Deltek Vision is a powerful tool with many capabilities to ensure the success of project-based businesses. Despite the availability, users often overlook or simply just don’t know some of the things Vision can do to make their jobs easier. Let’s take a look at some tips and tricks to learn how to get more out of your Vision system.

10 Tips and Tricks for Deltek Vision Users

1. You can create a Web dash part that links to a web site, a file, a report, or a Web Outlook site. Unlike the Links dash part, which can list many links, the Web dash part displays the content associated with a single link. To display a website on your dashboard, navigate to the Dashboard. Click on Configure > Add Web Dash part. In the Address Type choose HTTP to display a website. Then provide a Web Part Name and add the URL and click save.
2. A UDIC or a User Defined Info Center can be created to track custom information in a separate Info Center. To create a UDIC, go to Configuration > General > User Defined Components, and click the New Info Center button at the top. Then name the Info Center and select Activities Grid or Files Grid to add those tabs. As with any Info Center, now add custom tabs, grids and tabs. 
3. Display settings were introduced in Vision 7.0. You can find them in User Options. From here, you can change the color scheme of Vision. Each element has its own display setting. For example, you can make required fields a particular color such as yellow.  
4. The Record Access tab of the Security roles now contains a checkbox called "Enable Self Service in Employee Review." To display the Employee Review form, click Human Resources from the Vision Navigation menu and then click on Employee Review.
5. You can now edit Activities fields directly in the grid that is located in any Info Center. Previously, the fields in the grid were display-only and could only be edited by clicking the Edit option on the grid toolbar. 
6. An Equipment Info Center comes with the addition of the Purchasing or Asset Management modules. It stores two types of items, asset items and equipment items.
7. You can create a Client record from a Vendor record. Under the Vision Navigation Tree, click on Utilities > Advanced Utilities > Create Client from Vendor.  
8. You can email or run a report at a later time. Use the Schedule dialog box which is available in applications where you can use the process servers, such as Reporting. The Schedule button also allows you to set-up reoccurring activities. For example, you could send a report every Monday to project managers.
9. You can now exclude projects on a resume by the number of hours worked on a project in the Custom Proposals module. This new feature can be accessed when adding new Projects to a resume by checking "Only include Projects where this Employee worked more than this many hours" and inputting the number of hours. For example, you can exclude any projects that have less than 20 hours associated to an employee from showing up in your search criteria. 
10. Each department head can enter their own General Ledger budgets and submit them through an approval process in Vision. Those budgets can then be combined into a company-wide General Ledger budget.

Do More with Deltek Vision

These tips and tricks should help you get more value from a tool like Deltek Vision. Remember, there are always ways to explore how your firm can better utilize Vision. Contact Full Sail Partners, and we will be happy to assist you in this endeavor.

Many people don’t realize that talent management is a key business strategy and is vital to a firm’s success. It begins with recruiting potential hires and follows employees throughout their entire life cycles with a firm. Since talent management has such a great financial impact on a firm, talent metrics should be used to show return on investment and to make informed business decisions. So, which metrics are the most significant?

5 Important Talent Management Metrics 

1. Cost to Hire

It is very expensive to hire a new employee. Up front, you have ad placement and sourcing costs. Additionally, there is the time spent by the recruiter and managers to interview and determine the best candidate from the pool. As much effort and time will be put into selecting and onboarding the right match for a position at your firm, you want to ensure the new hire is a good return on investment. You also want to assess whether your ad placements and sourcing tools are getting you the quality candidates you desire. 

2. Time to Full Productivity

Every new hire needs some time to become acquainted with the new position and learn the ropes. Generally, it requires several months before a new hire can be fully productive. However, it is imperative that your firm has an effective onboarding and training program to get new hires up to speed as fast as possible. The quicker a new hire moves to full productivity, the faster there is the return on investment. 

3. High Potential Talent

As part of your talent management plan, you should hire a percentage of people that you expect to provide more value down the road for the organization. This talent should be the best of the best. These employees will be the ones you pull from for future succession into higher-level roles. Making sure you hire talent with potential is necessary to avoid more costs of hiring. 

