JCB Architects Achieves Unified Project Insights with Deltek Vantagepoint in the Cloud

An interview with Matthew Tence, Practice Manager at Jackson Clements Burrows Architects

For over 25 years, Jackson Clements Burrows (JCB) Architects has been bringing architecture, interior design and urban design best practices to education, public sector, multi-residential and commercial building projects across Australia.

With over 70 employees and a rapidly growing project portfolio, JCB leans hard on technology to ensure it can deliver projects on time and within budget. However, as it continued growing, the firm found its legacy project management and accounting solutions weren't keeping up with the needs of the business.

JCB embarked on an ambitious transformation to get the insights it needed into its projects, people and processes. It chose Deltek Vantagepoint as its new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to break down information silos and deliver a more streamlined approach to project management and reporting.

From Silos to a Single ERP System

To learn more about why JCB made the move to Deltek Vantagepoint in the Deltek Cloud, we spoke with Matthew Tence, Practice Manager at JCB.

"We had our previous system in place for a long time," says Matthew. "But it was a web of disparate tools that limited integration. We had lots of information in one tool, other insights elsewhere – and very little consolidated data." For example, JCB could only see the costs of any sub-consultants used on a project in one tool, leading to an incomplete view of project costs unless teams manually merged data from multiple systems.

When Matthew and the team began assessing new systems, it became clear they needed a solution that could:

1. Break down silos to improve visibility and communication across the business
2. Consolidate systems – without relying on extensive customizations – to reduce complexity

The team at JCB assessed several ERP solutions, and eventually, the choice became clear. "Deltek's solutions are widely used in the industry and have the right features for our organization," says Matthew. "And we know Deltek has the experience and capabilities to implement everything we need – in the way we need it."

JCB started its migration by implementing front-office components in Deltek Vantagepoint, including customer relationship management (CRM), project management and resource management. Soon, it will move over its core finance and project accounting processes as well.

Better Visibility, Better Conversations, Better Decisions

With an end-to-end project ERP solution, every team at JCB has the insights it needs to have better conversations and make more informed decisions.

"We've been able to develop better workflows in Deltek Vantagepoint," says Matthew. "This means we can get more done in less time. We used to spend anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour analyzing data. Now, it's just there, and we can trust it's accurate! With everyone on the same page – and looking at the same data – we can also have better conversations."

Now, all teams can get comprehensive views of available resources and skills across the business. That means managers can find the right people with the right skills to support their projects, and employees can get assigned to jobs that best match their skills and drive their careers forward.

Deltek Vantagepoint also helps JCB unify and simplify processes across the business, including resource management, project performance tracking and timesheets. "It's been really easy to create user-defined fields in Vantagepoint to keep everyone aligned," explains Matthew. "We can set security permissions so key information is only visible to the right roles. And it keeps everyone on track for things like work rights and pay conditions across the different professions and accreditations in our practice."

Simple – But Decisive – Steps Forward For JCB

JCB is still in the early stages of its ERP migration. But the move has been a straightforward one so far.

"We've been able to connect our systems easily," says Matthew. "It happened without much effort at all. We just connected the dots, cleaned up some data, and away we went. We did have a little help from the Deltek team getting everything ready, but it's a big step up. We're no longer connecting ten different spreadsheets and having to deal with broken links just to forecast fees and availability. Within the first month we were easily able to connect the system to the Smartsoftware Fee Forecast tool and Open Asset as well."

Soon, JCB will also bring its finance and project accounting functionality to Deltek Vantagepoint, streamlining the entire project lifecycle in a single solution – something that simply wasn't possible with its previous systems.

Three Tips to Ensure a Smooth ERP Implementation

Matthew also discussed his three top tips for hitting the ground running with a new ERP solution.

1. Take it step by step

"Implement things one at a time, or two at a time at most. It can take time to teach people a new system. You can't overload them with everything on day one."

2. The less customization, the better

"Keeping the process within the box is important. Avoiding excessive customization makes it easier to share things between different people, and new people can come into the business without facing massive complications learning the system."

3. Pick key wins and expand from there

"When it comes to deploying a new system, less is more. Pick a few key metrics you want to focus on and let them drive the story. So, you might start with jobs to do, estimate to complete or estimate at completion and build out other metrics later."

Seamless ERP Implementation is Possible

All Deltek ERP solutions are designed to be as easy to use and deploy as possible. So, when an organization like JCB chooses to implement, it can hit the ground running and get improved visibility – fast. To learn more about how Deltek Vantagepoint can bring people, projects, and processes together to generate better insights, please click here.