Position Your Consulting Firm for Profitable Growth A Path to Visibility, Control and Insight

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2014 Market Outlook:Double-Digit Revenue Growth Consulting revenue growth within the U.S. is up by nearly double-digits, according to industry researcher and Source for Consulting co-founder, Dr. Fiona Czerniawska. Her research also shows that targeting the right industry sectors and services are essential to your firm’s success.

The research points that the highest growth sectors within consulting are healthcare and energy/resources. The best services play, due to the increase in customer focus, is on marketing & selling, followed closely by the continuous strong demand for operational improvement.

Is Your Firm Ready? With the consulting market experiencing such exceptional growth, is your firm positioned to take advantage of new markets or changes in your service portfolio? More importantly, can the systems you have in place right now give your firm the insight it needs to make the right decisions that will lead your firm to success and profitable growth?

Outlook for the U.S. Consulting Market

» View the webcast now!

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Market Drivers and the Impact on Your Consulting FirmLet’s take a look at the 4 key market drivers* impacting consulting firms– and the key questions you need to ask of your firm:

1. Volatility

2. The Rise of the Mega-Firm

3. Hyper-Specialization

4. Fee Pressures

* per Source for Consulting (www.sourceforconsulting.com)

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1. Volatility – With a volatile economy driving the supply and demand of projects, consulting firms must be able to manage frequent changes in requirements, plans and projects.

Are you able to respond appropriately within a volatile market?

2. The Rise of the Mega-Firm – With continued market consolidation, consulting firms must be able to go after the right projects with the right people.

Is your firm set up to manage complexity to win new projects as you grow in scale?

3. Hyper-Specialization – After a period of stagnant consultant turnover, the market conditions are now in favor of attracting, managing and retaining the best industry experts. Consulting firms must be able to utilize the right people on the right projects.

Are you able to consistently utilize your talent?

4. Fee Pressures – With fee rates being depressed over the past several years, clients are looking for lower rates. Consulting firms must be able to manage project cost and still meet profit margins.

Is your firm set up to charge competitively, and get paid for work completed?

Let’s take a look at how these market trends impact your firm’s path to profitable growth, and more importantly, technology’s role in your firm’s response to these trends. Since strong project management is critical to your firm’s profitability, let’s start there.

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80% of Firms Struggle with Project ProfitabilityWhat’s behind unprofitable projects? To learn more, Deltek partnered with Consulting Magazine and sponsored a first-of-its-kind Efficiency & Automation Survey to discover how processes and technology impact consulting firms’ project profitability.

Survey Highlights

Not every consulting firm knows which engagements are unprofitable, but most have ideas about the reasons why. “Scope Creep” is by far the guilty party, but in more than 50% of firms, “Inaccurate SOW’s” are a partner-in-crime, with “Unrecorded (lost) time” coming in third.

Moving on to administrative efficiency, we learned 2 in 3 firms indicate “Tracking & Reporting on Project Progress” as the most cumbersome and time-consuming administrative tasks.

1 in 2 consulting firms have 3+ systems

50%

If engagements aren’t profitable, do you know why?

» View the infographic

2 in 3

1 in 2

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1 in 2 Consulting Firms have 3+ SystemsAnother key take-away from the Consulting Magazine survey is that firms have 3 or more administrative or project management systems. Respondents were blunt in telling us they need a more connected ERP infrastructure in order to cut back on the most cumbersome and time-consuming administrative tasks. What firm needs 3 different answers to the same question?

What are the consequences of a disconnected consulting firm?

Poor project visibility – it’s hard to see how engagements are performing

Inefficient financial control – it’s difficult to guide people to the best decisions

Weak and ineffective firm-wide insight – it’s challenging to know what is (or isn’t) working

These consequences lead to lost time eating into profit, uneven utilization that frustrates staff and clients alike, and incorrect invoices that tie up cash flow.

Let’s take a look at how wider visibility, tighter control and deeper insight can help you win, manage, deliver and measure your engagements.

Efficiency and Automation Survey Results

» Get the survey results now!

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Win – Manage – Deliver – Measure Your Engagements, Services and Clients

A path to profitable growth spans the entire lifecycle of a consulting engagement: Winning the job, managing the engagement, delivering the work and measuring the results.

Project Stage - To WIN new projects, you need to propose quickly, yet accurately. A smart firm can look at historical client engagements to see what worked, which resources were used and how best to price the work.

Project Needs – Better visibility to resource capacity and talent would give you the confidence to commit to delivery dates. Tighter control would help make sure bids go out with the right people and the correct rates. Deep insight would show you what you’ve done well in the past- helping you produce competitive bids and highly profitable, repeatable work.

Project Stage – Next, you need to MANAGE the projects you have won so you can complete them on time, on budget, on scope and with the quality that your clients expect.

Project Needs – Visibility is essential to seeing how projects are performing against expected budgets. And control gives you the power you need to guide adjustments whenever change is needed. Insight will show you what worked- and what didn’t - so you can prevent mistakes from happening in the future.

WIN

MANAGE

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Project Stage – You also need to DELIVER for your firm. This is all about meeting the client’s expectations and getting paid.

Project Needs – Visibility lets you know when you’ve reached a billable milestone, and tight control ensures you get paid promptly and completely- without lost hours or too many write-offs. Insight will help guide you to “repeat offenders” who typically run afoul of expectations, so you can guide behavior to bring the results you expect.

Project Stage – Smart organizations need to analyze and MEASURE the performance of their project-based business to find areas of opportunity and identify areas to improve. Assessing and measuring your firm effectively is a key to continuous improvement.

Project Needs – Visibility is essential so everyone can see how their team is performing against KPIs like Utilization, Leverage, Realization, or Margin. Control comes from knowing, in advance or as soon as possible, when you have issues that need attention. Insight comes with being able to answer practically any question you may have about the performance of your business - and seeing the “real reasons” behind the results.

