We get it! Working remotely, far from coworkers and isolated, can make for tough work attire choices. Well you spoke, and we listened! In our ongoing attempts to unify, team build and reduce decision fatigue, we are proud to announce our new corporate dress code. Introducing the universal, one-size-fits-all-in-wonderful, versatile, and fashionable Full Sail Partners' Speedsuit!

Perfect for:

Working from home!

Working with clients!

And leisure.

The Full Sail Partners’ Speedsuit is machine washable, wrinkle, stain, and odor resistant to accommodate any lifestyle. The official Full Sail Partners cap is the perfect accessory for bad hair days whether you’ve just gotten up or not slept for 3 days. We’ve got you covered! Together, the Full Sail Partners uniform will be a key lynchpin to success.

But wait, there is more! Clients can get their own Full Sail Partners speedsuit to show your support. Contact us now for more details.

HAPPY APRIL FOOLS’ DAY!

Out of all industries and professional disciplines, architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) leads in innovation. Not just in building design, but in how construction projects are completed. Among other efforts, the AEC industry is embracing modern technology to make projects and overall business more successful. Let’s take a look at some trends.

Moving to the Cloud

Taking your software to the cloud is becoming an extremely cheaper alternative to hosting your own software tools. Software/Desktop as a Service (SaaS/DaaS) is changing the AEC industry for the better. SaaS/DaaS gives employees the ability to access the software products they use from anywhere with an internet connection. As a result, it’s allowing firms to become more efficient and mobile.

Business development teams can retrieve important CRM information about their clients and prospects on-the-go. Project managers can update project records while they are on-site at the project. For AEC firms to stay competitive, they need to embrace SaaS/DaaS solutions to keep up with the changing times. Check out this link to learn more.

BIM Technology

Building information modeling (BIM) technology is not just for large firms anymore. It has now become economical for small firms and even the self-employed. With BIM, AEC firms can create digital models of structures…but it’s not just a 3D representation of a structure; it’s more like 6D. Whereas 3D is width, height and depth, the 4^th D is time, the 5^th D is cost, and the 6^th D evaluates the environment and sustainability of the structure. 

Even more, it’s a shared knowledge base of project information. By using BIM, companies will be apprised of a project’s status by instant access to all project information, even emails. Want to take Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision even further with project management? Check out Deltek PIM here for more information.

Software Integrations Using the Blackbox Connector

Third party software solutions can now be integrated with Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision. Using the Blackbox Connector for Constant Contact or Mailchimp, email marketing efforts are automatically updated in Vantagepoint or Vision. Instead of relying on plain spreadsheets for company business intelligence, firm employees can easily create real-time graphical dashboards with the Informer integration for Vantagepoint or Vision. Learn more about the Blackbox Connector options for Deltek here.

Stay Ahead of the Competition

Many AEC firm leaders are hesitant to make an investment into new technology. However, evaluating current practices and exploring ways to use technology to help streamline your business processes can prove to have a true return on investment. How can Full Sail Partners help you embrace modern technology?

In today’s world, data lives everywhere! Reducing duplicate data in the entry and maintenance process can be a time-consuming effort. The Blackbox Connector leverages the robust APIs available in Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision to automagically bring together data from your Deltek solutions and other best of breed 3^rd party solutions you use to help run your business. 

The Blackbox Connector vastly reduces manual, error prone, data import/exports between systems by directly speaking the language of each endpoint and making the translations between them instantly and accurately every time. As the Blackbox Connector keeps them in sync, changes made in one system just appear in the other. Let’s check out what types of Blackbox Connectors are available.

Concur Blackbox Connector

It begins with the realization that there must be a better way to manage business expense. Give your employees their own personal assistant by combining the power of Deltek Vantagepoint or Vision and Concur. Improve efficiency for employees, allowing them to focus on core business goals.

Concur reduces mistakes and fraud with built-in controls and duplication verification. Your business can lower costs by implementing company-wide policies to control expenses enabling accounting staff to better manage expense processing, from approval to payment posting. Enjoy shortened payment cycles along with improved payables and consultant accruals with invoice. Learn more about Concur here!

