Deltek and Industry Updates and Insights – 5 Key Learnings from Deltek Project Nation Live in Sydney

After a three-year hiatus, our customers gathered in Sydney for our annual customer conference, Deltek Project Nation Live. The one-day event offered customers the opportunity to hear updates from our leadership team, including a fireside chat with our Chief Customer Officer, Brian Daniell who gave an update on Deltek’s strategy and continued commitment to customer success and met with many of our customers throughout the day.

Attendees were also inspired by guest speaker, Rachael Robertson; and had the opportunity to learn more about how we are continuing to improve our products and take advantage of the long-awaited opportunity to network with their peers.

The feedback from Deltek Project Nation Live attendees was overwhelmingly positive. Below are five key learnings customers took away from the event.

1. Respect Trumps Harmony When Building Teams

Leadership expert Rachael Robertson answered an advertisement for an Antarctic expedition leader because she was curious about the selection process, she never thought she’d get the job. Before she knew it, she was managing teams of between 18 and 120 people in some of the most challenging terrain known.

Through her amazing stories from her time at Davis Station in Antarctica, Rachael shared what the role taught her about leadership. Her number one rule… respect trumps harmony…every time.

Rachael identified four things that teams must have to succeed:

• Integrity – you must be comfortable having difficult conversations with team members when they have upset you rather than talking to other people about it, this shows respect and integrity. Agreeing on this as a team builds trust and supports innovation.
• Collaboration – If you support collaboration and look after the team as a whole, this allows individuals to thrive. There are great examples of this in the natural world that we should try to emulate when working in teams.
• Leadership isn’t a title – you don’t have to have a title to lead, you can lead by seeing something that needs to be done, even if it’s outside of your role, and doing it.
• Look after the little things - The little things that people can get upset over, and that on the surface don’t seem to be important, are symptoms of a bigger problem. Usually, this is down to someone not feeling respected so if respect trumps harmony, you must be willing to address the little things.

2. Purposeful Innovation Drives Digital Transformation

At Deltek we are big fans of innovation, but not innovation for innovation’s sake. Deltek’s Vice President of Product, Bret Tushaus, talked about exactly what that means and how purposeful innovation shows up in how Deltek develops its products.

Bret defined what purposeful innovation means to him, “Deltek’s innovation strategy is underpinned by the requirements to provide tangible and practical value, we don’t focus on innovation for innovation’s sake. We also innovate more broadly than simply focusing on software development, and we do this by leveraging emerging technology in a way that reimagines business processes for the benefit of our customers. We are 100% focused on supporting the delivery of valuable business and project outcomes.”

User experience, or UX, might be the buzz term of the moment in the tech industry but focusing on UX as a part of purposeful innovation is key. Bret demonstrated this by showcasing the new desktop interface and mobile experience in development for Deltek’s total agency management solution, WorkBook and how we are reimagining the user interface (UI) for users of our Talent Management solution.

Users of Deltek’s ERP solution, Vantagepoint can also look forward to a refreshing new user experience. And with Deltek’s focus on reimagining business processes, Vantagepoint users will also be able to take advantage of enhanced efficiency across their CRM, invoicing and scheduling processes.

Another welcome development is the introduction of new team collaboration capabilities in the Deltek ArchiSnapper app, a tool designed to help architects, engineers, and contractors optimise the creation of field reports and punch lists. This was welcomed by Deltek’s built environment customers who are always looking for ways to increase efficiency on-site and make collaboration across project teams easier.

Deltek’s project information management (PIM) solution is being developed to include Universal Document Control. This will extend the power of PIM to other file sources and offer broader search capabilities. And if you are an AEC firm that works with external contractors, PIM Teamwork has got you covered by allowing you to invite team members from outside your organization to collaborate with you in PIM.

Bret also looked beyond the products and into the future as he discussed Deltek’s cloud-first approach, how we are responding to changes in the way that we work and what employees expect from their technology, the importance of automation and enabling your organization to more effectively work with data.

3. Integration Solutions are Leading the Way for Project-Based Businesses

As part of Bret’s Purposeful Innovation session, he introduced, Deltek Unionpoint, our new iPaaS solution that firms can use to build, deploy and manage integrations to and from Deltek’s products. More than 40% of companies see application integration as one of their top challenges. And Unionpoint, powered by the “best of breed” integration platform Workato, offers a powerful yet simple solution using product connectors to simplify and accelerate the process.

Bret demonstrated that Unionpoint enables customers, partners and Deltek’s global consulting team to build integrations using a code-less and/or code-light approach that leverages the community of prebuilt content and employs a drag-and-drop interface.

4. Working With Deltek Experts and Learning from Peers Supports Software ROI

Deltek’s product teams and partners spent the afternoon taking customers on a deep dive into product roadmaps and introducing actionable tips and tricks to optimize usage. Session attendees also got to hear from their peers about how they are adopting best practices and continually improving how they use Deltek’s software.

5. Getting Together in Person Supports Knowledge Sharing and Building Relationships

After a three-year break and the new world of remote work, attendees and Team Deltek talked about how much they enjoyed getting together in person. They enjoyed sharing knowledge and best practices, hearing from Deltek’s leadership team, gaining industry insights and discussing what they have planned for the rest of 2023 and beyond.

This was all rounded off with a networking reception and drinks to celebrate a great day.

Until Next Year

Thank you to all our wonderful customers who made Deltek Project Nation Live one to remember! Special thanks to our partner sponsors and speakers: Tangram and Smart Software for helping make the event a success. We hope every who attended walked away with new ideas, actionable takeaways, and a better understanding of how Deltek is committed to meeting the needs of your business.

And to all of Deltek Project Nation across the Asia Pacific region, we hope to see you at next year’s conference! Stay tuned for more details.