If your firm is like most firms in the survey, you probably have different, stand-alone front-office systems for client management, project budgeting and resource planning. And then you have a back-office system to collect time and invoice clients. All these silos and disconnected systems create problems.

 If this describes your firm’s fragmented view of projects, financials, clients, and resources, then a connected, project-based ERP system can enable profitability and growth.

MEASURE

DELIVER

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What a Project-based ERP System Can Bring to Your FirmA more streamlined, flexible, project-based ERP system seems to be the common denominator in order for firms like yours to gain the firm-wide insight and the project control you need. Here’s what you should look for:

Complete Visibility Consulting firms seeking profitable outcomes need complete visibility across clients, projects, resources and financials. But fragmentation separates people from information. Don’t address only half the business. You want a complete system that works across your entire firm, from front-office to back-office and gives everyone easy access to current work, past results and future forecasted business. A system that spans business development, resource planning, engagement delivery and financial management will bring you visibility across your entire consulting firm.

Imagine your firm with the complete VISIBILITY for staff to access trusted information anytime, anywhere, and from any device.

Advantages of a Connected, Project-Based ERP system

» Watch the video!

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Total ControlThink of everyone involved in capturing new business and delivering work. Find a system that connects workflows and processes across the entire organization. You’ll get the efficiency you’re looking for, and the control you need. Connect decisions with results, enforce discipline, trigger alerts, and bring total CONTROL over outcomes—even across the boundaries of service lines, offices or multinational locations.

Imagine your consulting manager, facing staffing and budget issues, who is able to make appropriate decisions based on trusted information for your client, the engagement and your firm.

Deep Insight By centralizing your entire firm’s information into a single repository of past results, current work and even future business, consultants or project managers can easily drill deeply into the data, connecting the path of decisions leading to the results. This is the kind of deep INSIGHT your firm needs to constantly improve results. And, if you find a configurable system that adapts to the way you do business, all the better.

Imagine a solution that adjusts easily to the way your firm works, with the right flexibility for changes you may want to make in the future.

Engagement Management: Super Hero or a Villain?

» View the article

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What to Look for in a Connected, Project-Based ERP SystemA project management and accounting system has something for everyone, from front-office to back–office– all tightly connected to bring your firm the visibility you want, the control you need, and the insight to continually improve:

Project Management

Financial Management

Resource and Capacity Planning

Business Intelligence

Client Relationship Management (CRM)

Human Resources Management (HR)

Time and Expense Capture

Social Collaboration Tools

How using an ERP system purpose-built for project-based businesses can help your firm!

» FREE copy of Project-Based ERP for Dummies book!

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FMI Corporation’s Receivables Increase Dramatically“Now our consultants know exactly where their clients are in terms of project costs, receivables, and project status. Having that knowledge has not only made them more effective and efficient, but it has improved their relationship with their clients, and cut down on billing errors. With Deltek, the consultants enter their own time sheets, invoices and expenses, and can track jobs correctly, without having to get accounting involved.” Denise Proctor, CFO, FMI

Receivables over 120 days old are now 3.24% of revenues, a decrease from 19% to 3% in just 3 years.

FMI Corporation is the premier management consulting and investment banking firm serving the worldwide construction industry. By bringing their disparate environment into a single, connected approach, they were able to achieve the following key successes:

• Collecting receivables in a timely manner

• Complete month-end close in under a week every month

• Decrease burden of expense and job reconciliation on the Accounting department

FMI leverages purpose-built Deltek solution to better navigate consulting industry challenges

» Read the FMI Case Study

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COWI’s Connected, ‘One Company’ Success“With our new processes in place, we have increased our billability and utilization to make sure that we have resources from our global network properly allocated to all projects. Deltek is really the only tool in the marketplace today that makes it possible for us to have the ‘one company’ set-up that we were looking for.” Keld Sørensen, CFO, COWI

With over 6,200 employees in offices around the globe, COWI is an 80-year old consulting business typically involved in more than 17,000 projects at any given time. Their major goal in implementing a Deltek connected solution was to institute a ‘One Company’ management approach to achieve higher utilization and better profitability. With core client-management, resource planning, project planning and financial processes now streamlined with Deltek, COWI productivity has increased significantly, and they’ve recognized higher profitability and increased utilization.

COWI uses Deltek as the foundation for its One Company/One System Strategy

» Watch the COWI video

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Consulting Firms Turn to DeltekDeltek has over 30 years of experience working exclusively with project-based businesses like yours. Developing the expertise and focus you’ll find in our connected, project-based enterprise resource management (ERP) systems.

Deltek’s connected solutions join the front-office and back-office into a single, streamlined workflow that delivers increased business control and maximizes project profitability. By having a single set of shared information that everyone can trust, your consultants and staff can instantaneously access information to answer critical business decisions, leaving them more time for billable work.

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Get Connected Today!It’s time for your firm to get connected.

You know you can’t stay with the status-quo. Here’s a self-audit and recommended guidance on next steps:

• How many systems do you have to run your organization?

• Are your systems eliminating complexity or contributing to it?

• How well will your systems help you respond to the changes we discussed?

If your answers aren’t what they need to be, please call Deltek to learn more about our project-based ERP systems, and the successes that our customers have experienced.

Controlling the Uncontrollable

» Read the White Paper

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Deltek is the leading global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for professional services firms and government contractors. For decades, we have delivered actionable insight that empowers our customers to unlock their business potential. 16,000 organizations and 2 million users in over 80 countries around the world rely on Deltek to research and identify opportunities, win new business, optimize resources, streamline operations, and deliver more profitable projects. Deltek – Know more. Do more.® deltek.com

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