Constant Contact and Mailchimp Blackbox Connector

With the Constant Contact and Mailchimp Blackbox Connector for Vantagepoint or Vision, your business can utilize emails like never before. Both solutions have many different features that make things simple while still being effective. Both reduce duplication of entry while maintaining consistent and accurate marketing data.

With either, you can leverage email results to further segment and target contacts and leads. You can track performance of email campaigns and receive insight on the latest email statistics. These connectors will save you hundreds of hours each year by consolidating disparate systems. Get the facts about email marketing and why your firm should be using Constant Contact or MailChimp. 

Client Feedback Tool Blackbox Connector

Reliable feedback is essential to understanding your client’s goals. Integrating the Client Feedback Tool with Vantagepoint or Vision ensures you can gather client feedback throughout the entire lifecycle of a project. Firms can fine-tune their performance to achieve maximum benefit for their clients and ultimate satisfaction. Find out how client satisfaction can be improved!  

Informer Blackbox Connector

The most recently introduced Blackbox Connector brings business intelligence and Deltek data together. Instead of wasting time on reviewing black and white spreadsheets of data, you can now visualize it with this connector. With customized dashboards, all members of your firm will have access to graphics available in real time so you can keep your finger on the pulse of your business. Learn how a good business intelligence solution can improve your firm's performance! 

HubSpot Blackbox Connector

The next Blackbox Connector in the works is HubSpot. With Hubspot, you can track performance of inbound marketing campaigns directly in Deltek Vantagepoint or Vision. With the ability to link your HubSpot inbound marketing tool with your Vantagepoint or Vision, you can maintain consistent and accurate marketing data and reduce duplicate entry.

With the HubSpot Blackbox Connector, you will be able to create a real-time information hub in Deltek CRM with the latest customer behaviors and activities. Share marketing awareness insight on your inbound marketing efforts to your entire organization. This connector will be available in fourth quarter 2019.

Bringing it all Together

Professional services firms have faced many data challenges, but the innovative solutions developed to bring data together with Vantagepoint or Vision from Concur, Constant Contact/Mailchimp, Client Feedback Tool, Informer, and HubSpot can make a huge difference. You can automagically synchronize your data between systems without human interaction or transcription errors. You can read, write and transform data to your specifications to a variety of end-points. The Blackbox Connector is the future for connectivity for Deltek Vantagepoint and Vision users.

Digital marketing, which includes email marketing, is a very effective strategy to growing your business. Most significantly, email marketing and outreach allows you to gain valuable insights into what information and messaging is important to your prospective and current clients. With each email sent, marketers can see open and click rates, and who opened and clicked on a link in the email. As a result, prospects can be easily identified, and messaging modified to grab the attention of other targets.

Email Marketing is Alive and Well

For many people, mainly the non-marketing folks, understanding how email marketing is effective can be difficult. In fact, many believe that email marketing is ineffective since they get so much spam and find it to be an annoyance. However, this is not the case. Email marketing actually has a very positive impact on your business. Here some are staggering facts about email marketing:

• There are 3.7 billion email users in the world and that will increase to 4.1 billion by 2021 (Statista)
• Email marketing has a 28.5% ROI compared to snail mail which has a 7% ROI on average (Chief Marketer)
• 59% of marketers agree that email marketing generates their biggest source of ROI (Emma)
• Email marketing is 40 times more effective at acquiring new clients than Facebook or Twitter (McKinsey)
• 72% of people prefer to receive promotional information via email compared to 17% who prefer social media channels (MarketingSherpa)
• Email marketing is 6 times more likely to result in a click-through than a tweet (Campaign Monitor)
• 90% of people said they will opt-in to receive a newsletter to obtain updates about a company while 10% elected Facebook (Nielsen Norman Group)
• 70% of B2B marketers agree that increasing their email list quality is their top priority (Delivra)
• The average office employee checks their email 30 times per hour (Marketing Insider Group)
• Checking email is the number 1 activity on the internet (Marketo)
• Companies in the United States will spend more than $350 million dollars on email marketing in 2019 (Statista)
• Email marketing drives on average $44 for every $1 spent (Campaign Monitor)

Email Marketing has a Bright Future

With all of these facts about email marketing, it is evident that the strategy works. While your firm is probably using email marketing as part of your overall digital marketing strategy, are you seeing the ROI and maximizing the benefits? Learn more about tracking and measuring email marketing success rates here!

