Enhancing the User Experience: A Glimpse into Deltek Ajera Innovations

At Deltek, we believe that innovation is not just a buzzword, but a mindset that drives us to create solutions that meet your needs and exceed your expectations. As the leading project management and accounting software designed for small and mid-sized architecture & engineering (A&E) and consulting firms, Deltek Ajera showcased purposeful innovation to improve project visibility and enable better and faster decisions.

At Deltek ProjectCon 2023, the annual event for project-based businesses, the Deltek Ajera team revealed the exciting future of Ajera, showcasing the latest innovations and enhancements as well as the product roadmap for upcoming key features that will transform the way you manage your projects and finances. The product team emphasized Deltek’s commitment to purposeful innovation to make it easier to manage each phase of your project lifecycle.

For Deltek Ajera, we have two important principles that guide our purposeful innovation approach: the user experience and customer feedback.

Deltek Ajera uses purposeful innovation to make it easier to manage each phase of the project lifecycle

Providing a World-Class User Experience (UX)

The user experience (UX) is the overall feeling that a user has while interacting with a product. It goes beyond the visual design (user interface or UI) and considers the user's journey from the first click to the last. UX ensures the product is easy to use, intuitive, efficient, enjoyable, and meets the user’s needs and expectations.

We have already introduced some changes in the browser-based areas of Ajera to improve the user experience, such as timesheets, expense reports, project time approval and the ‘manage project task’ widget. But we are not stopping there!

Unveiling a New User Interface (UI)

Deltek Ajera will also have a new UI over the next few releases to make the solution more modern, consistent, accessible and user-friendly. We want Ajera to have a more modern and aesthetically pleasing UI that doesn’t impact the core functionality and features you love.

Deltek Ajera will get a new user interface (UI) in 2024

These changes will make it easier for users to take advantage of Ajera’s capabilities and increase user adoption across your business.

Improving the Mobile Expense Experience

The Deltek Expense for Ajera mobile app lets you easily enter and submit your expenses from your mobile device. Coming in 2024 is Deltek Expense for Ajera 3.0, which introduces a new design and improved functionality to make it even easier to capture expenses. Users also will be able to enter expenses in fewer taps, helping users to complete their expense reports faster.

Deltek Expense for Ajera 3.0 will be available in 2024

Innovating through Customer Feedback

The team underscored how user feedback directly shapes the roadmap. User feedback helps Deltek better understand needs, challenges, and preferences. That’s why your Ajera feedback is critical through the Deltek Idea Portal. This platform allows you to submit ideas for new features or enhancements within Ajera, vote for and comment on other user ideas and watch how those ideas become a part of the solution.

Since its availability in October 2022, the Ajera team has received more than 1,000 ideas, several of which were incorporated this summer, including the ability to:

• Provide easier payment options to pay client invoices with a credit card
• Sort timesheets and expense report detail
• Track invoice email information
• Refresh billing review history
• Save invoice delivery preference by client

Additionally, several features are slated for future releases in 2024, such as the ability to:

• Email vendor remittance advice
• Manage more project data in any browser
• Freeze widget headers
• Drag and drop attachments
• Upload attachments for projects

We are grateful for your participation and contribution to the Deltek Idea Portal. Keep the ideas coming!

Provide Feedback on Pending Features

Based on your feedback in the Deltek Idea Portal, we are in the planning stages of two new features to help streamline financial management processes. To ensure that these features meet your needs, please take the survey(s) below to share your feedback.

• Accounts Payable Approval Process (survey)
• Remittance Advice for Vendors (survey)

We Need Early Adopters!

Deltek Ajera needs your help! We are looking for early adopters willing to test new features and updates before releasing them to the general user community. Early adopters provide valuable insight into the day-to-day functioning requirements of our solutions, as well as share their thoughts about what they tested.

If you are interested in becoming an early adopter, here are some keys to being successful:

• Actively Participate: Attend weekly meetings with our product team and other early adopters, where you can ask questions, share feedback, and learn from each other.
• Thoroughly Test: Test each of your use cases with the new features and updates, ensuring they work as expected and meet your needs.
• Share Your Thoughts: Tell us why you liked or didn’t like what you tested, how it could be better, what challenges or issues you faced, and what benefits or value you gained from using it.

If you want to join our early adopter program, please email us at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you!

Key Takeaways

The key theme was leveraging UX/UI improvements and customer-driven enhancements to make it easier to use Deltek Ajera throughout the project lifecycle. The roadmap demonstrates Deltek’s commitment to Ajera to ensure it continues to empower users to power project success and boost the company’s bottom line.