Unleashing AI & Enhancing UX: A Glimpse into Deltek Vantagepoint Innovations

At Deltek ProjectCon 2023, the Deltek Vantagepoint product team unveiled their vision for making the project lifecycle smarter through new innovations in Deltek Vantagepoint.

The kick-off session provided insights into recent enhancements and the product roadmap for key features coming soon to Vantagepoint. The Vantagepoint product team highlighted how Deltek is purposefully innovating in each of the five phases of the project lifecycle through generative AI, traditional AI, predictive analytics, a more intelligent user interface and more.

Deltek is purposefully innovating around the five phases of the project lifecycle.

Enhancing User Experience is Foundational

The Vantagepoint team emphasized that a stellar user experience (UX) is crucial for driving adoption and engagement. They are applying UX best practices like usability testing and early adopter feedback to make the product more intuitive and visually appealing.

Some highlights of the UI/UX improvements include:

• A new dark mode theme to reduce eye strain
• A full user interface (UI) refresh coming in 2024 with softer backgrounds and new collapsible navigation to save real estate and improve usability
• Enhanced indications of required fields to improve data quality
• A "Find Field" option to quickly locate fields within a hub
• Tighter integration with tools like MS Teams for easier access to notifications and actions

These changes will make it easier for users to take advantage of Vantagepoint's extensive capabilities.

Vantagepoint now offers a dark mode theme to reduce eye strain and improve user experience.

Transforming Client Data into Client Intelligence to Win More Projects

Several features are aimed at helping users better collect, analyze and act on client data to build lasting relationships.

• The Client Smart Summary leverages generative AI to automatically create a high-level overview of the client with key details like recent activities, potential opportunities and past projects, giving instant insights without having to dig through volumes of data manually
• Enhanced mobile CRM capabilities allow users to log client interactions and contacts on-the-go with key contextual information
• Email integration improvements in Vantagepoint Connect to give users complete control over who is automatically invited to Vantagepoint meetings in your Outlook or Gmail calendar

These improvements are in addition to the already-available business card scanner in the Vantagepoint CRM mobile app that leverages Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) to create contact records quickly.

Smarter Tools to Manage Successful Projects

For project managers, new features focus on efficiency, accuracy, visibility, and predictive capabilities.

• Project Smart Summary is coming soon and will leverage GenAI to deliver an overview of a project using natural language that includes key details and KPIs in one place
• Bulk scheduling of resource hours and automated revenue forecasting from project plans save time
• More robust work breakdown structures and the ability to track labor at a more granular level improve accuracy
• Additional KPIs provide greater visibility into project performance and potential risks including total billed
• Comparing project plan scenarios and seeing critical paths highlighted in Gantt charts strengthen predictability

Strengthen the predictability of profit by monitoring EAC planned profit and costs throughout the project.

Developing Employees and Matching Talent to Projects

By connecting Deltek Talent Management, companies can leverage employee skills, goals and development plans in Vantagepoint for more informed staffing decisions. A new system dashpart is also coming soon in Vantagepoint to easily identify resources with upcoming availability with the right skills and career aspirations for upcoming projects.

Seamlessly connect Deltek Talent Management and Deltek Vantagepoint to align project needs with employee development goals.

Automating the Project Financial Process

Several automation features aim to streamline processes and lower costs associated with project delivery.

• Intelligent character recognition (ICR) to capture data from AP invoices reduces manual data entry time and errors
• New purchase order workflows will further optimize procure-to-pay processes
• New options to streamline creation of billing terms for fee-based projects will save billers time
• Automated updates from approved PTO requests into project schedules will provide more accurate resource planning
• Upcoming "Timesheets Assist" will suggest likely project assignments and allow administrators to create company-specific alerts to accelerate timesheet creation

Easily capture data from AP invoices with machine learning and ICR to eliminate manual data entry and improve accuracy.

Monitoring Performance with Insightful Dashboards

Deltek is focused on making the “measure” phase of the project lifecycle smarter by expanding the dashboards to enable informed, timely decision-making, effective project team communication and clear insight into project and company progress toward goals.

Now, Vantagepoint dashboards will provide executives, PMs and other users the ability to quickly see KPI performance and allow users to drill into the details as needed. And, in the future, The Deltek Clarity A&E Industry Report statistics will be able to pull into those KPI dashparts to compare your firm to industry benchmarks, enabling smarter decisions to keep projects and the firm on track.

In the future, accounting teams can build smart dashboards to show outstanding AP details as well as expand AR information allowing prediction of how clients will pay in the future with a clear visual of expected cash inflow in the upcoming months.

Monitor key performance indicators quickly to see where your firm is on track and what needs to be addressed.

Customer-Driven Innovation

The team underscored how critical user feedback is for shaping their roadmap and shared metrics around the high levels of customer engagement. The Deltek Idea Portal, customer advisory council, early adopter program, user groups and other channels help them continuously refine Vantagepoint based on real user needs so keep the ideas coming.

Key Takeaways

The key theme was leveraging new technologies like AI and automation together with UX improvements to make the project lifecycle smarter. But ultimately, the focus is on providing solutions to empower users and organizations to power project success and boost the bottom line.

The roadmap demonstrates Deltek's commitment to transforming Vantagepoint into an intelligent client, project and financial management hub that goes beyond basic ERP functionality. The coming innovations should provide real productivity and performance gains for any project-based business.