Deltek Talent Management is a powerful set of tools for firms to manage the complete employee lifecycle. It offers an extensive product line to handle acquisition, learning and development, performance and compensation. With such a robust HR system, there are many notable features - some of which are underused. Let’s check out these hidden features and see what benefits they provide.

Employee Recognition

Employees really enjoy being recognized for their accomplishments and want to feel as if they are contributing to the business. Deltek Talent Performance allows employees to submit recognition for other employees in their firm. Recognitions include specifics about each situation such as competencies that the employee has showed. Both the manager and employee can access these recognitions as part of the performance review. Such recognitions go a long way to create a positive culture within the organization.

360 Reviews

360 reviews expand the performance evaluation from just managers to others, both inside and outside of the organization, who have information about employees. Employees can recommend people that they would like to participate in the review, and managers can stay on top of the process. All completed 360s can be viewed by the employee and manager then stored in the employee’s appraisals section for future reference. Feedback from a variety of sources gives employees the chance to see how impactful their work has been.

Project-Based Appraisals

Deltek’s strong focus on projects means that project team members get project-based appraisals. Within Deltek Talent Development, project teams can be set up and team leads determined. Team leads launch the project-based appraisals which may include goals, achievements and competencies that can be later reviewed. Employees get relevant and timely feedback from project managers which can be applied to the next project. Doing project-based appraisals improves performance and drives employee engagement.                                                                                        

Job Seeker Certifications

Today, job seekers have many options, and leveraging technology is a necessity to acquire top talent. Deltek Talent Acquisition makes it easy to view job seeker professional certifications and licenses which can be uploaded during the application process. Candidates can be sorted through efficiently and those with the qualifications needed can be recruited faster. Additionally, with Deltek Talent Learning, those hired will have their certifications automatically added to their learning record which will streamline the onboarding process.

Do Even More with Deltek Talent Management

These hidden features of Deltek Talent Management provide the means to engage quality employees and ensure top project performance. Recognition for valuable work, positive feedback from many different sources, specific project appraisals and assurance of certifications all promote a productive work environment leading to well-run projects. Are you ready to experience what Deltek Talent Management has to offer?

Firms complain that there aren’t enough candidates when a job opening needs to be filled yet many firms aren’t taking the necessary steps to ensure they have candidates in the hopper when a position opens. Do projects just fall out of the sky? Ok, maybe on a rare occasion, but most of the time you must nurture relationships in order to be considered for a project pursuit. Recruiting should be looked at in the same way. A great way to find the best fit for your firm is to identify potential candidates before a position opens and develop these relationships.

Finding Potential Candidates

Recruiting should involve more than just your HR department and executives. Just like marketing and business development, recruiting should be something all staff members do. Some firms have found that having a referral process can be a great way to encourage employees to share the news, but even more important is letting your employees know to keep their eyes out for anyone that might fit the firm’s corporate culture and have skills needed within the company. The best recruiters leverage their staff within the company to help them do their jobs. Here are places employees can find potential new recruits: 

• Social and informal connections happen all the time and staff can use these interactions as informal recruiting sessions. Potential recruits can come from current projects, partners, vendors, neighbors, and social events. Asking the right questions can provide you with a plethora of information regarding whether any of the people you deal with would be good matches for your firm.
• Conferences and networking events are also convenient places to meet potential candidates. Conferences and association networking events are specifically geared for your industry. Sometimes individuals you meet might be great teaming partners or they might be just what you are looking for if a position comes available. Collect those business cards and ask some deeper questions about their jobs and you have a talent pool without having to officially recruit.
• Social media is another easy way to recruit for candidates. Whether you tweet or connect with others via LinkedIn, there are a variety of ways to find qualified people that fit with your company culture. Just keep in mind what skills you are looking for on a consistent basis, and you will have plenty of options in the world of social media.
• Job fairs, of course, are also appropriate places to find potential candidates. Even without an open position available at your firm, people at job fairs are looking to find where they fit in so when something does come up with your firm you have options. Simply gather names and resumes and you will get an immediate talent pool, or better yet, send them to your website to upload their information into your Talent system. 

