Deltek Executive Viewpoint David Sample, Deltek Time & Expense

Transcription

1 Deltek Executive Viewpoint David Sample, Deltek Time & Expense TRANSFORMING QUALITY PROJECT TIME INTO PROJECT BUSINESS WITH EMPLOYEE TIME COLLECTION & EXPENSE AUTOMATION SOFTWARE Deltek interviewed David Sample, Deltek Time & Expense Product Manager, about the specific business challenges that project-based organizations and professional services firms face in automating their employee time collection and expense processing systems. Some of the most critical business challenges include managing and tracking employee time by project as well as reporting on labor utilization and employee expense processing. Sample also describes some of the key features and benefits of the Deltek time and expense applications and the specific areas in which they deliver a better business fit than competing solutions. Q How does Deltek define "time collection" and "employee expense processing" in terms of the essential project-related business functions and practice management activities that this application area addresses? A DAVID SAMPLE, DELTEK TIME & EXPENSE PRODUCT MANAGER: From a business function standpoint, we define employee "time collection" as an automated process for capturing, tracking and classifying labor and expenses at project level detail, which can also include the capture of sub-layers of labor information such as billable codes, pay types and locations. For employee expense processing, the focus is more on traditional expense reporting where you have a trip or billable amount that's going to be captured and applied against a project or indirect activity. We look at it in terms of not just "generic" time and expense, but as "project-oriented" time and expense. Q What are some of the key differences in the way project businesses and professional services firms need to manage employee time and expenses versus other types of companies? A SAMPLE: Project-oriented businesses and professional services firms have more detailed contracting needs than folks operating outside of that industry. They are looking to specifically capture and know exactly what an employee is working on every hour of the day, whereas for example in a retail trade, the need is to simply know that an employee is on the job. On the expense side, there are certainly more similarities to other types of businesses, but the level of detail in expense tracking is still far greater than what's associated with nonproject or professional services firms. Also, some of our clients that work with the federal government have more exacting requirements from an audit and tracking standpoint that they must be in compliance with or be in violation of their contract. Q What are some of the most critical challenges that project businesses and professional services firms face in controlling costs associated with labor utilization and expense processing? A SAMPLE: There are actually a myriad of challenges that create issues for these firms. First of all, the primary cost for the vast majority of project business and services firms is labor, so it's especially critical to have the capabilities for managing this cost effectively. Secondly, labor is also the primary source of revenue. So, if you're going to bill individuals out, you've got to be able to have a system that you can rely on for recording labor and 1

2 expenses properly, and that quickly and easily attributes that data to the right contract and project in an expedient manner. If this process isn't automated, it would be very difficult to know where your money is being spent, and to subsequently discover ways to cut costs ¾ perhaps through volume discounts and other things along those lines. Q Are there specific industries or types of firms that stand to benefit the most from adopting a time and expense automation system? A SAMPLE: From a functional standpoint, companies that need to track time against a cost center, and basically any organization that needs to have their employees' time broken down at the project level, are ideal candidates for our products. This includes architecture, engineering, environmental organizations, as well as government contractors, researchdriven companies, non-profit groups, advertising agencies and law firms. To a certain degree construction firms are also can realize significant benefits, since we recently added a crew time sheet function and other new features specifically designed for that industry. Q How many of Deltek's clients are using the company's time and expense system, and what types of industries do they serve? A SAMPLE: We have more than 600 companies using the system with over 300,000 end users serving all types of industries: A/E Industry, construction industry, consulting firms, insurance, PR, advertising, pharmaceutical, government contractors of all flavors, IT shops, manufacturing companies and virtually any type of company in any industry that wants to track time to a project. Q What are some of the key features of the Deltek applications and the specific areas in which they function more effectively or deliver a better business fit than competing solutions? A SAMPLE: Certainly we've spent a lot of time trying to make the application as userfriendly as possible. We've done that by making the graphical user interface (GUI) as intuitive as possible, and I think this is one key area in which Deltek's solution stands out. The GIU is laid out in a manner which is easy to understand by the employee and can be somewhat changed by the company, depending on how they may want to customize it. For example, for project-based business, our system allows you to create lists based on the project; program manager or department whatever is required. And we'll send authorizations out to employees based on these lists. Additionally, we have multiple levels of validation within our application so you can have a project number with a certain billing code that can be different from project to project. We also support a number of government contractor requirements. On the timesheet side, the audit trail is very robust tracking and recording everything that DCAA requires. The solution also provides the ability to enter time for a crew of your construction company, where a bunch of people are working at the jobsite but need to be able to track their hours to multiple projects or multiple tasks within a project using different billing codes or rates. Deltek also now supports wage determination on certain contracts that call for people to be paid differently depending on the type of work that they're doing across different cities. Finally, our billing backup feature allows users to go through the application and print out timesheets that go with certain bills eliminating the need to photocopy, sort and collate all the timesheets that go with certain bills. 2

