In the News

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!’

Often times, upper management views the proposal process as a “cost of business” and don’t put forth a concerted effort to control proposal related costs. There are several ways to increase the cost-effectiveness of your proposal process, and starting with a bid/no bid process is the first step.

Did you know that 40% of AE firms have no formal bid/no bid process? This is according to the 36^th Annual Deltek Clarity AE Report. For that reason, I’m going to focus on the importance of the bid/no bid process. More specifically, why the decision can be made during any phase of the proposal process. 

Notification of New Opportunity

Full Sail Partners, a Premier Partner for Deltek and the Client Feedback Tool, is pleased to announce the hire of Amy Balassone in the role of Direct Marketing Associate. In this role, Amy will work with the marketing and sales team to communicate the value of Deltek Vision to the professional services industry. With more than 12 years of customer service, sales, and marketing experience, Amy will conduct market research on management consulting firms to extend the Full Sail Partners brand beyond the AE industry.

“What has impressed me most about the company is their customer service and dedication to their clients, “ says Amy Balassone, Direct Marketing Associate. “I feel privileged to be a part of a company that takes a consultative sales approach to ensure prospects are the right fit for the software. That customer focused mentality is what makes this company great and easy to work for.”

Amy will support the company’s growth goals and provides the firm with the brand awareness development experience needed for Full Sail Partners to help project-based firms develop their systems and processes.

“Amy’s tenacious, yet easy-going personality combines the right touch needed to target new verticals,” said Sarah Gonnella, Full Sail Partners’ Vice President of Marketing and Sales. “We are extremely honored to have Amy join our team. What is most impressive about Amy is her drive and resourcefulness. Her varied experience with marketing and sales along with her previous experience in the Navy as a data systems technician brought the right mix for this position.”

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.

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

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

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

Real Results Your AEC Firm Needs to Know

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Manage Email Marketing Campaigns in Vision

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

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

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

Let’s jump right in!

What are Deltek Vision Marketing Campaigns?

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

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

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

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

3 Examples of Marketing Campaigns for Professional Services Firms.

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

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

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

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

Ready to Learn More?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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