I have recently started working as a CRM Consultant at Full Sail Partners, a firm which specializes in software consulting for professional services firms using Deltek software. It is an exciting role that I’m so thankful to be in, but there is one thing that I have been asked a lot recently by friends and family…

What is Deltek?

Deltek is a software company that specializes in providing planning software for project-based businesses. The term “project-based” mostly encompasses firms that do work based around large contracts - for example, contracts to create built-spaces or infrastructure projects, along with all the peripheral specialties that go along with those efforts. These are often architects, engineers, planners, and the like, which often sub-contract specialty firms for those other efforts like environmental design, MEP, traffic engineering, etc.

Deltek’s vision is “Powering Project Success.” In that spirit, the company develops two pieces of software that they are best known for: Vision, and Vantagepoint. These are their core products which are the de facto standard of project-based planning, accounting, and CRM for professional services firms.

What is Vision?

Vision is the Deltek software that I learned during my last role as a Proposal Coordinator at RRM Design Group. It is Enterprise Resource Planning Software, meaning that it coordinates the data points of the firm for a variety of different target user groups: Project Management, C-Suite, Operations, IT, Business Development, and Accounting. Basically, it provides a one-stop-shop solution to keep projects, people, and resources well-accounted and monitored in a professional services firm.

As a proposal coordinator, I was directly involved in the use of Vision’s CRM add-on. The acronym “CRM” stands for “Customer Relationship Management,” and typically is associated with products like HubSpot and Salesforce (see here). However, for the services world, Vision offers a much more targeted approach. Proposals often make up a large slice of business development for a firm, especially when they seek work in the public sector. Drafting these documents becomes increasingly complex as the firm grows older and larger, since they source information from an increasingly large data pool. For example, Requests for Proposals often require project case studies as proof that the firm has expertise in the proposed task. Well-established firms often have hundreds of projects, and cataloguing these manually would be a herculean task.

Vision’s CRM provides a great way to sort these, storing relevant information that can quickly be searched to create marketing materials or proposals. Other ways I’ve used it are:

1. Creating resume project lists for team members based on custom database searches
2. Storing written content, like reference quotes, for marketing material
3. Automating proposal document generation based on Word and InDesign templates
4. Managing business-pursuit opportunities, like estimated project value, resource allocation, and proposal links for reference
5. Automating workflows to send email notifications to staff if their professional licenses are about to expire

For non-marketers, Vision also provides things like:

• Timesheets
• Project-based accounting
• Reporting
• Resource Scheduling

What is Vantagepoint?

Vantagepoint is the software succession of Vision, introduced by Deltek in 2018. According to their website:

It gives you a single source of truth with better data and improved visibility to improve productivity and increase profitability so you can make better, more informed decisions to drive your business forward.

The new product uses the same core principles that made Vision so dominant, but adds a host of modern new features, built on user feedback from Vision. One of my favorites is how the front-end has been fully migrated to the browser, meaning that client’s no longer have to locally download software to access the interface.

It focuses heavily on improving the user experience, making tasks like navigation much more intuitive. It also offers more powerful ways to manipulate and search data, with better search query options, dashboards, reports, and ways to view records (“Record” refers to a piece of database information stored in Vantagepoint - i.e. a row in a table).

Vantagepoint offers a more scalable and approachable ERP solution than its ancestor, Vision. Many firms are making the switch, and part of my job as a consultant is to help with the CRM side of making sure their processes and data are well-thought out with the new software. However, despite its overall improvement over Vision, it is still a work in progress with regular updates introducing new features and fixing bugs. Furthermore, although Vantagepoint’s average user experience is more approachable, the power user experience remains difficult to grasp.

As I continue to dive into that knowledge, I’m excited to share the lessons I learn about real-world software solutions, and hopefully help others along the way.