Nurture Those Potential Candidates

In the Deltek Clarity report, project-based firms stated that their top challenge was finding qualified talent. I would beg to differ since talent is always around you and most likely available if you nurture the relationships. I suspect your challenge is just not identifying the talent when you come across it. 

Once you find potential candidates, it’s important to capture their information so you can pull from a talent pool. Using the Deltek Talent Acquisition system, recruiters and managers can quickly add resumes to talent pools allowing you to access your potential candidates by categories when a position opens. These talent pools allow you to keep lists of candidates with specific requirements or needs. 

We know great Project Managers or Marketing Coordinators are hard to find so you could tag potential candidates as you come across them. Instead of waiting until the position needs to be filled to start your search, with talent pools you can quickly send a templated email asking candidates you have met in the past, that have been pre-qualified, to submit for an opening. Imagine how much easier and quicker recruiting can be by taking a more proactive versus reactive approach.

Improve Hiring Efficiency

For project centric businesses, people are your competitive advantage. Ensuring solid talent management best practices within the business means assuring you can find the talent quicker than your competition. See how Deltek Talent can improve your employee hiring process.

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.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “bad data in – bad data out.” Well, bad data is outdated, incorrect, incomplete or duplicated information, and according to the Harvard Business Review, workers waste 50% of their time dealing with it. Now ask yourself, when was the last time someone at your firm took a deep dive into the data in your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system?  While the process of cleaning company data is time consuming, it is something all firms should do on regular basis. Businesses can achieve numerous benefits by fixing bad data. Here’s a look at some of the top benefits.

Improves Employee Productivity

Spending the day combing through a bunch of bad data is tedious work and a major time waster. Furthermore, the result of this extensive effort might be little to no actionable information. Also, with finding inaccurate information, employees may be led down the wrong path and not towards the goal. However, with clean company data, businesses can be sure employees are making the best use of their work hours and accomplishing goals.

Improves Marketing Efficiency

Building a pipeline of new revenue requires having accurate data about customers you want to target for your marketing efforts. Having the correct email address, mailing address and phone number is critical to ensure the highest rate of return for your marketing efforts. Regularly cleaning customer data ensures information is up-to-date and marketers can realize a higher return on investment and a larger pipeline of new opportunities.

Improves Decision-Making

Effective decision-making is critical to the success of a firm and requires having accurate data. Business intelligence (BI) is a hot topic in all industries right now. For your firm to be able to jump on the BI bandwagon, the data you are using to make decisions must be accurate. Having clean data can support better analytics and improve your firm’s decision-making process.

Prevents Fraud and Billing Mistakes

Having clean company data can also reduce fraud and billing mistakes. In many cases, vendors may send multiple invoices for the same service to encourage firms to pay them faster and more often. They are not trying to be malicious. Accurately tracking invoices to see which ones have been paid will reduce double paying vendors.

Get Your Firm’s Data Clean

The task of going through your firm’s data can be daunting, but the benefits of clean company data are worth it. To begin the cleaning process, you’ll want to define goals and assign ownership to the different steps required to obtain your goals. You can also automate several of these steps using the different software solutions, or you can seek help from a trusted outside company that is familiar with the ERP system your firm uses.

Deltek Insight 2018 is fast approaching­! Have you thought about attending? This year it will be in Dallas, Texas from November 5^th to the 8^th at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center. If you are not sure yet about attending Deltek Insight this year, here’s a look at some reasons to make it worth your while.

Learn More at Sessions Led by Experts

Deltek products can do so much for your business. At Insight, there are multiple sessions with Deltek experts where you can learn things you might have never known. These educational sessions are provided to Deltek users, so they can utilize their Deltek products successfully.

Additionally, experts from Full Sail Partners will be on-site leading other sessions. Rick Childs along with Tim Burns will be demonstrating how to speed up your accounts payable process through automation. If you are struggling with workflows, join Kelly Duquette as she shows how you can use standard workflows to automate repetitive tasks. Check out the whole list of Full Sail Partners’ led sessions here.

