Sweet Spots and What-Nots: Enterprise Management Software Vendor Provides Notable Solutions
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Even though it was run for over two decades as a family business (at least, this was sometimes the public perception), Deltek Systems, Inc. has become North America's principal provider of enterprise software and solutions for project-focused organizations. In mid-2005, Deltek announced that New Mountain Partners II, L.P. would make a majority capital investment in the company. See Mountainous Investment Transforms Enterprise Management Software Vendor and Enterprise Management Software Vendor Welcomes Additions for more information about this investment and its implications. This move, while certainly enhancing Deltek's prospects in terms of strengthening its global position, should not deflect attention from its already impressive offering.
Part Three of the series Mountainous Investment Transforms Enterprise Management Software Vendor.
Deltek uses a wealth of standalone and bundled modules to target the following core markets:
* professional services firms (including the architectural, engineering, and construction [A/E/C] "sweet spot," both domestically and internationally)
* complex project-focused enterprises and large federal contractors in aerospace and defense (A&D), nonprofit organizations, information technology (IT) services, and systems integration and management consulting industries, both domestically and internationally
* small to medium project-focused domestic businesses and federal contractors in the government services industry
In a simplified manner, Deltek's vertical markets can be separated by both government and commercial business. On the government side, it scales from small government contractors up to very large contractors with billions in annual revenue. On the commercial side (which includes A/E/C and professional services firms such as management consultancies), it also scales up, from firms under fifty employees, up to the largest A/E/C firms in the world.
In fact, Deltek has recently benefited from penetrating the professional services market: the use of project-oriented and professional service business application software systems is expanding as a result of a number of economic trends. These applications go hand in hand with one another, since service organizations have traditionally used project accounting more than product manufacturing firms, due to the need to customize their services for each client and to properly allocate the associated revenues and costs. As the North American shift continues from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy, the market for project-oriented organizations is expanding too. Furthermore, the trend towards outsourcing an increasing range of activities broadens the market for project-oriented organizations, as both customers and vendors need to track the costs associated with their projects.
Understandably, professional services firms that provide consulting, know-how, or other types of billable services (rather than tangible physical products), need to track billable hours and other intangibles. Also, a typical professional services business will often also have fewer fixed assets; but it must keep close track of staff billable hours to remain competitive. The true value of the business is actually determined by the quality of intangible assets, such as the staff roster (including the aggregate expertise roster), and the client list. For some time now, professional service automation (PSA) applications have tried to fill a gap that traditional enterprise systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) have failed to address. Again, that's to say that ERP vendors have traditionally built products that collect data and generate reports on widgets rather than people, whereas CRM vendor have provided solutions that help automate the process of selling these widgets and subsequent customer service interactions. PSA applications, conversely, provide information about staff members (consultants), tapping near real-time data from the sales pipeline, the project teams, and finance, and in the process enable professional services firms to improve productivity, efficiency, and profitability. Deltek is one of a few enterprise applications vendors that have largely managed to bridge this gap (see Enterprise Resource Planning for Services, and Professional Services Automation: Where Do You Draw the Line?).
The main product for this market is Deltek Vision, a "young" solution (compared to many sibling products, and in terms of modernity) that was designed from the ground up for professional services firms, enabling them to attain an up-to-date 360-degree view of people, projects, clients, resources, and business in action. The product, which was initially released in late 2002, reached a landmark 1,000 customers in early 2006. Using Web-based technology, Deltek Vision provides client relationship management, proposal automation, project management, resource management, project and financial accounting, time and expense (T&E) capture, billing, purchasing, multicurrency, multicompany, and performance management functionality in a single solution. Project-focused organizations and professional services firms around the world have apparently been deploying Vision, since it offers an exceptional business fit for such firms in a wide range of vertical markets, including A/E/C, accounting, consulting and planning, IT services, software, and integration. The product's Web services-based n-tier architecture is scalable, and its open foundation allows for reasonably rapid deployment as stand-alone modules or a broader tightly integrated solution.
