Customer Success Story
Criterion Systems, Inc.
Deltek Costpoint® Streamlines Operations and Reduces Compliance Concerns for Fast-Growing IT Solutions Firm
The Challenge
Since its founding in 2005, Criterion Systems, Inc. has steadily grown as a provider of next generation technology solutions with a focus on information discovery and analysis, cyber security, advanced technology services and high performance solutions. During the company's formative years, Criterion's legacy accounting system – a QuickBooks-based solution – was unable to keep pace with the company's growing operational needs. “It was fine, at first, but just wasn't robust enough to keep up with our needs,” said Rick Williams, Controller at Criterion Systems. “It lacked the flexibility and integration we required to meet the compliance needs of our government customers.” From reporting to timesheets, manual entry and preparation were the rule, not the exception – leading to wasted time, inaccuracies and potential revenue leakage.
Criterion's leadership recognized that they needed a solution that was well-respected and approved by their government clients, easily auditable across numerous agencies and projects, flexible enough to grow with their business, and fully integrated to increase automation and efficiency.
The Solution
The search for a more robust accounting system led to a number of options, but only Deltek Costpoint and its family of products offered a completely integrated, widely-recognized solution that was able to meet Criterion's compliance needs right out of the box. “It's a fully integrated, compliant system – period,” Williams continued. “With the other options, we just weren't convinced they'd meet our compliance needs, and we didn't want to go through this exercise again in six months’ time.”
Criterion ultimately chose Deltek Costpoint, as well as the Time & Expense and Deltek Performance Management solutions. A completely integrated, end-to-end solution, Costpoint and its compatible applications deliver a best-of-breed solution that provides the exact functionality project-focused businesses need – including accounting, project management, Human Resources, time and attendance, operations, expense management, payroll, recruiting and business development.
“Costpoint was a perfect fit,” said Williams. “It was as if Deltek took our wish list and used it to create a solution specifically for our needs.”
The Benefit
Criterion began to see the benefits immediately. Costpoint increased efficiency, lowered costs, and provided real-time access to the information needed to make informed business decisions. “The detail of the reporting alone is worth the price of admission – from satisfying internal customers to external auditors, we're never more than a few clicks away from a readable, informative, and accurate view of how our business is performing,” Williams continued.
Costpoint also helped to modernize Criterion's financial infrastructure giving them the foundation they needed to support their dynamic, fastgrowing organization. “To keep pace with Criterion's rapid growth, we needed to establish the financial infrastructure that rivals that of much larger companies and can continue to support the company's expansion,” said Steve Mast, Criterion's Co-founder and CFO. “Deltek Costpoint, a cornerstone of this infrastructure, has significantly improved our capabilities and response times within the Finance department.”
With the new infrastructure in place, Criterion has reduced the amount of manual work they do on a daily basis and decreased its closing cycle by over 66%, generating invoices and monthly reports in just five days, as opposed to the 15 days it took with their legacy system. Labor capture has never been easier since the elimination of manual or Excel spreadsheet timecards. “We can track labor and process time more efficiently, lower the impact of revenue leak from late timesheets, and do more with less,” Williams reported. “Our experience with Costpoint has completely validated our decision to go with Deltek.”
Today, Criterion is building upon its positive Deltek experience by implementing Deltek Costpoint CRM for business development and capture in the government space. “Now that we're ready to comply with the government's strict requirements, we're in a great position to continue our rapid growth,” Steve Mast said.
“I look around and see streamlined processes, elimination of activities that weren't adding value, and the tools we need to improve our business development processes. That's a win for us,” Williams said. “I don't need to crunch a bunch of numbers to know we've saved a lot of time, money, and energy with our Deltek solutions.”
Stats At A Glance
Company Name: Criterion Systems, Inc.
Headquarters: Vienna, Virginia
Primary Business: Criterion specializes in information discovery and analysis, cyber security, advanced technology services and high performance solutions. The company offers strategic business and technology advisory services, systems engineering and integration solutions, and managed technical services.
URL: http://www.criterion-sys.com
| The Deltek Advantage |
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The implementation of Deltek Costpoint and compatible applications enabled Criterion to:
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