Full Sail Partners Blog | Technology Solutions (8)

With the start of the new year, it is a perfect time to focus on areas of improvement. Along with making resolutions personally, many people see this time of year as one to revamp their workplace strategies. To support you in this process with your workplace resolutions, we have put together a list of tips and tricks.

Top Tips for the New Year

1. Make sure you reopen a new benefit year to roll over previous benefits from the past year. If you are not manually adjusting, you should be initiating a new 1099 for the payment roll over.
2. Adjust your multiplier in the beginning of the year so you can get a good look at your net profit.
3. Make sure you prepare a new year budget so the monthly reconciliation for the bank is correct at the end of each month.
4. Go through projects and vendors to make sure that the projects you have completed are set to dormant along with the vendors you no longer work with.
5. Do not leave things to the last minute. If there are any errors, make sure you get them fixed immediately so they do not pile up later in the year.
6. Make sure you log into Vision more often than just to complete timesheets. Frequently logging on to Vision is a good idea to make sure things are up to date and correct.
7. Start using iAccess for your business development/CRM activities as well as time and expense.
8. Commit to regularly updating your marketing content by spending one hour every Friday revising your projects and resumes with the information from the latest proposal. Put it on your and your marketing team’s calendar to make the time.
9. Save consulting expense by not making journal entries to AR, AP, Revenue or Cash Accounts.
10. Make sure, when billing, you resolve to post every transaction that you have and never undo posting.

Do More with Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision This New Year

With each new year comes both potential opportunities as well as challenges. Following these tips and tricks, you will get this new year off to a great start. Do more with Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision and help your firm run efficiently and effectively in 2019.

Need help reaching your goals this year? Click the link below to see how Full Sail Partners can help you achieve your goals.

With the shift to an employee-centric marketplace, it has never been more important to focus on talent acquisition and retention. With Deltek Talent Management, you can manage the entire employee lifecycle in one built-in platform. You can efficiently handle acquisition, performance, learning development and compensation. By managing talent, you can retain the best workers, drive employee engagement and ultimately deliver more successful projects. Let’s see how Deltek Talent Management will help your firm be a winning player in the war for talent.

Acquire Top Talent

Deltek Talent allows you to build high performance teams while reducing the time to hire and to reach productivity. There is total visibility into talent acquisition with trends to see what positions are open and how quickly they are hired and onboarded. Using this talent management solution, you can also make sure you offer the most competitive compensation packages to candidates guaranteeing that top talent will join your firm.

Retain Talent

With thoughtful performance management that matches the way project teams work, Deltek Talent offers an effective way to keep the top talent you worked so hard to acquire. Included in the solution is a comprehensive incentive system aligned with performance. This ensures employee compensation transparency and consistency. Deltek Talent additionally comes with the option to build and store unlimited staff learning and training opportunities to keep employees engaged.

Optimize Your Workforce

Deltek Talent Management helps your firm strategically analyze the workforce and predict future needs. This solution allows managers and employees to work together to develop career paths and long-term development plans. Using Deltek Talent, your firm can even create succession plans which work for each unique business.

Manage Talent More Efficiently

Deltek Talent Management provides firms with a unified HR system. This solution is both mobile and flexible and will meet the needs of any firm no matter the size. Acquiring and retaining top talent ensures superior projects are delivered. Are you ready to prevail in this competition for the best employees? Get Deltek Talent Management today.

With the new Deltek Vantagepoint, Vision is re-imagined. Not only has the look and feel been improved, but there are many new enhancements that all users will love. This new browser-based solution helps your firm deliver more successful projects and grow your business. It’s built around the project—from finding, pursuing, winning, and delivering them. 

In the last quarter of 2018, Full Sail Partners’ consultants participated in early adopter testing of the Vantagepoint 2.0 solution. To say we are impressed with the new features and streamlined design and framework is an understatement.

In this article, three of our consultants share what sets Vantagepoint apart from Vision and why you should be excited. We will go into detail from Employee Scorecards and Project Plans to Multiple Dashboards and Milestone Dashparts.

While change can be scary, we assure that you will fall in love with the Vantagepoint enhancements we have seen so far, just like we did. 