Developed in close collaboration with some of Deltek's high-profile professional services clients, Deltek Vision aims at solving the business challenges of professional services firms, such as winning repeat business, improving project performance, and maximizing project margins. Contrary to the typical detrimental practice of detaching initial customer interactions from subsequent project management and delivery, this unified solution serves as a single source of project-related data, which can be used to track performance, make strategic business decisions, and measure individual project performance. To that end, accessing a client record in Deltek Vision from the CRM & Proposals module will, for example, also list the client's employees and former employers via a hyperlink, enabling users to keep tabs on industry movement and team turnover.
Another example of how a tight vertical fit works compared to generic solutions, in the construction segment, is the requirement of cost-plus contract accounting (one of a variety of methods for pricing and billing project work). A cost-plus project has a different set of requirements from a fixed-price contract, since in the first case, a services company wants to maximize billable hours, while in the latter case, the goal is to minimize them. While "bolt-on" features exist for generic solutions designed solely for fixed-price contracts, Deltek Vision uses the percentage of completion method for subcontract progress payment requests, including variable rate retention for work in place (WIP) and stored materials. In the architecture vertical, project planning requirements are traditionally handled via disparate spreadsheets for project planning, whereas Deltek's project planning is integrated with accounting, and supports multilevel work breakdown structure (WBS), and revenue and profit forecasting. Finally, in the engineering segment, the ability to automate the proposal process as a key CRM component is vital; traditional product-based CRM systems have no qualification-based proposal automation capabilities, whereas Deltek Vision features project-oriented CRM capabilities, which intrinsically include proposal automation.
Deltek Vision is a Microsoft .NET-based platform for the commercial professional services market. With its support for Web-native hypertext markup language (HTML), dynamic HTML (DHTML), and Java Script on the user interface (UI) tier; Microsoft SQL Server as database; and the Actuate reporting server, the product features extensible integration architecture that enables collaboration and mobile extensions through Web services. For these reasons, the goal is for Deltek Vision to become the company's primary offering to professional services firms, and will be targeted at existing Deltek Advantage, Deltek FMS and Deltek Sema4 customers, as well as at new customers in all types of professional services industries.
In mid-2005, Deltek announced the release of Deltek Vision 3, which provided significant upgrades and enhancements for increasing productivity and workflow, including Deltek's new Microsoft .NET-based VisionXtend platform. This technology enables real-time, transparent connections via Web Services and extensible markup language (XML) across multiple platforms and applications, allowing professional services firms to integrate and streamline key business processes in order to achieve performance and compliance management, as well as a collaborative view of firm-wide operations. Other significant enhancements in Vision 3 include a new workflow engine, a screen designer, audit trail reporting, a purchasing module, and document management capabilities providing secure Web-based collaboration for users to share, upload, review, and edit documents, regardless of location. In addition, Vision 3 introduced improved international (multicurrency and multicompany) functionality. For more information on the product release, ssee Niche Software at Its Best.
Early in 2006, Deltek and AppForge, the provider of enterprise multiplatform mobile and wireless application development solutions, announced a partnership that will eventually enable Deltek to deliver mobile applications via Deltek Vision across any major mobile operating system (OS) and device. Through this partnership, Deltek plans to deploy mobile applications to more than 450 devices across PocketPC, Symbian, and Palm OS platforms (with the addition of the BlackBerry OS in the second part of 2006) via AppForge's Crossfire product. This should allow users to choose from a wide range of mobile platforms and devices, while significantly reducing development time and resources. With AppForge, developers can write an application once, and deploy it to most major mobile and wireless devices, PDAs, smartphones, and industrial devices, using Microsoft C# .NET 2003, Visual Basic .NET 2003, and Visual Basic 6.0. This should save businesses time and money by eliminating the need to rewrite an application for a new or next-generation device or OS. Mobile applications for timekeeping and expense management have been available since mid-2006 as part of Deltek Vision 4.0, and future releases will include other functions such as CRM, and alerts and approvals for requisitions, purchasing, and resource planning.