3 For remote users, our Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solution allows employees without convenient access to a computer to call in their time using a touchtone telephone or mobile phone. On the expense report side, we support both look-ups and automatic population of per diem and lodging based on city codes and locations that employees are working in. Q What are some of the most substantive benefits or ROI that Deltek time and expense users have realized? A SAMPLE: The three main benefits that companies using our products are experiencing are making money, saving money and managing money better. As far as saving money goes, the Deltek Time Collection product decreases the amount of data entry that's done. It also eliminates the cost of paper sorting, issuing, filing, retrieving, and copying speeding up the entire approval cycle. Other savings include time spent to manually correct timesheets, because our automatic correction procedure eliminates manual timesheet corrections that are typically prone to error. As far as helping companies make money, the product can validate all the entries, so that fewer inaccurate entries occur. When bills out faster and with a higher level of accuracy, fewer of them get pushed back, resulting in much fewer billing discrepancies. We've been able to speed up the billing cycle anywhere between one to four days between different clients, which in turn reduce the day s sales outstanding. The product also helps clients manage money better. Companies can use the application to see who's billable and who's not billable. So if you have a number of people or offices that are experiencing low productivity, you can use the product to show you in mid-week who's not billable and who has extra time. This will help you potentially move people from one project to the next before waiting for their timesheets to be posted in your system and retrieving that information from your accounting system. The expense report application also has many different ways to save money that go to return on investment. Obviously the savings that go along with managing paper are similar to time collection, such as eliminating the issuing of paper expense reports. However, the big saving comes in terms of managing the approval cycle better. The remittance of expenses is cut down from anywhere of ten to fifteen days to three days by implementing auditing procedures and receipt management, as well as changing some procedures such as how receipts are handled. For companies that are using a corporately sponsored credit card (either centrally or employee paid), we can institute a procedure where those transactions are automatically sent to the employee. Employees can select from a pick list, drop it into an expense report and send them to their managers. Q How do Deltek Time Collection and Deltek Employee Expense fit into the overall Deltek Enterprise Automation Suite? A SAMPLE: Our time and expense solutions interface with Deltek's back-office products to provide a true end-to-end solution. They work with systems such as Deltek Costpoint and Deltek GCS Premier by providing the door that does data capture. So instead of gathering 500 paper timesheets at the end of the week and having someone sit down and key all of their data in, we're gathering that data and transferring it into these systems in a batch mode. 3

4 The same thing holds true with employee expense. Instead of having people turn in paper expense reports every day, that information is moved electronically from the employee expense product into the back office product. The key advantage here is that companies looking for proven end-to-end solutions can turn to Deltek as a "one stop shop" for their project-based requirements. Q What additional benefits or advantages do users gain through integration? A SAMPLE: I want to emphasize that the integration with the Deltek Enterprise Automation Suite is already in place when a client purchases any type or combination of Deltek software solutions. This is a major point because all the interfacing is done, and there's no special code that has to be written when one of our implementation consultants goes out for the implementation. It's the same tried and tested, quality controlled interface being used every day in hundreds of other companies. The benefit is that we can get a pilot system up and running in one to two weeks depending on the system; whereas a lot of companies spend months struggling with an interface and never really do get it right. Also, because the system is fully integrated, end-users get a single point of data entry, which prevents against the occurrence of disparate data in one system to the next. You know that when you take timesheets at the end of the period and load those back into your accounting system, the data's out. That also drives the billing cycle into getting things done more quickly and cuts down on data entry. Q Many clients have also integrated these two products with third-party software systems from other vendors. Who are these vendors and which of their products can be integrated with Deltek's solutions? A SAMPLE: We've had a lot of success in implementing the time and expense applications with an impressive number of third party software packages. These include all of the major vendors, such as SAP, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards (both World and the One World), Oracle (Oracle Project and Oracle HR), ADP; Navision; Platinum Software; Solomon; and Mass 90. We've also had some companies send data back and forth through Microsoft Project and other similar systems. The bottom line is that, overall, we haven't run across one that we can't interface with. Q What product development plans are in place for future versions of Deltek's solutions for automating time collection and employee expense? A SAMPLE: I see our products becoming a portal for the employee out in the field. Basically, being able to touch an employee at anytime and to move data to the back-office. That may be behind firewalls and secure areas to employees traveling around without their own computer with access to only an Internet Café or something like that. In addition, we plan to take advantage of the growing number of tools that would help us achieve tighter integration with non-deltek back office products. 4

5 ABOUT DELTEK SYSTEMS, INC. Deltek is the leading provider of enterprise software, solutions and consulting to more than 7,500 professional services firms and project-based businesses worldwide. Deltek s solutions encompass client relationship management and proposal automation; employee time and expense; project and resource planning, budgeting and control; accounting and billing; procurement and materials management; human resources management; and e- Business. Integrated services include premium-level customer support and software maintenance, implementation and practice management consulting, and classroom training. For more information, visit Deltek at or call 800/ in the U.S., or +44 (0) in the U.K. DELTEK CONTACT INFORMATION: Deltek Public Relations: Allen Farber, Press Officer, , ext. 4544; Cell: 703/ ; afarber@deltek.com. Deltek PR In The US: SheaHedges Group: Nick Findlay, (703) ; Cell: (301) ; nfindlay@sheahedges.com. Deltek PR In The UK/International: Cobalt Blue Marketing Communications LTD: Helen Williamson, +44 (1252) ; helenw@cobaltblue.com. 5