Intuitive Business Development

Lindsay Diven, CPSM is a Senior Consultant for Full Sail Partners. Below are just a few of my new favorite features of Vantagepoint.

• All Companies in One Place – The previous Clients and Vendors has been combined to form a new hub called Companies.
• All People in One Place – The previous Leads and Contacts info center has been combined to form a new hub called People.
• Easily See All Associations for People and Companies – With streamlined hubs, you can easily see all the projects a company is associated with – either as a subconsultant or a prime.
• Easier Searching – You can easily build searches on the fly. You can add a field quickly and instantly preview results.
• Milestones Dashpart – A place to track and display all your CRM and proposal deadlines.
• Visual Dashboards by Function – You can easily toggle between Business Development, Project Management and Executive/Owner level dashboards.
• New Drag and Drop Proposal Builder – Long gone are the days of coding and testing merge templates! You can now see what your proposal looks like as you are building it.

Efficient Project and Resource Management

Below Principal Consultant, Matt McCauley, shares some of his favorite new aspects of Vantagepoint for creating and managing projects as well as managing resources.

• Create a Project and Plan Simultaneously – When you create a new Project Record, a Project Plan is automatically created.
• Add Multiple Resources to a Project at One Time – Quickly add multiple resources to a project with a few clicks.
• View Resource Management by Employee or by Project – Gain greater visibility into resource utilization.

Streamlined Accounting Functions

We sat down with Scott Gailhouse, Principal Consultant, to ask what his favorite new features of Vantagepoint are. He listed the following:

• All Reports in One Place – Get the information you need to make actionable decisions easily and quickly.
• Best of Both Worlds: Batch or Single Entry – Save time with easy functionality that allows for processing multiple transactions with a click of a button.
• Expanded Approval Center – New Approval center includes absence requests, expense lines, expense reports, timesheets and timesheet lines. You can also view the progress of the approval workflow.
• Update Fees in Interactive Billing – Update project fees while processing invoices.
• Employee Cards and Timesheet Calendar – New Outlook integration that allows for timesheets to be updated from a user’s Outlook calendar.

Learn More about Deltek Vantagepoint

To learn more about these new features and see examples, make sure to watch our webinar Things We Love About Deltek Vantagepoint So Far. This is the first in a series of webinars on how to prepare for Vantagepoint.

One of the most time-consuming processes for accounting is accounts payable (AP). In fact, the entire process from receiving and reviewing invoices to paying the vendor is riddled with opportunities for errors. To make matters worse, 77% of invoices received by companies are in a manual format such as hard copies, PDFs and emails, and the average cost to process one invoice is $34. There is, however, a way to put an end to these ever-present accounting woes – automate the AP process.

Reasons to Automate the AP Process

Let’s look at the benefits of automation:

• Save Time – Using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, AP automation software reduces the need for manually inputting information from an invoice into your firm’s accounting system
• Eliminate Errors – With less reliance on manual input, the element of human error is greatly reduced
• Faster Processing – AP automation software allows for faster approval since the software will flag invoices that have inaccurate information
• Reduce Double Payments – AP automation software will flag a duplicate invoice when on the rare occasion a company accidentally sends two or more of the same invoices
• Gain Greater Insight – With invoices in one system, firm leaders and the entire accounting staff can quickly evaluate spending using easy to read dashboards
• Improved Relationships with Vendors – By paying invoices faster, your firm will have a better relationship with vendors and even possibly get an early payment discount
• Better Staff Utilization – Instead of having accounting experts processing AP, they can work on more important accounting tasks

AP Automation Solution for Deltek Vision & Vantagepoint Users

For Deltek Vision and Vantagepoint, SAP Concur integrates with these ERP systems utilizing the Blackbox Connector integration. When you begin using Concur, you can have all your vendors email invoices to one specific email address. Concur will then use OCR technology to collect the information contained in the invoice which can be reviewed by a member of the accounting staff to approve or deny payment. Once approval has been given, a check or ACH payment can be made.

It’s important to note that Concur then uses Expense Types to link all invoices to the correct GL account. This information is then extracted on a nightly basis into your Deltek system keeping it up-to-date. See, it is actually quite simple. Let Concur AP automation work for your firm!