In March 2006, Deltek announced the release of Deltek Vision Small Business, a preconfigured, out-of-the-box business solution that delivers Deltek functionality to small businesses. The product features a solid combination of core modules from Deltek Vision, such as CRM, proposal automation, project management, resource management, project and financial accounting, and performance management functionality. The solution is the result of Deltek's vast experience, combined with the recent acquisition of Wind2, which provided the vendor with a deeper understanding of the requirements of a small professional firm. With its core functionality and low-cost special pricing (an affordable start-up fee), the product offers a wide array of convenient options, including new hosting services, an out-of-the box configuration of critical core accounting, billing and time keeping functionality, licensing options, and a new self-paced training program called Vision Fast Start Implementation that should help reduce implementation time, and ultimately lower the total cost of ownership (TCO). The solution is also available through Deltek's expanding reseller network throughout the world.
Finally, as a result of increasing requirements for Deltek's analytics capabilities, and given Deltek's quest to capture new markets, the vendor has lately been exploring data visualization technology (analyzing historical data from similar projects to improve project profitability presents a different problem from optimizing current staff deployments). These tools of this technology originate from scientific applications, and are now being merged with statistical analysis software, with the goal of replacing reports and tables with powerful, eye-catching images that convey important statistical messages to even the casual user. To that end, through a partnership with Panopticon, Deltek has been embedding this technology into Deltek Vision 4 to allow a firm-wide view of the health and performance of project portfolios to executives, project managers, and other users.
Most recently, in mid-2006, Deltek announced the release of Deltek Vision 4, which, for the first time, integrates planning, tracking and project administration features with innovative functionality such as visualization and mobile access, to create a solution that streamlines all facets of the project-based business. It is available as a complete enterprise-class suite, or as a preconfigured solution designed to meet the needs of smaller firms. Visualization is a powerful management tool that empowers businesses to take control of their data and quickly turn it into actionable information. A mission-critical technology in the financial services marketplace for many years, Deltek has harnessed the power of visualization for the project-focused organization with the release of Deltek Vision 4, enabling engineering and architecture firms, IT services companies, and management consulting firms to instantly discover trends and opportunities across their entire project portfolio. Visualization provides a simple display that depicts mission-critical information about a firm's entire business—including project performance, status, trends, and risks—using color and shapes to alert viewers of any performance issues at a glance, and allowing them to focus on the most critical issues.
Deltek Vision 4 also introduces a new Mobile Applications Suite, significantly enhancing capabilities that allow field workers to collect and provide their project data more simply than ever before. For the first time, project managers and consultants can work offline or from their wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smart phones, contributing to project reports and entering critical information (including time and expense data) when they are not connected to the network. Businesses can now streamline field reporting without requiring large hardware investments.
Part Three of the series Mountainous Investment Transforms Enterprise Management Software Vendor.
Deltek uses a wealth of standalone and bundled modules to target the following core markets:
* professional services firms (including the architectural, engineering, and construction [A/E/C] "sweet spot," both domestically and internationally)
* complex project-focused enterprises and large federal contractors in aerospace and defense (A&D), nonprofit organizations, information technology (IT) services, and systems integration and management consulting industries, both domestically and internationally
* small to medium project-focused domestic businesses and federal contractors in the government services industry
In a simplified manner, Deltek's vertical markets can be separated by both government and commercial business. On the government side, it scales from small government contractors up to very large contractors with billions in annual revenue. On the commercial side (which includes A/E/C and professional services firms such as management consultancies), it also scales up, from firms under fifty employees, up to the largest A/E/C firms in the world.
In fact, Deltek has recently benefited from penetrating the professional services market: the use of project-oriented and professional service business application software systems is expanding as a result of a number of economic trends. These applications go hand in hand with one another, since service organizations have traditionally used project accounting more than product manufacturing firms, due to the need to customize their services for each client and to properly allocate the associated revenues and costs. As the North American shift continues from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy, the market for project-oriented organizations is expanding too. Furthermore, the trend towards outsourcing an increasing range of activities broadens the market for project-oriented organizations, as both customers and vendors need to track the costs associated with their projects.
