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Excellence in Project Intelligence: Increase efficiency and boost ROI with Insightsoftware and Deltek

insightsoftware -
March 3, 2022

insightsoftware is a global provider of reporting, analytics, and performance management solutions, empowering organizations to unlock business data and transform the way finance and data teams operate.

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Quotes attributed to Michael Heinsdorf, Senior Director of Product Alliances and Corporate Development at Deltek

Our valued partner, Deltek is a leading provider of software and information solutions for project-based businesses. Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, the company leverages its expertise to maximize efficiency and revenue for clients through project and financial management, business intelligence, and collaboration.

To celebrate our partnership’s 100th customer, we sat down with Michael Heinsdorf, Sr. Director of Product Alliances at Deltek to discuss the partnership between Deltek and insightsoftware (ISW), and how the collaboration has helped clients increase efficiency, boost ROI, and reduce time spent generating financial reports.

What advantages do customers realize from our partnership?

The Deltek Marketplace provides partner solutions, business services, and integrations across the project lifecycle that allow Deltek customers to unlock potential, accelerate operations, and improve profitability.

It’s also a way to showcase those software vendors, including ISW, who have committed to providing solutions that we think are a great fit for project-based businesses. This makes vendor selection easier, and adoption and implementation more successful for our customers.

Deltek customers should also feel confident that ISW, as a Marketplace partner, has access to the tools and support they need to make their solutions easy to configure, use, and integrate. Customers do not have to worry about being a test environment or having software built on their production database–ISW has made the commitment to support the customer from the ground up!

What have Deltek customers said about their experience with ISW?

There are a couple of great proof points here. The first is a case study for a joint customer, BSK Associates, a tech-forward engineering services firm out of Fresno California. Using ISW and Deltek’s products, BSK has saved a significant amount by fully automating their reporting.

And recently, three Deltek customers and Bret Tushaus, Deltek VP of Product Management, recently joined ISW in a webinar roundtable, and covered a range of topics including reporting, Deltek Vantagepoint, and how they are getting better insight into their businesses.  

Why has the partnership been so successful?

Project-based businesses, such as architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms, generate their revenue from managing and delivering projects. They must do a good job at identifying opportunities for future work, specifically those that have been historically profitable, while also maximizing the potential of a matrixed organization. The latter can be quite challenging as there are varying specialties, skill sets, and costs associated with project staff.

For example, a structural engineer, project manager, and draftsperson may have wildly different labor rates, ranging from several hundred to just under a hundred dollars an hour. Managing the costs and utilization of those resources across one or multiple projects, while delivering high-quality work, is a primary driver of success for an A&E firm. Technical strength needs to be combined with financial acumen–and that’s one area where Deltek and ISW complement each other.

While Deltek ERP products, such as Vantagepoint include both basic and advanced dashboarding and financial reporting capability, the CFO or Finance Team traditionally does their slicing and dicing of financials in Microsoft Excel. ISW makes it easy to create and pull ad hoc and scheduled reports from the comfort of Excel and allows a business to quickly change or adapt their reporting. They can distribute financials to the project managers or teams via an Excel based and controllable dashboard, which is a great way to dive into the details of each project. And that kind of depth of analysis is a great complement to the native reporting and dashboarding capabilities in Vantagepoint.

Why is reporting and analysis important for project-based businesses?

A project-based business is providing services as they deliver the project. Consistent profitability and on-time delivery of projects is a primary indicator of a successful project-based business.

Tracking revenue starts at the project level. It requires a level of granularity that allows the business to identify which projects are profitable, what staff are over, under, or appropriately utilized, all while identifying potential problems with projects well before they surface. What’s unique about Deltek’s ERP products is the concept of a project, which is tied to every single transaction, account, and organization or business unit. ISW is flexible enough to pull project data from a Deltek’s ERP products, such as Deltek Vantagepoint, as well as other data sources, and consolidate them in a repeatable and consistent presentation.

How do SPS and BizView improve data management for project-based businesses?

I go back to the use case of a business that pulls data from multiple sources and consolidating them into a statement as being one of the strongest cases for SPS. Much of the work that happens in that use case is tediously manual, and the ability for SPS to create a template that allows for that data to be quickly and easily refreshed is one that our customers appreciate.

What is the future of this partnership?

ISW has been a great success story in the Deltek Marketplace, and we look forward to continuing the relationship into the future. Since the partnership began two years ago, more than 100 Deltek customers have started using ISW.

BizView is a Cloud Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) offering by ISW. The cost and time to value compared to alternatives is compelling. I can see it being of interest to a business that are look to be deliberate and strategic about their growth.