4. Talent Mobility

Retention of talent is another important factor to consider, especially when concerned with the financial impact of hiring a replacement. Employees need to know that there are opportunities for them to move within the firm, so they don’t stagnate in the same position after several years. Your firm should offer career paths for upward mobility for top performers who seek new challenges. 

5. Talent Turnover

Turnover is probably the most relevant metric of all. Your firm will want to keep this number as low as possible to reduce its financial impact. With turnover, you have the cost of replacing the position with a new hire and the loss of the knowledge gleaned during the years of service. Additionally, turnover stops the cohesive flow of business and causes efficiency to wane.

Manage Your Talent Well

Of course, there are cases where turnover cannot be prevented no matter what the firm does. Overall though, your talent should be chosen wisely, trained properly and given opportunities for mobility. When you manage your talent well, you will in fact reduce your costs because word of mouth is free and high potential talent will come to you.

Business analytics has become increasingly important for professional services firms. However, finding a business intelligence (BI) tool that works with Deltek Vision and gives us the analytics we want has been challenging. We need flexibility, customization and ease of use to answer important questions about our firms yet often we find that this type of analysis is not accessible in Vision. Thus, we are faced with the export/import/number crunch process in an external tool like Excel plus countless hours spent doing the calculations over and over. We need a better solution, instant access, and easy updates.

Enter Informer 5

Introducing Informer 5, the BI tool which works with Deltek Vision to make instant analytics readily available. Informer 5 is an integrated customizable interface to Vision data for use in various analytical scenarios. Using the Blackbox Connector, direct integration with Vision is now a reality.  

You simply select the data fields you want in your database including standard Vision fields, User Defined Fields, and User Defined Info Centers, and you’ll quickly be able to visually see project metrics, employee measurements, marketing results, and firm forecasting. You’ll be able to answer questions such as: 

• How are my projects performing?
• How is that new branch office doing?
• Are my employees billing enough hours?
• How is the firm doing compared to the last three years?

Also, remember those spreadsheets with all that data we built over the past years? Informer 5 can integrate this data with your Vision data. No need to reinvent the wheel, we can use it as a data source. Other data sources? Informer 5 can access those too.

Visualize Your Data with Informer 5

Are you interested in where your work is being done and where the profits are made? Well, Informer 5 also includes geographical presentations including maps. You can easily visualize and determine these specifics with Informer 5.

You can even find the numbers behind the pictures. Informer 5 has built in drill down capabilities that can take you directly to the detail data. From Profit Center to Project Manager, Project Manager to Project, and all the way down to line item detail, data can be acquired with Informer 5, and all of this can be gathered from the same graph with no need to run additional reports.

Make Smarter Decisions with Informer 5

On a final note, the Informer 5 package includes set calculations for many of our industry standard metrics. Additional calculations can be added to customize this solution for any firm. Also, firm data can be updated regularly on schedule or updated on demand from Vision. It is up to you. So, with all of these awesome features of Informer 5 and its integration with Vision, isn’t it time for your firm to start making smarter decisions?

You’ve just spent hours creating a clever email with an enticing subject line to send your clients and prospects. As you prepare to push the button to send this email, you hope for a positive outcome of your campaign. Over the next 24 to 72 hours, you will log into your email marketing platform, such as Constant Contact or MailChimp, to check the performance of this email. But, which numbers really determine the success of an email marketing campaign? Let’s take a look.

The open rate is simple to understand but quite important. This is the percentage of the recipients that opened the email. Knowing how many people opened your email is significant because it will show you if your subject line drew enough attention to make opening it worth their time. Of course, the higher the open rate, the better.

Click-through Rate

Here’s probably the most important metric that allows you to know how successful your email marketing campaign has been. The click-through rate lets you know who actually read your email and took action by clicking on the included link. Seeing who clicked on the email allows you to know who’s interested in your content. This tells you who to target in the next stage of your marketing campaign. In other words, the more click- throughs, the more potential leads that have moved further into your marketing funnel.  

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate tells you how many of the intended recipients did not receive the email at all. There are two types of bounces, a soft bounce and a hard bounce. A soft bounce happens when the recipient’s mailbox is full, the server is down, or the email is too large for the inbox. On the other hand, a hard bounce means the message is permanently rejected because the email address is invalid or doesn’t exist. Obviously, the more bounces, the less potential for exposure to the email content.    

