step in achieving your WIN.

And while going shirtless in below freezing weather or being painted the colors of your favorite ERP vendor is one way to show your support, it’s not necessary. But then again…a Full Sail Partners logo on my chest would make me stand out in the crowd.

What does CRM Mean? CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a solution that enables your firm to cultivate relationships and gain valuable insight in to marketing efforts. An integrated CRM solution brings together data from all data sources within an organization to provide a holistic real-time view of each customer or campaign. This real-time knowledge provides your team with the metrics and data needed to make informed decisions in a quick, yet calculated manner.

What Does CRM Mean for My Firm

A CRM system is truly something that each member of your team can benefit from. Examples of the benefits a CRM solution provides include:

Track client contact information | No need for the use of virtual cards or digging through outlook to find email signatures, a CRM allows your entire firm to store valuable customer information in one location.
Monitor marketing campaigns and efforts | What good are your marketing efforts if you cannot track the results? Track the effectiveness of your efforts and campaigns to help better refine your message and target audience.
Review past engagements | Utilize dashboards to easily track which messages, campaigns, and leads resulted in the highest wins.
Access customer (or lead!) information, on the go | Never get left out in the cold again! Gain access to your customer information on the go! Readily available intelligence allows your business development staff to go out and produce, and track, results.

What does CRM mean for your SMB, and how can you use it to grow stronger? The answer is simple; a CRM solution means that as your business grows, and the associated contacts and connections grow with it, you have the ability to manage a myriad of relationships across your entire firm. Clients are the lifeblood of any professional services firm, and without a proper CRM solution in place, you are essentially ignoring an open wound. So how can your firm use CRM to manage an opportunity from concept to completion? Simple:

Pipeline and Cash-flow forecasting | Avoid rough patches and dry spouts by becoming intimately familiar with your pipeline of potential new business, and the value of your current projects.
Track progress on current sales opportunities, review historical information on past opportunities | When speaking to a client or prospect, easily log details about the conversation for later follow-up. Tracking detailed information about interactions can allow you to win future work, based on often overlooked past experiences.
Create milestones for each step of the project, and specify a target completion date | Tasks can be created and associated with each milestone within the project, so you have more granular control of what needs to be done, by whom, when.
Comprehensive reporting allows deeper insight | Setup your marketing goals within your CRM and track status and progress quickly and easily.

It is important to not only track valuable customer data, but to do so in a way that promotes sharing amongst your team. Promote growth and sharing and consider taking your customer data in to the cloud with an all-in-one CRM solution that consolidates all of your information in to an easy to access system. Stop wasting valuable customer insights and information, and start impressing customers with your deep firm-wide knowledge about each relationship.

So next time someone asks you ‘what does CRM mean’, you can tell them, “CRM means winning more work!”

softwareforecasting How many times has it happened, you are cruising along thinking all is going well. All of a sudden wham, utilization is dropping like a stone. How did it happen? You were doing all the right things -- meeting with your clients, looking at Work In Progress, and asking staff all the right questions. Executives and accounting are looking at you to explain what is going on, but outside of saying “well things will get better” – can you provide an answer?

The Magic of Forecasting

One thing you probably weren’t doing was forecasting for the future. What? That sounds like accounting voodoo – right? Well kind of, but it isn’t magical and it isn’t just accounting folks who need to do it.

Anyone who is responsible for production staff needs to understand what their staff is working on currently, AND what they have coming up for work. When there is excessive “downtime” we need to fill that time for staff. When there is excessive “overtime” we might need to look at how the workload is allocated. A good system of project budget and forecasting is necessary to have that visibility.

These steps can be used with forecasting software to help plan for the future:

Create a process. The process of creating an initial budget, even for time & material projects, when the project is signed (you DO get signed contracts – right) is just the first step. You must also have a mechanism of reporting actual results against the budget on a regular schedule.
Update the budget for changes. These changes usually come in the form of scope change orders and additional services. These changes will add increases to your budget and you will have to report actual against them. If you are not diligent about getting authorizations for scope changes or add services, then you run the risk of running out of budget by the end of the project. Your client is quite often experiencing temporary memory loss at this point about what they asked you that was outside of contract.

Bring it all together

So you and your managers have all initial pieces of the puzzle - Initial Budget, Scope Changes, and Actual Results. Why do you still feel out of control and have surprises?

You need to pull all this information into one centralized location, have the ability to update “on the fly”, and have actual results map to your budget. A forecasting software, like Deltek Vision can help you to pull all this information together into something than can be easily updated and allow visibility into the upcoming workload and expectations for the future. You can then use the “remaining budget” to forecast out for the next month, 3 months, or even year to avoid those nasty unexpected drops in your staff’s utilization.

However maybe your initial budget assumptions were incorrect and you need to change the expectation of the end of the project. A forecasting software will allow you to update the ETC (estimate to complete – this is what you EXPECT it to take to complete the project – not what you have remaining in the budget). This provides a better picture of what you need to forecast over the timeframe you are forecasting.

Once you have the above process in place, it is easy to review what you expected vs what you actually performed and what you have left to do. This provides you the ability to plan for the slow times and the busy times. It also provides you credibility when reporting to executive management or accounting what is going on in utilization or over the next few months.

What else does all this tracking get you?

It helps you to establish how long it REALLY takes to complete a project – which is vital information for the future. It also helps you understand what should be included in your scope vs. what is an additional service. Many clients would prefer to know the costs up front and if you can include these items in your scope and present a “total package”, your firm just went to the front of the pack. If you can get to the point that you budget and forecast (and yes people do this) beyond the project and down to the employee level, you can easily identify what employees are efficient and what employees may need further training. All this information combines to make you a more knowledgeable and successful project manager.