Understandably, professional services firms that provide consulting, know-how, or other types of billable services (rather than tangible physical products), need to track billable hours and other intangibles. Also, a typical professional services business will often also have fewer fixed assets; but it must keep close track of staff billable hours to remain competitive. The true value of the business is actually determined by the quality of intangible assets, such as the staff roster (including the aggregate expertise roster), and the client list. For some time now, professional service automation (PSA) applications have tried to fill a gap that traditional enterprise systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) have failed to address. Again, that's to say that ERP vendors have traditionally built products that collect data and generate reports on widgets rather than people, whereas CRM vendor have provided solutions that help automate the process of selling these widgets and subsequent customer service interactions. PSA applications, conversely, provide information about staff members (consultants), tapping near real-time data from the sales pipeline, the project teams, and finance, and in the process enable professional services firms to improve productivity, efficiency, and profitability. Deltek is one of a few enterprise applications vendors that have largely managed to bridge this gap (see Enterprise Resource Planning for Services, and Professional Services Automation: Where Do You Draw the Line?).
The main product for this market is Deltek Vision, a "young" solution (compared to many sibling products, and in terms of modernity) that was designed from the ground up for professional services firms, enabling them to attain an up-to-date 360-degree view of people, projects, clients, resources, and business in action. The product, which was initially released in late 2002, reached a landmark 1,000 customers in early 2006. Using Web-based technology, Deltek Vision provides client relationship management, proposal automation, project management, resource management, project and financial accounting, time and expense (T&E) capture, billing, purchasing, multicurrency, multicompany, and performance management functionality in a single solution. Project-focused organizations and professional services firms around the world have apparently been deploying Vision, since it offers an exceptional business fit for such firms in a wide range of vertical markets, including A/E/C, accounting, consulting and planning, IT services, software, and integration. The product's Web services-based n-tier architecture is scalable, and its open foundation allows for reasonably rapid deployment as stand-alone modules or a broader tightly integrated solution.
Developed in close collaboration with some of Deltek's high-profile professional services clients, Deltek Vision aims at solving the business challenges of professional services firms, such as winning repeat business, improving project performance, and maximizing project margins. Contrary to the typical detrimental practice of detaching initial customer interactions from subsequent project management and delivery, this unified solution serves as a single source of project-related data, which can be used to track performance, make strategic business decisions, and measure individual project performance. To that end, accessing a client record in Deltek Vision from the CRM & Proposals module will, for example, also list the client's employees and former employers via a hyperlink, enabling users to keep tabs on industry movement and team turnover.
Another example of how a tight vertical fit works compared to generic solutions, in the construction segment, is the requirement of cost-plus contract accounting (one of a variety of methods for pricing and billing project work). A cost-plus project has a different set of requirements from a fixed-price contract, since in the first case, a services company wants to maximize billable hours, while in the latter case, the goal is to minimize them. While "bolt-on" features exist for generic solutions designed solely for fixed-price contracts, Deltek Vision uses the percentage of completion method for subcontract progress payment requests, including variable rate retention for work in place (WIP) and stored materials. In the architecture vertical, project planning requirements are traditionally handled via disparate spreadsheets for project planning, whereas Deltek's project planning is integrated with accounting, and supports multilevel work breakdown structure (WBS), and revenue and profit forecasting. Finally, in the engineering segment, the ability to automate the proposal process as a key CRM component is vital; traditional product-based CRM systems have no qualification-based proposal automation capabilities, whereas Deltek Vision features project-oriented CRM capabilities, which intrinsically include proposal automation.
Deltek Vision is a Microsoft .NET-based platform for the commercial professional services market. With its support for Web-native hypertext markup language (HTML), dynamic HTML (DHTML), and Java Script on the user interface (UI) tier; Microsoft SQL Server as database; and the Actuate reporting server, the product features extensible integration architecture that enables collaboration and mobile extensions through Web services. For these reasons, the goal is for Deltek Vision to become the company's primary offering to professional services firms, and will be targeted at existing Deltek Advantage, Deltek FMS and Deltek Sema4 customers, as well as at new customers in all types of professional services industries.
In mid-2005, Deltek announced the release of Deltek Vision 3, which provided significant upgrades and enhancements for increasing productivity and workflow, including Deltek's new Microsoft .NET-based VisionXtend platform. This technology enables real-time, transparent connections via Web Services and extensible markup language (XML) across multiple platforms and applications, allowing professional services firms to integrate and streamline key business processes in order to achieve performance and compliance management, as well as a collaborative view of firm-wide operations. Other significant enhancements in Vision 3 include a new workflow engine, a screen designer, audit trail reporting, a purchasing module, and document management capabilities providing secure Web-based collaboration for users to share, upload, review, and edit documents, regardless of location. In addition, Vision 3 introduced improved international (multicurrency and multicompany) functionality. For more information on the product release, ssee Niche Software at Its Best.
