ERP UX/UI: Delivering Software That Works the Way You Do

In today’s rapidly evolving landscape where the latest generation of workers are increasingly shaping the workforce, expectations around employee experience have drastically shifted. With an increased focus on flexibility and work-life balance, professionals entering the workforce today are seeking out organizations with purpose-driven and engaged cultures.

Organizations, on the other hand, are prioritizing initiatives that will help them respond to these expectations and attract and retain top talent. Project-based businesses reported in both the 2023 Deltek Clarity Architecture & Engineering and Government Contracting Industry Study that retaining top talent is one of the biggest challenges they’re facing. They noted, however, that leveraging the right technology to help streamline business processes, improve communication and collaboration and drive business efficiency and productivity would be a key to overcoming this HR challenge. 

This is why we’re dedicated to empowering project-based business with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and information solutions that are purposefully designed to work the way their users do. By investing in user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) innovation, we aim to deliver the best possible experience to our customers that helps contribute to a more engaged and productive workforce.

Design Thinking: The Power of UX Innovation

User experience design is much more than how a product looks. While a visually appealing user interface — or the visual and interactive elements of a product — contributes to an enjoyable user experience, UX design is truly about understanding user behaviors, needs and motivations to improve the overall quality of their interaction with the product. By empathizing and focusing on the user and how they work, UX design can uncover insights that drive innovation while simplifying complex tasks for everyday users.

SaaS ERP innovation in UX and UI focuses on simplifying workflows, ensuring responsive design across devices, offering personalization options, presenting data through effective visualization and incorporating continuous feedback. These areas of emphasis contribute to reduced friction and increased satisfaction with everyday users, which helps contribute to a meaningful and fulfilling workplace.

As the leading provider of project-based ERP software, we understand the importance of UX research and design. Deltek’s team is committed to delivering the best possible user experience – working with speed to design solutions that address the challenges our customers are facing in today’s market. By creating meaningful partnerships with our users, implementing best practices and utilizing market research, we aim to deliver superior industry solutions with enhanced usability, intuitiveness and overall satisfaction.

To deliver software that meets our customers’ needs, we utilize a Design Thinking Framework that focuses on three key stages: learning about our customers and their needs through user and market data, transforming that insight into innovation design solutions and measuring our progress and level of success for continued improvement over time.

Utilizing User & Market Data to Drive UX Decisions

Our learning process is all about gaining a deeper understanding of our users by collecting information through qualitative and quantitative research methods. This includes user interviews, contextual inquiries, surveys, and competitive research, as well as collecting ideas from our project nation community.

One of the innovative ways we engage directly with our customers is through Deltek's Idea Portals. This online tool allows our customers to submit enhancement and feature requests directly to our product teams and vote on what they would like prioritized. Nearly 1,000 organizations in Deltek’s user community engaged with the Idea Portals last quarter, submitting their ideas and voting on those most impactful to their organization. Some of those ideas have already made it into our products: 31 user-submitted enhancements were released in Vantagepoint 6.0, and 22 ideas were recently added to our Costpoint solution. Dozens more have been added to product roadmaps and are planned for future releases.

In addition to hearing directly from our users, we also examine market data during this stage, including results from our Deltek Clarity Reports the longest running and most comprehensive industry survey specifically focused on the architecture and engineering, government contracting and consulting. Deltek Clarity offers dozens of benchmarks that focus on key performance indicators most important to a specific industry, including an inside look at how companies handle challenging market conditions.

As we continue to collect stories and insights from our users and the market, we can more fully understand what our customers need in an industry-specific solution and strategically inform the product roadmap based on our research.

Transforming Ideas Into Innovative Software Design Solutions

Through careful analysis and the intentional use of tools like persona mapping, storyboarding, and workflow mapping, we make sense of the information we gathered in our learning phase and ideate on solution ideas that would meet the defined needs while delivering the most business value to our customers.

Over the years, we’ve also developed and enhanced our Deltek UX Lab, which allows us to test our designs more efficiently by gathering feedback from a wider group of participants. Our online lab allows us to offer real-time testing where, for example, users test workflow designs by clicking through each defined step; the click path is then analyzed through heatmaps, which allows us to see whether our changes are designed the way users expect them to be.

This strategic design approach has allowed us to release major improvements across our Deltek product portfolio, including key user experience enhancements in Deltek Costpoint. In this latest Costpoint 8.2 release, users benefit from additional interface customizations, streamlined navigation and a re-imaged time entry experience that allows employees to log their time directly from an email reminder. These usability improvements help streamline everyday processes while easing the burden on users, and each of the changes were a direct result of user feedback and our desire to support users in their natural flow of work.

Deltek Vantagepoint, our leading ERP solution for architecture and engineering firms, has also undergone recent usability changes. Based on customer research, our team discovered that the majority of Vantagepoint users rely on MS Teams as their primary collaboration tool, especially for handling staffing challenges and project issues. In response, Vantagepoint 6.0 introduced an integration that allows users to initiate a Teams chat directly from within Vantagepoint’s interface, allowing them to more quickly collaborate on projects. Our team is also working with the Deltek Talent Management product team to support the redesign of the Total Talent Profile and Resume Dashboard for HR and Talent professionals. This redesign will bring more relevant information to the forefront so these professionals can find what they need more quickly and make better, more informed decisions for their employees.

These UX and UI enhancements, among others, have all been a direct result of user feedback and our commitment to delivering software that’s designed to support the way our customers work. These informed improvements contribute to better projects and more engaged employees, who can spend less time on tedious tasks.

However, our work doesn’t stop once changes are released. To measure the success of implemented design changes, we go directly to the voice of the customer through Early Adopter programs, G2 Scores, Support Community forums, User Groups, Customer Town Halls and Customer Experience partnerships. This continuous feedback loop helps ensure that we are continuing to improve the user experience as user needs shift, allowing us to better deliver industry-leading solutions that are optimized for project-focused businesses.

Partner With Us on Future Improvements

Creating meaningful partnerships with our users is how our UX at Deltek team can deliver the most impactful software improvements. By offering feedback, users help us iterate on designs, prioritize changes and determine how we can continue to improve the user experience of our Deltek products. If you’re interested in helping shape the future of our solutions, there are multiple ways to get involved. During this year’s Deltek ProjectCon customer conference – taking place October 16-18, 2023, in Orlando, Florida – you can visit the UX Lab for a chance to provide feedback on in-flight designs and get a sneak peek at future ideas for product features and enhancements.

At last year’s conference, we had 152 customers participate in UX Lab activities – including live usability testing during the conference – to help our product teams develop our current product features and shape our future product roadmaps. By offering this kind of testing experience, we can learn more about our users while increasing the pace of innovation through rapid iteration.

This year at Deltek ProjectCon, you will also have the opportunity to attend a variety of product breakout sessions to gain insight on future roadmaps and learn tips and tricks and best practices to get the most out of your Deltek investment. We’re also offering an exciting opportunity to learn more about UX at Deltek! Join me for an informative session titled, Influence through Partnership: Empowering Users to Shape Deltek Solutions, to learn more about partnering with our UX team and how your voice can help drive product design decisions. Check out the full session catalog for Deltek ProjectCon 2023 and register today!