Many Deltek Vision customers have been a bit confused by the announcement of Deltek Vantagepoint (formerly Deltek for Professional Services). Well, Deltek Vantagepoint is the newly branded and freshly reimagined next version of Deltek Vision specifically built for professional services organizations. The starting point for Vantagepoint was Vision 7.6 and this initiative has been about accelerating the product to a pure browser-based interface which began with iAccess. Let’s take a look at Vantagepoint and the impact on Vision users.

Reimagined Next Version

Vantagepoint is the same great product with all the power of Vision using a fresh, modern interface that will be accessible to anyone, anytime from anywhere. This next version of Vision has impressive new features, reengineered workflows and expanded functionality. All of these enhancements were created based upon years of customer feedback taking Vision to a completely new level.

User Defined Content

As part of the upgrade to Vantagepoint, user defined content and configurations within Vision come along. Some areas will need to be reviewed to make sure things continue to work and look the way you want due to the functional improvements of Vantagepoint. However, the configured content will not be lost in the upgrade which is very similar to a typical Vision upgrade.

Custom Reports

In Vantagepoint, the reporting platform is SQL Server Reporting Services just like in Vision. The architecture and database structure of Vantagepoint is the same as Vision since Vision 7.6 was the starting point. Custom reports and/or invoice templates should continue to function in Vantagepoint. If a custom report references a portion of the database schema that changed in Vantagepoint, it will need to be reviewed with minor updates just like it would have with Vision upgrades.

Upgrade on Your own Timeline

During the transitional phase between Vision and Vantagepoint, the timing of the upgrade is up to the customer. Upgrade timing depends on what functionality your firm is using in Vision today. Vision 7.6 will remain in active support mode including updates until at least the end of 2022. Moving to Vantagepoint does not require a data conversion but rather all Vision data is simply upgraded. Just like with any Vision upgrade, there may be the need to accommodate functional changes.

Upgrade to Vantagepoint

More than 200 customers are currently using Vantagepoint today. For all Vision customers, there is an existing customer portal to learn about Vantagepoint https://dsm.deltek.com/Vantagepoint. All firms using Vision are encouraged to consume the portal content in order to ensure a smooth upgrade.

Full Sail Partners is dedicated to helping businesses be the best they can be. Therefore, we consistently provide a variety of resources offering much insight to our clients. These can be found on the resources tab of our website. From webinars and webcasts to whitepapers and events, we want to ensure our clients run at maximum efficiency. Let’s check these resources out.

FSP Webinars & Webcasts

With our webinars and past webcasts, you gain insight on valuable information from leaders and industry experts. Our webinars focus on many relevant topics providing you the tools needed to move your firm forward. If you missed a webinar, we have an archive page with all our past webinars. Just request the video and a PDF of the presentation you are interested in by filling out the form to the right. Some of our most recent past webinars include; Talent Solution Speed Session: Career Paths, and What to Measure, How to Measure, and Making Sense of it All. Don’t hesitate to find a webinar that will help you! 

Events & User Groups

Full Sail Partners conducts virtual user group meetings to help our clients learn more about Deltek products. We encourage you to contact your area representative to meet and network locally while viewing our virtual presentation as a group! The largest networking event for Deltek users is Deltek Insight, and this year it is November 5^th-8^th in Dallas, TX. The Full Sail Partners’ team will be presenting at Deltek Insight and topics include DPS (Vantagepoint), workflows, accounts payable process, and functional database. If you want to attend these classes at Deltek Insight 2018, you can register here. Interested in a Full Sail Partners’ speaker for one of your events? Fill out the form to the right of the Events & User Groups’ page and specify your company, topic, and how many people! 

Whitepapers

Full Sail Partners provides complimentary whitepapers as a part of an ongoing effort to provide information about the newest technology and industry standards. These resources can help your business stay ahead of the competition. There are many to choose from to learn about solutions for your project-focused business. Some of these include: Benefits of an Enterprise Resource Planning System, Growth and Transition, and Top 10 Recruiting Metrics HR Should Care About. Be sure to check out all of the amazing whitepapers we have to offer. 

eBooks by Deltek

To ensure users get the most out of their systems, Deltek has published a Dummies eBook series that addresses the importance of several tools and industry best practices. If you are interested in downloading a copy of an eBook, simply fill out the survey including your name and email. Some of the eBooks we have to offer include: Talent Management for Dummies, Resource Planning for Dummies, and Planning a Great Project for Dummies. Whatever topic you are struggling with, there is an eBook to help. 