Unsubscribes

Like click-through rates, unsubscribes allow you to assess the quality of your content. If a person signs up to receive your emails and newsletters but unsubscribes, it is usually because the content is not what they expected. So, unsubscribes can show you how many recipients have determined that the content is not valuable or interesting.

Spam Reports

While unsubscribes are bad, being reported as spam is worse. This usually happens for one of two reasons. Either you send emails to people that never signed up to receive them or you send emails to people with irrelevant content. Email marketing platforms can and will suspend accounts that have a high spam rate. Therefore, not spamming is a priority in your email marketing campaign.

Refining Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Using A/B testing is a great way to improve your email marketing campaigns. This is a controlled experiment that compares two versions of the same content to determine which messaging improves your email marketing success rates. There can be a variation of the subject lines, the messaging in the email and the verbiage used in the call-to-action. Remember, in the end, the main goal is to get your email marketing campaign through to its intended audience and have it be well received. How you accomplish this is up to you.

Many firms have a plethora of data regarding existing clients, prospects, and wins and losses just sitting around being underutilized or possibly not being used at all.  So, what should these firms be doing with all this data? Well, this significant information needs to be analyzed to create actionable insights which will help drive business development decisions. Here are some thoughts to ensure a proper data analysis.

Reports Don’t Equal Analysis

Reports are pretty and give you an easy view of your data. The line goes up and you smile, the line goes down and you frown. However, quickly glancing over these reports doesn’t actually answer why these are the results you see?

Analyzing means taking those results to the next level and learning why these are the trends your firm is experiencing. You must ask the right questions to find answers in your data and then form a hypothesis to test your data against. This will allow you to find the reason behind your numbers.  

Using Analysis to Achieve the Real Goals

As simple as this sounds, getting the right information from your data analysis can affect achieving your firm’s goals. To make actionable decisions, the goals of the business must be what drives your measurement strategy. Using the correct data analysis technique requires that you know what questions you’re trying to answer.

Think about it, generic questions tend to lead to generic answers. To determine what you’re trying to figure out from your data analysis, you’ll need to have clear objectives provided by the firm’s stakeholders. Without having a specific question to answer, you won’t get a clear answer.     

Creating Metrics That Promote Action

Communicating the results of your analysis in a way to create actionable insights can often be difficult. It doesn’t have to be when the results of your analysis answer the questions that have been established by the business objectives. Therefore, communicating actionable insights requires being able to quantitatively measure the success of the plan you recommend.

The findings of the analysis should drive the development of key performance indicators (KPIs). With these KPIs, the company knows what quantifiable objectives determine the success of the business. Keep in mind, your KPIs need to be realistic based on your data. 

Good Data in Equals Good Data out

Collecting the right data and maintaining it is the most important part of data analysis. For project-based firms, projects are the lifeblood of the business. Winning more projects is essential to generating more revenue. As a result, discovering key project related data from your analysis is integral to creating compelling proposals that win new business. 

Making Data Work for Your Firm

To learn more about project data collection and maintenance best practices, make sure to attend this year’s SMPS Pacific Regional Conference and the Southeast Regional Conference. Lindsay Diven, Full Sail Partners’ Senior Consultant, will be presenting a session titled, “Develop Your Data Collection & Maintenance Program – No CRM Needed” to address this specific topic. Let your data work for you.

Data here, data there - this seems to be a continuous issue for professional services firms as more technology solutions designed to overcome specific business challenges enter the market. Luckily, there is an answer to this problem for Deltek Vision and Deltek for Professional Services (DPS) users - the Blackbox Connector. Simply stated, the Blackbox Connector allows users to embrace the power of third-party technology solutions using the data in their Deltek Vision or DPS database. Here’s a look at the current and upcoming integrations available from the Blackbox Connector.

Outbound Marketing Connectors

Email marketing has revolutionized how businesses stay connected with clients. Even more, being able to know who opens and clicks on links in the email becomes valuable business intelligence. With Constant Contact and MailChimp, this information is attainable, and all that is needed for these solutions currently resides in your Deltek database. Click here to learn about email marketing.