You might be tempted to think that the hardest part of using business performance metrics to guide your business is gathering and analyzing the metrics.

But equally important — maybe even more so — is selecting the right metrics to begin with. Of course, there are some people who observe that there are no “bad metrics.” The argument goes that a metric itself is neither good nor bad; it could be just as likely that your data is wrong, or possibly that the metric is simply not a good fit for your needs or your organization.

But even though the metric itself is neither good nor bad, there are other ways that business performance metrics can be failing you. Let me describe three of the most common problems.

1. Inconsistency. One of the most common ways a metric can go south is inconsistency. Granted, some people think consistency is overrated: the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson once railed in his classic essay, Self-Reliance, that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” (It’s good stuff — look it up!)

2. Unintended consequences. Another problem is if your metrics are somehow incentivizing your employees to do the wrong thing. For example, imagine your firm has put a recent focus on customer service. Unfortunately, last year you notified all employees that their pay raises will be based on employee utilization rates. The longer your employees spend keeping your clients happy (non-billable work), the lower their utilization rate. You are telling your employees one thing, but your actions are saying the complete opposite.

Although it should go without saying, it’s absolutely critical to make sure that the math and logic that feed into your business performance metrics remain consistent, regardless of the timeframe or operating unit being analyzed.

So in this example, a better metric would be to incentivize your employees on a combination of utilization rate and customer satisfaction — more complicated to gather, but ultimately closer to what you want to reward and encourage. What’s more, a great reason to plan your metrics with care!

3. Understanding Lagging vs. Leading Indicators. To be most effective, you need business performance metrics in as close to real-time as possible. Understanding the difference between lagging vs leading indicators can often be the defining factor for setting your firm on the correct course. Lagging indicators help your firm indentify historical trend information, while leading indicators provide predictive information that can allow you to make data-driven decisions to change future outcomes.

QuickBooks, Excel and other office applications can help in collecting and analyzing data, but lacks the sophistication to provide real-time insight. A purpose built ERP, like Deltek Vision, provides front and back office functions insight into historical and predictive information. Whatever tools you use to gather your metrics, be sure to automate the process as much as possible to provide your team with the ability to make the best data-driven decisions.

Start measuring!

So how does one avoid the pitfalls of metric management? A great starting point is to understand your business and what your version of success looks like. For example, is it total revenue, net profits, other measures, or a weighted combination?

At Full Sail Partners, we work with a large number of professional services firms — especially those that are project-based. As a result, we have a lot of insight and experience into the metrics that are most telling for them. To learn more, keep exploring our blogs, or contact us.

You may find it helpful to know that there is no ”right” way to go about evaluating your business growth plan (or knowing that might actually make you even more anxious!). There are however, several reliable tips for getting the most out of the effort.

Tip # 1. Choose the right metrics

Using metrics to evaluate your business growth plan is a powerful strategy that can bring you greater focus. The key is knowing which key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure — and to do so, you need to really understand your business and what your version of success looks like. Start by considering such basic questions as:

What are the three or four market forces or trends that will have the largest impact on your organization in over the coming year?
What are your specific revenue objectives for the year, and for each quarter?
What are the “soft” (that is, non-financial) criteria for success over the coming year?

Your answers to such questions will provide insights into what matters the most to your business. They’re also a springboard for choosing the metrics that will be most effective at measuring success.

Small wonder that the use of metrics differs from firm to firm. For example, Full Sail Partners recently conducted a survey of client organizations and asked about which specific metrics they considered to be reliable growth indicators. Almost 9 in 10 (88%) identified revenue, while slightly less (70%) identified profit margin; a much smaller portion pointed to headcount or retention as indicators of growth.

Tip # 2. Establish yearly and quarterly goals, and measure accordingly.

Create a business growth plan with goals not only for the company, but for each department as well. Ideally, you should measure every component of your business in terms of its performance against goals — your marketing staff, your project managers and teams, support and operations, sales, finance, and so on.

Tip # 3. Keep your data fresh and reliable.

To be most effective, you need data in as close to real-time as possible. QuickBooks, Excel and other office applications can help in collecting and analyzing current data. Even more effective is a purpose built ERP, like Deltek Vision, that allows front and back office functions to share and collaborate on relevant data. Whatever tools you use to gather your metrics, be sure to automate the process as much as possible — that way, you and your people won’t spend all your time on number-gathering.

Tip # 4. Get people involved and interested.

In our survey, we also asked firms which functional areas within their organizations took part in the development of KPIs to measure. More than half (58%) said that their finance and operations functions contributed to the establishment of KPIs, while another 17% said that HR also played a role. Don't forget to include marketing so they have visibility on how they can impact KPIs. It’s also a good policy to share metrics and results as you receive them — not only with management, but with all employees. Doing so helps to maintain transparency and leads to a culture where everyone is on the same page and motivated toward unified goals.

Tip # 5. Keep tweaking.

For best results, you should plan on reevaluating and adjusting your metrics as your business priorities change. Every month, quarter, and fiscal year offers a new chance to refine your metrics and your business growth plan in order to drive growth.

The power of metrics is within your reach!

When you invest time and thought into establishing, measuring, sharing, and refining your metrics, incredible things can happen. You’ll be pleased at how much more in sync you are with the state of your business, and how much more confident you’ll feel in making the critical decisions that can help you take your business to the next level.

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