Keep Learning! 

The more knowledge firms have, the more smoothly they will run. Full Sail Partners strives to continuously provide information to our clients that helps them achieve maximum efficiency and stay ahead of the competition. Keep an eye out for more resources as they come available!

The goal of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is to integrate all aspects of a business from finance to CRM to HR. To have and maintain a successful business operation, accurate and timely information must flow between all the different business functions. With an ERP in place, there is visibility into operations which provides greater control over the business. However, while all businesses benefit from an ERP system, one size does not fit all. Project-based companies are distinct and thus require ERPs suited for their needs.

Unique Financials

Unlike firms just selling products to be shipped, project-based firms have financials reflecting more specific details. Project-based financials are focused on resources, projects and clients. Project-based firms are concerned with billing and time and materials needed per project which is vastly different than a firm that simply tracks inventory. Since project-based financials are so particular, project-based firms should have ERP systems that are equally so.

Deeper Function of Resource Management

Resource management for project-based firms is also a lot more involved. Project-based firms must manage both clients and projects matching the scope of a project to delivery. More than just people, resources here mean skills needed in a project and determining when certain skills are to be used. CRM with projects is built around proposals and recurring client interaction. With the intricate nature of running projects, project-based firms require ERP systems set up to manage resources in this more complex way.

Designed for Different Roles in the Firm

Executives, accountants and project managers all have different focal points. Executives want to see that the business is financially sound and that customers are satisfied. Accounting needs to be able to make sure billing is being completed on time. Project managers must collaborate with everyone to make sure the work is getting done and that people are being utilized by tracking workers as they come off a job. Project-based ERPs are specifically built for all these key roles ensuring efficiency in operation.

Complete Visibility into Business

With project-based ERP systems, every transaction is tied to an account, organization and project. The general ledger account describes expenses, the organization describes who is doing the work and the project is the source of revenue. With these elements linked, financial reports, invoices, payroll and project status reports are all available to show the whole picture of the business providing complete visibility.

Match the ERP to Firm Needs

With a project-based ERP in place, project-based firms will be able to make proactive decisions with current, real-time data. Generic ERP solutions do not meet the needs of project-based companies. Project-based ERPs are specifically designed to ensure that all aspects of project management are tied together to provide an accurate view of project profitability and company health.

Expense management seems to be a difficult task for accounting personnel at many professional services firms. With a workforce that is constantly on the go, tracking spending and enforcing expense policies can provide a plethora of challenges. What if there was a better way to manage expenses? Let’s see what firms can do to improve the expense management process.

Streamlined Process from Start to Finish

Being on the go means employees must be able to book travel and track expenses from anywhere at any time. Employees and those who approve expenses need to be able to easily accomplish these things from a smartphone or tablet. So, an efficient expense management solution needs to have a user-friendly mobile feature available to all.

Accurate Collection of Information

Not only is it time consuming to have to manually enter information from receipts, it is also prone to errors. Firms should have an expense management solution with optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities. OCR technology enables applications to recognize printed or written text characters so users can take a picture of a receipt, and the application will add the name of the vendor, the dollar amount spent and the date to an expense essentially saving time and reducing errors.

Simplified Policy Enforcement

Sure, we all like to make travel for ourselves more convenient for our schedules and prefer certain hotels. However, the later flight and the preferred hotel might cost a lot more, and if the policy is to find the best deal, how can your firm know employees are sticking to it? Well, firms should have an expense management solution that compares the costs of flights and hotels to ensure employees are booking the best value. If a more expensive flight or hotel is required, employees can submit a request with a reason indicated.  

Integration with the Core Accounting Software

Several core accounting management systems have built-in expense management solutions. However, they often lack the key features mentioned above. This means firms may need to look for a third-party solution provider to gain these benefits. It is important that the third-party solution integrates with the core solution, so do your research to find one that helps keep your expense management process streamlined.