Early in 2006, Deltek and AppForge, the provider of enterprise multiplatform mobile and wireless application development solutions, announced a partnership that will eventually enable Deltek to deliver mobile applications via Deltek Vision across any major mobile operating system (OS) and device. Through this partnership, Deltek plans to deploy mobile applications to more than 450 devices across PocketPC, Symbian, and Palm OS platforms (with the addition of the BlackBerry OS in the second part of 2006) via AppForge's Crossfire product. This should allow users to choose from a wide range of mobile platforms and devices, while significantly reducing development time and resources. With AppForge, developers can write an application once, and deploy it to most major mobile and wireless devices, PDAs, smartphones, and industrial devices, using Microsoft C# .NET 2003, Visual Basic .NET 2003, and Visual Basic 6.0. This should save businesses time and money by eliminating the need to rewrite an application for a new or next-generation device or OS. Mobile applications for timekeeping and expense management have been available since mid-2006 as part of Deltek Vision 4.0, and future releases will include other functions such as CRM, and alerts and approvals for requisitions, purchasing, and resource planning.
In March 2006, Deltek announced the release of Deltek Vision Small Business, a preconfigured, out-of-the-box business solution that delivers Deltek functionality to small businesses. The product features a solid combination of core modules from Deltek Vision, such as CRM, proposal automation, project management, resource management, project and financial accounting, and performance management functionality. The solution is the result of Deltek's vast experience, combined with the recent acquisition of Wind2, which provided the vendor with a deeper understanding of the requirements of a small professional firm. With its core functionality and low-cost special pricing (an affordable start-up fee), the product offers a wide array of convenient options, including new hosting services, an out-of-the box configuration of critical core accounting, billing and time keeping functionality, licensing options, and a new self-paced training program called Vision Fast Start Implementation that should help reduce implementation time, and ultimately lower the total cost of ownership (TCO). The solution is also available through Deltek's expanding reseller network throughout the world.
Finally, as a result of increasing requirements for Deltek's analytics capabilities, and given Deltek's quest to capture new markets, the vendor has lately been exploring data visualization technology (analyzing historical data from similar projects to improve project profitability presents a different problem from optimizing current staff deployments). These tools of this technology originate from scientific applications, and are now being merged with statistical analysis software, with the goal of replacing reports and tables with powerful, eye-catching images that convey important statistical messages to even the casual user. To that end, through a partnership with Panopticon, Deltek has been embedding this technology into Deltek Vision 4 to allow a firm-wide view of the health and performance of project portfolios to executives, project managers, and other users.
Most recently, in mid-2006, Deltek announced the release of Deltek Vision 4, which, for the first time, integrates planning, tracking and project administration features with innovative functionality such as visualization and mobile access, to create a solution that streamlines all facets of the project-based business. It is available as a complete enterprise-class suite, or as a preconfigured solution designed to meet the needs of smaller firms. Visualization is a powerful management tool that empowers businesses to take control of their data and quickly turn it into actionable information. A mission-critical technology in the financial services marketplace for many years, Deltek has harnessed the power of visualization for the project-focused organization with the release of Deltek Vision 4, enabling engineering and architecture firms, IT services companies, and management consulting firms to instantly discover trends and opportunities across their entire project portfolio. Visualization provides a simple display that depicts mission-critical information about a firm's entire business—including project performance, status, trends, and risks—using color and shapes to alert viewers of any performance issues at a glance, and allowing them to focus on the most critical issues.
Deltek Vision 4 also introduces a new Mobile Applications Suite, significantly enhancing capabilities that allow field workers to collect and provide their project data more simply than ever before. For the first time, project managers and consultants can work offline or from their wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smart phones, contributing to project reports and entering critical information (including time and expense data) when they are not connected to the network. Businesses can now streamline field reporting without requiring large hardware investments.
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