Customer Success Story
IAP Worldwide Services, Inc.

Deltek Costpoint^® CRM Improves Data Visibility and Efficiency Across Premier Government Contractor’s Business Development Practice

The Challenge

A Deltek client since the early 1990s, IAP was using Deltek Costpoint, enterprise resource planning software designed specifically for project-driven businesses, to streamline and integrate its financial and project accounting. However, the company was looking for a more effective way to track business development and sales opportunities, and to integrate those opportunities with project information tracked and stored in Costpoint, said Leslie Burgett, Director of Operations and Planning at IAP. They were relying on a series of Excel spreadsheets to track the information.

“For years, we would send these spreadsheets out to more than 30 people on a regular basis in order to update the opportunity pipeline,” Burgett said. “Because this data was being gathered across several sources and not being integrated in any central database, there were numerous red-lines made to the spreadsheets by several individuals, and consequently the potential for manual error was steadily increasing.”

The Solution

To streamline this process, IAP purchased a competing customer relationship management solution, in 2005 to use alongside Costpoint. “We had a deadline to get a sales tracking tool up and running by the end of the year,” Burgett said. “However, implementing the product proved be a rather slow and complicated process and we soon realized we were nowhere near where we needed to be according to our implementation schedule. In addition, the system was not tracking revenue as part of the opportunity pipeline, which was a key functionality for us.”

Burgett learned of Deltek Costpoint CRM, the only comprehensive business development and capture software designed specifically for government contractors, while attending a Deltek demo on earned value management.

After learning of Deltek Costpoint CRM, and with only one month left on the schedule of integration, IAP made the decision to switch to Costpoint CRM. “After seeing the software, we realized that Costpoint CRM spoke the language of government contractors,” Burgett said. “Proposal automation, past performance tracking, net probabilities, margin sales forecasting… we knew that virtually anything our organization needs would be at our fingertips with Costpoint CRM.”

The company licensed Costpoint CRM in late November 2005, successfully and rapidly implementing the software. Because Costpoint CRM is designed specifically for the industry and is tailored to the way firms like IAP do business, implementation took only three weeks. Other CRM solutions would have required a great deal of customization just to shape the product for use in the government contracting industry.

The Benefits

IAP experienced immediate time savings after implementing Costpoint CRM. “We didn’t have the luxury of time in getting a system up and running, and Costpoint CRM’s flexibility and ease of deployment accommodated this urgency,” Burgett said. “Had we stayed with the competing product, implementation would have taken six more months as compared to just a few weeks.”

Costpoint CRM also provides IAP’s business development managers with better visibility into the progress of each sales opportunity, accurately tracking project status and the progress of each opportunity in real-time. As a result, IAP has seen significant time savings in their reporting processes as well. “With Costpoint CRM’s instantaneous reporting, we can build and run reports at any time we need,” Burgett said. “This is especially important for us, as these status reports are reviewed on a weekly basis by our Senior Management and Chairman of the Board of Directors.”

According to Burgett, data flows from Costpoint into Costpoint CRM for contracts, subcontracts, clients, vendors, consultants and employees. “Because Costpoint CRM integrates closely with the project data in Costpoint, it has brought Costpoint full circle for us. We are now able to see what is happening at the contract level.”

About IAP Worldwide Services, Inc.

A leading government contractor providing a broad spectrum of services focused on global mission support for the federal market, IAP Worldwide Services, Inc. specializes in three toptier lines of business — global operations and logistics; facility maintenance/base operations; and professional/technical services. With 5,000 employees, IAP is headquartered in Cape Canaveral, Florida, with another five office locations and several project sites worldwide.