Picking the Most Efficient Expense Management Solution

It is said that business travel expense is the second most difficult operating expense to manage. By moving away from paper receipts and automating the expense management process, firms can gain better control of employee spending. So, what are you waiting for? Find the best solution to improve your firm’s expense management processes.

Establishing meaningful key performance indicators (KPIs) is vital if your firm is committed to data-driven decision making. First, you will need to determine what most clearly correlates with your company’s goals. A simple way to think about KPIs is that you can only improve what can be measured, and using today’s business intelligence (BI) offerings, measuring KPIs can be especially precise and easy to do. Let’s look at some trends in BI and the connection to KPIs. 

Easier data discovery

It used to be that data discovery was only done by IT experts who created reports about crucial information regarding KPIs. This process could take many days, and by the time a report was generated, the information was irrelevant. With the continuing simplification of BI, more people can now have access to real-time analytics. Using simplified BI, anyone can drill down into the data and find answers to important questions which are related to KPIs.

Visual Analytics

For non-analytical people, visualizations are helpful to digest key information. They activate the brain’s recognition capabilities and enable people to detect patterns in charts and graphs. Rather than having to discover data buried in tables over multiple pages, visual analytics allow for decisions to be made quickly and are a much more efficient way to evaluate KPIs.

Self-service Business Intelligence

More and more business users are accessing BI solutions to make faster and better-informed decision. Each company has unique goals and so does each department. To measure specific KPIs, customized BI dashboards can be created with the features relevant to each user. These dashboards are viewed in a single screen providing immediate, accurate and up to date visual status reports.

Mobile Business Intelligence

Today’s fast paced business environment requires that people have access to critical BI anywhere, anytime. With increased accessibility and improved smartphones, BI can also be analyzed on mobile devices. Companies that use mobile BI can stay ahead of the competition because there is always access to important data for decision making and gauging KPIs.

Cloud Business Intelligence

While most BI software has been hosted on-premise, the increase in on-demand data access has led to cloud BI. There are many benefits of a cloud BI solution. It is easy to install because it is an internet-based software, adding new users is a simple and the cost is low. Cloud BI is an option for companies of all sizes within an industry that provides an instant way to assess KPIs.

Being Proactive with Business Intelligence

All firms strive to be successful and creating KPIs allows them to measure success and avoid potential negative outcomes. Using a BI solution, firms can be proactive by visually seeing KPIs and making quick decisions based upon critical information. The two go hand in hand and together they help firms make sense of it all.

Many Deltek Vision users are unaware of the vast capabilities of workflows. From managing repetitive tasks to ensuring information is updated, workflows are extremely versatile and easy to setup. Let’s take a look at some Vision CRM workflows.

Workflow Examples for Deltek Vision CRM Users

Contacts - Track companies where your contacts have previously worked and automatically update a user defined grid when the Client field is changed on the contact record allowing information to stay up-to-date.

Marketing Campaigns – Automatically add predefined activities for Marketing Campaign follow-ups to ensure follow-through on your marketing efforts.

Opportunities – Make sure the business development team is following up on opportunities by creating Actions and Alerts that are prompted when an Opportunity is opened, a stage is changed and when the Opportunity is closed.

Warning Notifications - Give a gentle reminder to fill in a field value using a workflow to display a warning message. When a user changes the value of one field, a workflow can trigger a warning to indicate another field requires more information only when a specific value is chosen.

Error Notification - Use a workflow to display an error message instead of making all fields required. When a user changes the value of one field, a workflow can trigger an error message requiring an update to another field before being able to save when a specific value is chosen.

Contact Record Verification - Provide employees further insight on the validity of contact information by creating a workflow using custom fields. Employees simply check a checkbox, and through a workflow, the modified user and the date the checkbox was checked can populate reducing the number of fields the end user has to fill in.

Let Deltek Vision Workflows Work for You

These are just a few examples of things you can do with CRM workflows in Deltek Vision. Setting these workflows up is actually easier than you think and will save you and your firm lots of time. Checkout “Navigating Workflows: Standard and Advanced” and “Oh the Places You Can Go with Workflows, Alerts, and Stored Procedures” to learn more about workflows!