Stanley Consultants Improves Operations

Streamlined and Enhanced Operations

Stanley Consultants is an industry-leading engineering firm with a rich history of helping clients worldwide solve complex challenges ranging from energy and transportation to water and industrial. The firm has more than 900 employees in more than two dozen offices worldwide and it has worked in all 50 states and more than 120 countries. The firm's mission is to remain an enduring energy and infrastructure leader as it embraces the challenges of the future and strives to provide resilient, sustainable solutions built to withstand the test of time. To support its continued growth, the firm streamlined and enhanced its operations by upgrading to Deltek Vantagepoint.

Eliminating Data Silos with Deltek Vantagepoint

Stanley Consultants has relied on Deltek products for over 25 years to support its business operations and wanted to reduce data duplication and eliminate silos of information. With the upgrade from Vision to Vantagepoint, Stanley Consultants was able to streamline processes and so much more.

"We were excited to take advantage of the new features that Vantagepoint offered. We have since kept a regular cadence of upgrades to keep up with the most recent version. These upgrades are smooth each time and the new features make it easy to drive adoption," said Caine Schneider, Manager of Business Systems.

Vantagepoint Improves Business Operations

The firm currently uses Vantagepoint for critical functions such as accounting, marketing, project management, resource management and forecasting. With over 900 employees across 25 offices worldwide, Stanley Consultants integrates Vantagepoint into daily operations, from timesheets to complex project management tasks.

Vantagepoint plays a critical role in various departments. The accounting team uses Vantagepoint for its complete accounting workflow including accounts payable and accounts receivable, as well as expense reports, while marketing professionals maintain crucial project and client information within the system.

"We use Vantagepoint as our source of record regarding project teams. The information in Vantagepoint shows us who worked on what projects, which is essential for when we need the information for proposals, " remarked Caine.

The legal department stores contracts and other essential documents in Vantagepoint, and project delivery teams use it to track project performance by monitoring revenue, labor, expenses and schedules.

"In Vantagepoint, we were able to merge opportunities and projects, which was a huge help," said Caine. "With the old system, we had opportunities, projects and plans in different places, and they were completely independent of one another. With Vantagepoint, we have a unified platform to take a project from the beginning of its lifecycle all the way through to the end, which was a key consideration when deciding to upgrade from Vision to Vantagepoint."

The upgrade to Vantagepoint has streamlined operations, enhancing efficiency across the firm. Marketing, accounting, and project management teams now share data seamlessly, eliminating silos. Project managers appreciate the ability to create detailed, configured reports on expenses, labor, projections and forecasting.

User-Defined Hubs Solve Unique Issues

The firm was experiencing a few challenges, and to improve productivity, the company created user-defined hubs in Vantagepoint to address these concerns. According to Caine, "In Vantagepoint, it is easy to create a hub, which functions as a master information source for us and eliminates silos. When we get project feedback, that data is entered into the hubs. Vantagepoint helps us keep it all validated."

One of the hubs was designed to bring together several ad-hoc and manual processes in the accounting department. By centralizing these processes in a single hub, the firm has significantly reduced the time spent on accounting tasks during month-end periods.

Additional hubs were created to manage employee overhead rates and employee skills as well as details on military installations and performance ratings for federal projects. The military installations hub within Vantagepoint has dramatically improved the firm's ability to access and organize information. Previously, gathering data on military installations, especially in regions like the Pacific Southwest, was complex and required pulling data from multiple sources. Now, with Vantagepoint, all relevant information is centralized in one place, making it easier for the marketing team to compile data on strengths, skills, and specific members' capabilities. This helps the team assess whether it is prepared for new opportunities or areas of interest or need to develop additional skills to pursue them.

The user-defined hubs have greatly improved the firm’s efficiency, data management and overall user control across various operational areas.

Vantagepoint Provides Seamless Integration

In May 2022, after acquiring two firms, Stanley Consultants wanted to integrate the marketing and financial data from these firms into Vantagepoint. The Stanley Technology Services Group (TSG) was tasked with upgrading and integrating these systems into Vantagepoint within 30 days, a challenging and ambitious timeline. Despite the complexity of transferring data from outdated ERP systems, Stanley Consultants achieved this goal by iterating through the data and creating custom reports for review and adjustment.

One key factor in the success was Vantagepoint's flexibility, which allowed the team to decide whether to import all data, only a subset of the data or keep it separate while ensuring it remained compatible with existing firm data. The team appreciated the ease of transition for existing employees, the quick onboarding of new employees, and the seamless integration, which had no negative impact on the business.

The integration process involved significant coordination across various departments, starting with finance and accounting, followed by project delivery. Additionally, the new staff had to be trained on how to use Vantagepoint. The successful onboarding highlighted the advantages of Vantagepoint. Despite the tight deadline and challenges, the acquisitions were smoothly integrated into the company's operations and Stanley Consultants now has a single source of truth, thanks to the capabilities of Vantagepoint and the expertise of the TSG team.

In addition, the newly acquired firms have benefited from Vantagepoint, which allows for performance measurement of new projects and provides deeper insights into each group's operations. Vantagepoint revealed strengths and weaknesses not identified during the firms' initial vetting. A notable benefit is quickly identifying and correcting misallocated time/labor charges, ensuring accurate project budgeting.

Advice for Firms Thinking About Vantagepoint

"Deltek is a leader in the industry and is always at the forefront of innovation. It consistently releases new features thoughtfully to ensure users can adopt them at their own pace,” said Caine. He added, "We value Deltek's flexibility, allowing our firm to gradually grow into using advanced tools, like artificial intelligence (AI), without feeling overwhelmed."

Melani McMullen, System's Analyst, appreciates the support from Deltek. "Deltek is very responsive to my day-to-day support requests, and I like that it has the Deltek Idea Portal for submissions. The team is very interested in supporting us and making sure we are successful. It feels like a partnership."

"We stretch the usage of the product in many ways, but I am comfortable that if we need advanced support, we can get it, which is very important for me," Caine added.