With the Blackbox Connector, your Deltek CRM data is easily integrated with Constant Contact or MailChimp. Just create the email in your chosen email marketing solution, and with a push of a button, your target contacts in your Deltek CRM quickly populate the email target list in the email marketing solution. The open and click data for each email campaign will appear in the associated marketing campaign in your Deltek CRM.  

Spend Management Connector

Maximizing your profit means controlling how your business spends money. Spend management requires having timely and actual spend information. The Concur solution allows businesses to automate the expenses process from receipt to reimbursement and to gain visibility into travel expenses. Additionally, the Concur solution provides businesses with the ability to automate accounts payable and see spending before it’s spent. Learn more about spend management here.

The Blackbox Connector for Concur connects these key accounting responsibilities with the accounting tools in Deltek Vision and DPS. The current version of this Connector allows expense data collected in Concur, including receipt images, to automatically populate in the expense module in Deltek Vision or DPS. This enables your firm to take advantage of the powerful expense management capabilities of Concur. The automated accounts payable capabilities from Concur will soon be integrated with Deltek Vision and DPS.

Customer Success Connector

As a firm finishes a project, it doesn’t always mean the client felt it was a success. Ensuring your project delivery was successful requires managing client expectations throughout the lifecycle of the project. The Client Feedback Tool allows businesses to capture feedback periodically throughout the project lifecycle. As a result, your project managers can better manage client expectations. Find out more about client feedback in this article.

Using the Client Feedback Tool Connector, project managers can easily obtain feedback at specific milestones of a project from the project info center or hub in Deltek Vision or DPS. The Client Feedback Tool Connector allows for surveys to send based on multiple criteria such as billing milestones or at a set timeframe utilizing the existing data in Deltek Vision or DPS.

Inbound Marketing Connector

In today’s world, every business is competing to be found on the internet and discovering how your inbound marketing efforts are attracting clients is essential to developing meaningful relationships with prospects. Using the HubSpot marketing software, your firm has access to all the tools it needs to run an inbound marketing campaign. Soon, business development teams will be able to acquire this vital information from HubSpot.

Coming in 2018, the HubSpot Blackbox Connector for Deltek Vision and DPS will allow data collected in HubSpot to populate the associated marketing campaigns in your Deltek CRM. When your inbound marketing efforts generate new contacts, their information will create new contacts in your Deltek CRM. With the Blackbox Connector for HubSpot, your business development team will have great new insight into your firm’s inbound marketing efforts.

Business Intelligence Connector

Having the ability to quickly analyze data to make informed decisions is a necessity to stay ahead of the competition. With Informer 5, users can create, analyze, visualize and collaborate in a user intuitive environment to make data-driven decisions. Informer 5 is a new generation of business intelligence and data analytics.   

In early 2018, Deltek Vision and DPS users will now be able to use Informer 5 to cleanse, merge, and analyze the data in their Deltek database. Firms using the Informer 5 Blackbox Connector will have an edge over their competition using timely and actionable insights.

Integrate Your Data with the Blackbox Connector

Deltek Vision and DPS are powerful solutions designed to help professional services firms win more business and better manage resources by tracking, editing, and analyzing project details. Despite the overwhelming capabilities of an ERP or PSA solution, further technology solutions are sometimes required. This is why the Blackbox Connector was created.  It is specifically designed to allow your firm to maximize the capabilities of your Deltek products, while also taking advantage of these other world class solutions, all along keeping your data in one system. Learn more about how your firm can bring data together.

At a recent client meeting, it was brought to light how many of my clients don’t use Deltek Vision’s approval engine capabilities. I thought how crazy that notion was because using the approval engine can save clients so much paper and time. Let me share with you what this firm experienced in dealing with approvals, and let’s see how many of you can think outside the box and see the benefits of Deltek Vision’s approval engine.

Packed with Paper 

Here’s where the story begins. A little time back, I was with a client when a principal walked in with a banker’s box full of papers. He was preparing to leave for vacation and had carefully assembled all the paperwork he needed to take care of while he was away. I asked what was in the box, and he explained that he had to approve the consultant invoices and then review the client invoices. He had packed all the project folders and everything was ready so he could speed through them on vacation and bring them back to accounting when he returned. 

