UIC Government Services Drives Growth and Creates Greater Efficiencies with Deltek

An interview with Roy Joun, Chief Financial Officer at UIC Government Services and Michael Hundley, Senior Vice President of Operations, UIC Government Services

“Deltek Costpoint runs our operation; it’s that simple,” explained Roy Joun, Chief Financial Officer at UIC Government Services (UICGS). “We are a very complex organization, made up of 36-plus subsidiaries. Each one is a standalone system and is continuously audited by DCAA, as well as DCMA. No other software provides the compliance features that Deltek offers to help us complete those audits while also providing us with deep management of our projects, where we can dissect down to every project’s performance and identify weak points.”

For more than a decade, UICGS has relied on Deltek Costpoint and a suite of industry-specific solutions to drive its business forward. “We are consistently in a process improvement mentality, and working with a company like Deltek that understands the way Department of Defense customers must operate in a DCAA-required environment has been invaluable. Deltek gets it and has already built the tools, like Costpoint, to make you successful,” said Michael Hundley, Senior Vice President of Operations, UICGS.

UICGS began partnering with Deltek in 2013 when they chose Costpoint as their enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Since implementation, UICGS has won more contracts and added more modules to support their continued growth. “Today we manage over 300 contracts of all types and 165 subcontracts. Costpoint continues to support our business in a range of ways, from daily timesheet collections to accurate and timely monthly and yearly closing; complex monthly billings and rates adjustments; rate calculations and incurred costs; weekly and bi-weekly payroll for over 2,815 employees and automated account reconciliations,” Roy said.

“Costpoint also manages accounts payable functions supported by robot processors and machine learning; and most importantly, SOX compliance of accurate intercompany postings and reconciliations—an ongoing challenge to a complex structured company like ours.” Additionally, Roy shared there have been significant cost savings thanks to Costpoint. “Our cost and number of support people is about 40% lower today than 10 years ago.”

A Complete Project Lifecycle Solution

But it hasn’t just been Costpoint that has helped UICGS. It is the integration of multiple Deltek solutions that has enabled their continued success. “We’ve also been using Deltek Cobra since 2013,“ added Roy, which has helped UICGS manage costs, establish controls, measure earned value and predict project performance. In 2019, they added GovWin IQ, Deltek’s industry-leading platform, providing the most comprehensive market intelligence data across the U.S. and Canadian public sector.

“GovWin is the heart of our pipeline. Business development is the success of a company, and GovWin allows us to remain competitive, providing updates on everything that has happened on System Award Management, contract award partnerships and teaming suggestions on funding,” said Michael. “We receive notifications on opportunities we're pursuing and leads we're interested in. It’s a great product, and we're very happy to have it.”

Roy has also been impressed with Deltek’s ongoing commitment to innovation, which he says has been even more evident with recent product improvements, like those made to GovWin IQ over the last year. “By incorporating generative AI into GovWin IQ the system can now identify best-fit opportunities based on your past performance and historical contract awards data. GovWin is yet another asset to our contract pipeline, telling us which contracts, in what areas, meet our qualifications that we should bid on. We cannot live without GovWin.”

“I'd go a step further,” added Michael. “GovWin reports are invaluable. They give us a very high-level view of our competition, our market space, where the spending comes from and all that data is aggregated and shapes our go-to-market strategy. This helps us from a competitive perspective as we can see our competitors’ strengths and identify potential weaknesses we can target. Access to those reports and real-time data generated by GovWin is an extremely valuable tool for us as an organization.”

Roy said they are very aware of the value all these products bring to UICGS and the importance of how they integrate to ensure time savings and ongoing cost efficiencies. “The integration between Costpoint, Deltek’s CRM solution and GovWin saves us an inordinate amount of time, by bringing information in, automatically populating fields and eliminating the need to enter data manually. From a business development perspective, the intelligence that we glean out of the GovWin IQ product saves us time and energy.” He added, “We can manage UICGS business development functions, track opportunities, and maintain a very healthy pipeline through the CRM module and GovWin market intelligence. It would be impossible to achieve all this without Deltek’s integrated ERP solution.”

Innovation Drives Success

As business needs continue to evolve, Roy said he’s confident Deltek’s commitment to innovation will continue to drive even greater efficiencies and cost controls for UICGS. For example, after recently adding the subcontract module in Costpoint he explains, “As a company, we have about 150 subcontractors we deal with daily - we pay their invoices once or twice a month, and it was all done manually. We have a robot on our finance team staff, and that robot processes about 40 percent of our digital invoices. Because of the complexity of these invoices before implementing the subcontract module, the robot could not process them. Now, with the subcontract module, our robot can identify each invoice generated by Deltek, match them to the PO and create the payment himself.”

Another example of where UICGS gained efficiency is with more than 2,800 employees having access to record their time. “With the introduction of Costpoint Mobile, which is available on every iPhone or mobile device, we saw a tremendous improvement in compliance,” Roy said. “Our people don't have to be at home or in front of a computer to enter their time. They can simply leverage the app on their mobile device, record their time and that's it. We are much more agile with this application in the hands of our workforce.”

Michael shared that UICGS will soon implement Deltek TIPQA, a comprehensive quality management solution for manufacturers, as they need to eliminate manual processes and digitally transform quality operations at their Bowhead manufacturing facility. After learning more about the product last year, UICGS decided to move forward with implementation and is currently in the testing phase.

Leveraging a Robust Partner Network

Roy points out another advantage of partnering with Deltek has been access to Deltek’s Marketplace partners and shares they have contributed to the success at UICGS. “When Bowhead’s Manufacturing business line wanted to add barcoding to our inventory process, it was important the process integrates directly with Deltek Costpoint and we were able to use a Marketplace partner. We chose RFgen and they have added efficiency and accuracy in our material transactions.”

He also cited another example of leveraging a Deltek Marketplace partner that contributed to direct improvements: “In 2021, we experienced a large increase in our accounts payable invoices because of unexpected growth in our revenue. Instead of adding additional people, we looked for a digital solution that would integrate into Costpoint. We selected Alirrium, a Deltek Marketplace partner, who offered the best cost-effective solution specifically designed to our unique operation.”

Roy added, “Alirrium offered and implemented a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) system that automated our Accounts Payable invoices. The RPA is based on artificial technology and machine learning and currently processes about 40% of our invoices. This process increased efficiency, along with reducing human errors and costs. Alirrium’s thorough knowledge of Costpoint system made the implementation painless and trouble free.”

In addition, UICGS teamed up with Deltek Marketplace partner A2B Tracking, who provides them with the ability to track and inventory Government Furnished Equipment, Contractor Acquired Property, and Company Owned Equipment, explained Roy. “Having the functions and support of A2B Tracking has allowed us to remain compliant with the FAR, DFARS, Mil-Standards, and contract requirements.”

As for the future, Roy says he remains focused on the strong partnership with Deltek and continuing to leverage Deltek’s suite of product solutions. “Michael and I are championing the digital transformation of UICGS and could not do that without Deltek’s products and innovative technology.”