There is also a great lineup of keynotes at Insight. The list includes Mike Robbins, The Four Oarsmen, and Johnny Cupcakes. These sought-after speakers will provide inspirational stories and talk about their achievements. Learn more about the educational opportunities at Insight 2018 here. 

Meet Other Deltek Users

Insight is the largest gathering of Deltek users. Attending this conference gives you the opportunity to connect with Deltek users from around the world that you would normally not be able to meet. You will be able to speak with others in your industry about common issues and how they use their Deltek products. With so many Deltek users in one spot, you can get answers to questions that you have or give feedback to those struggling with an obstacle that you have overcome.

Have Fun While You Work

Deltek Insight will kick off Monday, November 5^th with a general session where attendees can mingle while learning what will be going on throughout the four days of Insight. Then at the welcome reception, everyone will enjoy snacks and beverages provided by Deltek. Make sure to stop by our booth and see what we have been doing this year to improve our customer experience!

Finally, Celebrate Insight which is the last night of the conference will be held at the world-famous Gilley’s in downtown Dallas. Attendees will be dancing through the decades with six decade-inspired rooms including the 60’s Revolution, a 70’s disco, I Love the 80’s, Smells like 90’s Spirit, and Y2K Tech Nerds. Food and beverages will be provided in each room, and if that’s not enough, the legendary Kool & The Gang will be performing their iconic hits. This Celebrate Insight is something you’ll not want to miss.

Register Now for Deltek Insight 2018

With all these amazing events that are going on this year, you are going to want to sign up right away! From the networking, to the learning experiences, to the fun, it is worth the effort to attend. See you there!

When Deltek for Professional Services (DPS) 2.0 is released, it will have a new name - Deltek Vantagepoint. In addition to the name change, there will be several enhancements to improve the user experience for both back office and front office users. Here is a sneak peek of how Deltek plans to take the breadth and depth of the Vantagepoint solution to the next level.

Say Goodbye to the Smart Client

With the release of Vantagepoint 2.0, Deltek will begin to push users away from the smart client and direct them to the web browser version. Using this version, they will be able to access Vantagepoint from any device that is connected to the internet using any browser they desire. Think of it this way - Vision is the smart client and iAccess is the web-based version. Keep in mind that if your firm is still using Vision, you may want to consider using iAccess more to get comfortable with the look and feel of Vantagepoint.

Proposals Engine

The proposals engine is now being introduced to Vantagepoint, and it is a great feature. For marketing, the proposal process can be extremely time consuming. With the proposals engine, a person creating a proposal can go through and check off boxes based on the requirements of the RFP, and Vantagepoint will automatically create the proposal. It can include images and pictures, employee resumes, past work examples, references and more.

Combined Opportunities and Projects

The opportunities hub is going away and is now being combined with projects. This has a huge upside for business development. By tracking an opportunity as a project, time and associated costs can be captured to help determine the price of pursuing new work. Additionally, a timeline with milestones and reminders can be developed to ensure business development is staying on top of winning the opportunity.

Simplified Transactions

Moving forward, transactions will be managed within a single location. Users will go to one place within Vantagepoint to enter, edit, report, post and approve transactions. Additionally, you will have the option to enter transactions without files and to post on entry. The line item detailed view will still be available.

Project Information Management Integration  

Deltek Project Information Management (PIM) will now be integrated with Vantagepoint. It will be easy to find since it will be a tab in the project record. By using PIM, firms can easily share project related documents and information within one platform.

Expanded Dashpart Designer

The new improved dashpart designer allows users to create custom dashboards with information that is important to them. They can select bar and line graphs, pie charts, or other graphics as part of their dashboards. Additionally, users will have enhanced control for grouping, sorting, filtering and totaling data all within the dashpart.

Improved Reporting

The reporting screen will now have a preview menu. When users create a report, the multiple clicks required in the past will be eliminated. The reporting tool will also include charts and graphs.

What Deltek Vantagepoint 2.0 Means to Your Firm

One thing is for sure - 2018 to 2019 will be a transitional time for Deltek Vantagepoint. As Deltek continues to further develop Vantagepoint, more features will be added to further enhance this solution. The most important take away for users is that they need to be aware of the changes coming and they need to be ready to embrace them.