In my mind, I was screaming for several reasons. First, who wants to work on your vacation? Next, so many things could happen to those papers like losing some on the plane or spilling wine when reviewing them. Not to mention, accounting is put on hold until he returns, the consultant’s invoices can’t get entered until billing is processed and how will he really know when he is done. By the way, how does he even keep track of action items using his box and paper system? 

Let’s Think Out of the Box 

Not wanting to overwhelm this principal just hours before he was set to go, I calmed the voices in my head and simply said, “You know, one day I am going to take your box away from you and you won’t miss it.” With a perplexed look, he asked me how. I explained that we could process the consultant invoices electronically. Accounting could scan the invoices, and after being scanned into the system, various parties would then do their part to approve or reject the invoice in Deltek Vision based on the business rules. 

The entire process could be done in the Deltek Vision system, and the status and notes would be visible to everyone along the way. As soon as there was final approval, accounting could continue processing the invoice and post it in Vision. The copy would be attached to the next Invoice and no box would be required. 

Coming into the Light 

Despite my description of the approval engine process, the principal remained unconvinced. He instantly presented a list of objections which I confidently addressed one by one: 

“I need to see project details as I am reviewing.” “No problem, use the project review tool in the approval application.” 

“Sometimes I want the project manager to look at it before I approve it.” “The system is designed so you can delegate or reassign approvals.” 

“There are also times that I need accounting to send the invoice back to the consultant.” “That’s why when you reject it, you must notate why in the dialog box. The system sends the message to accounting for you.” 

“We must have paper copies for taxes and legal things.” “Maybe, but IRS has been accepting electronic copies since 1995.” 

After my most excellent retorts to his arguments, the principal finally realized that using Deltek Vision’s approval engine capabilities was a viable option. I further explained that with his current Vision system, he can use electronic approvals to handle vacation requests, departmental budgets, expense reports and more. Before, he just hadn’t seen the value of thinking outside of his box. Now his box could instead be used for vacation souvenirs. 

Use Deltek Vision’s Approval Engine 

This is a true story, but not at all unique. In the past, there was not a fully integrated system. Many firms had given up on going paperless, and the final handshake always required touching that piece of paper one last time. However, with Deltek Vision’s approval engine, firms can now truly eliminate the need to physically transport documents in their boxes. Rather, thinking outside of their boxes, they can reduce processing times and provide unprecedented visibility into status and condition of their invoices.

Welcome to Deltek for Professional Services (DPS), the next generation solution for professional services automation (PSA). If PSA is a new term for you, think of it as a specialized system like an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution except specifically designed for the professional services industry. Also, check out this short article to learn more about PSA.  So, what can DPS do for your firm? Let’s see how this new cutting-edge solution will add value.

What is Deltek for Professional Services?

At its core, Deltek for Professional Services is a solution to assist your professional services firm with overcoming industry challenges and give you the tools needed to gain a competitive advantage. Whether it’s winning more work, recruiting new talent, providing top-notch project delivery or accurate forecasting of final performance, DPS will help your firm stay focused on the future. As a complete and all-inclusive package, DPS will positively affect all the core areas of your business by streamlining your processes.

Intelligent Business Development

Knowing if you have enough pipeline to meet your firm’s future goals is critical to measuring the success of your business development efforts. With Deltek for Professional Services, you can eliminate business development shortcomings by providing your team with a collaborative platform to enable every team member to stay engaged and up to date. Even more, DPS is an integrated solution that allows your business development team to create proposals based on the historic performance of your firm. As a result, your firm can create actual target revenues per account and realistic revenue forecasting.

Simplified Project Management   

Using Deltek for Professional Services, building a project plan has never been easier. With an improved user interface based on iAccess for Deltek Vision, DPS allows project managers to develop plans based on the performance of similar projects. Managers can simply build key performance indicators (KPIs) and milestones into these plans which can track the success of a project. Furthermore, these KPIs and milestones can be used to develop a project management dashboard that lets project managers see all critical project information on a single screen.

Improved Financial Insights

Tracking project profitability can be challenging. However, Deltek for Professional Services makes this process simple by eliminating the guessing game with dashboards and alerts to let you know how a project is faring. DPS allows you to monitor the key metrics that can determine the success of a project like margins, utilization, and cash flow. With this tracking system, you can keep your finances on target.

Transitioning to Deltek for Professional Services

Ready to make the move? Deltek has a plan to transition your firm to DPS if your firm is currently on Deltek Vision. Contact us to find out more about preparing for the migration. If you’re not currently using a Deltek product, Full Sail Partners can help your firm determine if DPS is right for you!

Did you know that 30% of Vision customers are in the cloud today? That is a fact, and the number is growing every day as more and more Deltek Vision clients are deciding to take their systems to the cloud. Now, what makes the Deltek Vision Cloud so attractive for so many firms?

Always Available and Reliable 

Being able to always fully utilize your Deltek Vision system is vital to run a successful business. With the Deltek Vision Cloud, you can rest assured that your firm will have access to Vision whenever needed with a 99.9% average uptime. What makes this possible? Well, Deltek has a dedicated cloud operations team. Ensuring your data is always safe in case of disaster, with a top-notch disaster recovery environment, is the number one priority.

Know Your Data is Secure in the Deltek Vision Cloud

As the leader in ERP solutions for project-based firms, Deltek knows the importance of data security to these firms. Therefore, Deltek selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) to ensure your data is protected by a leader in the data security industry. Working together, AWS maintains the physical infrastructure and security, and Deltek handles application management in the Deltek Vision Cloud. To learn more about AWS, click here.  

Access Deltek Vision from Anywhere

With the Deltek Vision Cloud, if you have a secure internet connection, you can access Deltek Vision from anywhere. This allows your mobile workforce to search data and update information while working remotely. Since Deltek makes protecting your data its top priority, you can be certain that these remote connections are secure.

Keep Up with the Latest Versions

When you use the Deltek Vision Cloud, timely updates to the latest versions of Vision are automatically done for you. As a result, you can free up valuable IT resources from having to implement the updates and hot fixes. Additionally, custom reports and other customizations are easier to maintain in the cloud environment during the update process. Deltek also allows you to determine the best upgrade window for your firm.

Consider Moving to the Deltek Vision Cloud

If your current hardware is aging or you have plans for growth, you can avoid the cost of replacing old hardware or adding new hardware by moving to the Deltek Vision Cloud. Your firm will have safe and reliable Vision access, as well as remote employees with a secure internet connection. Futhermore, you can leave the burden of Vision updates and hot fixes to the dedicated Deltek cloud operations team instead of your IT resources. The cloud is waiting for you.

Yep, you read that right. I said free resources are available for Deltek users. Using these free resources, you can become more familiar with Deltek products and keep up with the newest features and how they work. Even more, Full Sail Partners and Deltek both offer these free resources for your consumption. So, what are these useful yet complimentary tools and where do you find them?

User Groups 

User groups are a great way to network with your peers, learn tips about how they utilize their systems and perhaps better ways to accomplish specific tasks. User group meetings are led by a Deltek expert and you will enjoy an interactive environment where you learn more about a feature and get questions answered in real time. Additionally, user groups provide the opportunity to talk with other users about challenges you may be having so you can discover solutions. Look for a user group in your area and check out our upcoming list of user group events.

Webinars 

Both Full Sail Partners and Deltek offer webinars on a variety of topics presented by subject matter experts. These webinars can be attended live or viewed later on demand. You can ask questions during live webinars and walk away with the answers you are seeking. Additionally, webinars can be attended from anywhere that has internet access making them extremely convenient. Check out a list of upcoming and on demand webinars here.

YouTube 

Full Sail Partners also offers short training videos and demos for Deltek Vision users. These give you the ability to learn as your schedule allows. In our YouTube videos, we show you how to complete time saving tasks so you can quickly move from novice to power user. The videos are packed with valuable information to benefit all users. Make sure to check out and subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

Blogs 

Our weekly blogs cover hot and relevant industry topics. Each blog is written to provide helpful insights and tips with the intention of keeping users up to date on all of the latest information available. You will find links to our blogs in our monthly newsletter or you can check out our blogs on our website. 

Stay Tuned for the Latest Free Resources

While you can always visit our website daily, there are other ways to keep in the loop. We use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to spread the word about our new educational resources. Also, make sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you can find lists of new blogs, webinars, and events.