Deltek ProjectCon 2025: The Mission to Elevate Project Success with Vantagepoint

At Deltek ProjectCon 2025 in Denver—Deltek’s annual user conference—the Vantagepoint Kick-off Session delivered the energy of a mission briefing, complete with a rallying cry for the future of project-based work

Bret Tushaus, VP of Product Management, set the stage: the industries we serve — architecture, engineering, and consulting — are at a pivotal moment. The pressures of talent shortages, market volatility, and client expectations demand a new level of precision and agility. And the key to navigating it all? Artificial intelligence.

Bret explained how Deltek’s mission remains steadfast — to serve the full project lifecycle and help firms win smarter, plan better, execute faster, and analyze deeper. But now, AI is amplifying that mission, transforming every phase of the project journey through automation, intelligence and insight.

The result is the Dela Agent Workforce — a digital team of intelligent agents that will be built in Deltek Vantagepoint, designed to work alongside humans to make what once seemed impossible, possible.

“Artificial intelligence isn’t just changing how we work. It’s redefining what’s possible across every phase of the project lifecycle.” — Bret Tushaus, VP of Product Management

Meet the Dela Agent Workforce: Your New Digital Teammates

The Dela Agent Workforce isn’t about replacing people — it’s about empowering them. These intelligent, proactive collaborators are embedded directly into Vantagepoint.

Each Dela Agent serves a specific part of the project lifecycle — from business development and project management to billing and accounting — surfacing insights, automating actions, and predicting challenges before they arise.

They’re designed to free your teams from manual, time-consuming tasks so you can focus on higher-value work — building relationships, managing projects and delivering exceptional client outcomes.

“This is more than innovation — it’s evolution. The Dela Agent Workforce marks the next chapter in how project-based businesses will operate and thrive.” — Bret Tushaus, VP of Product Management

Winning Smarter: Develop Winning Strategies and Enhance Client Relationships

The first “mission” tackled what every professional services firm knows too well — the proposal crunch. With deadlines looming, resumes to format, and RFPs to interpret, proposal teams often scramble to keep up.

Enter innovation and AI to help your teams win more and win smarter. Here is a glimpse into what’s coming in Vantagepoint to better support your business development and marketing.

1. Employee Document Automation
Creating resumes and project sheets for proposals can be very time consuming and tedious. Now with Vantagepoint, proposal teams can create resume and project templates once, then automatically populate and format them for each opportunity. No more reformatting or retyping. Just select, generate and go.

2. Monitor Client Intelligence
An always-on intelligence agent will monitor client news — surfacing leadership changes, M&A activity, and project awards. It will then suggest next actions, like sending a congratulations note, automatically logging that outreach in Vantagepoint.

3. AI Pursuit Scoring
Replace “gut feeling” with data-driven decision-making. AI will analyze your firm’s historical win factors — client relationships, project types, team expertise — and assign clear pursuit scores so you can focus on the right opportunities.

4. AI Proposal Builder
Upload an RFP and let AI handle the groundwork: parsing requirements, assigning tasks, recommending the right project examples, and generating a first draft using content from past winning proposals.

Together, these capabilities will help firms respond faster and smarter while deepening client connections. 

“With Dela, your business development team gains a 24/7 intelligence network turning proposals from a race against time into a strategic advantage.” — Teresa Bever, Sr. Product Director

Planning Smarter: From Guesswork to Guided Intelligence

Once the contract is signed, the next challenge begins: planning and delivering efficiently while managing risk. Starting with Vantagepoint 2025.4, project managers will gain:

• The ability to create multiple plans and baselines for side-by-side comparisons of delivery approaches or change orders.
• Immediate insight into how changes impact profitability and schedules.

Looking ahead, a Dela project management agent will bring predictive intelligence to project planning. It can analyze the contract, extract scope and schedule details, create optimized delivery scenarios, and even flag risks before they occur.

Imagine asking:“How can we finish this project two weeks earlier without increasing costs?” OR “Show me who’s available with the right skills to replace an out-of-office team member.”

And receiving data-driven, actionable answers in seconds. That’s AI-guided project planning — faster, smarter, and more resilient.

“AI-guided planning means seeing around corners, anticipating risk, optimizing resources, and delivering with confidence before challenges arise.” — Dawn Gajewski, Sr. Director, Product Management

Executing Faster: The Financial Front Line

In professional services, healthy cash flow is the heartbeat of success. Yet billing delays, manual approvals, and misaligned contracts often slow the process down.

In Vantagepoint, Dela can help streamline billing and invoicing workflows:

• Smarter Draft Approvals: Automatically route invoices based on thresholds and rules — for example, routing a higher dollar invoice for a second level of approval.
• Collaborative Review: PMs and billers can tag drafts as “needs updates” or “ready to go,” streamlining communication and speeding approvals.
• AI-Powered Billing Insights: Dela flags discrepancies such as missing rates or misaligned fees, suggests next steps, and ensures every invoice reflects accurate project progress.
• Autonomous Billing: From draft to delivery, Dela automates the cycle, catching errors before they reach clients and ensuring timely payments.

The impact is clear: faster invoicing, fewer bottlenecks and improved client satisfaction. 

“Invoicing shouldn’t slow you down. With Dela, approvals are faster, insights are clearer, and your cash flow stays in motion.” — Melissa Coffey, Sr. Director, Product Management

Capturing Time and Expense Effortlessly

Time and expense entry has long been a frustration for busy professionals juggling client calls and deadlines. The Dela Agent Workforce removes that friction. Here is a glimpse into what’s coming:

• Automatic Time Suggestions: Dela recommends time entries based on your calendar and recent project activity.
• Expense Compliance Checks: Upload your company expense policy and Dela will flag noncompliant entries and suggest fixes before they hit finance.
• Expand Vantagepoint Experience to Microsoft Teams: Log time and ask project-related questions directly in Microsoft Teams using Ask Dela.

By connecting insights to daily workflows, Dela makes compliance effortless and time entry nearly invisible letting teams focus on delivering value, not chasing paperwork.

“Time entry shouldn’t feel like such a burden. With Dela, it happens naturally and is integrated into your workflow, your conversations, and your day.” — Brent Johnson, Sr. Director, Product Management

Analyzing Deeper: Closing the Books with Confidence

When it comes to financial accuracy, speed and precision are everything. One of the most anticipated features in Vantagepoint is the Accounting Control Center.

This new command hub simplifies and accelerates month-end close with:

• AI-driven insights that surface anomalies and recommend corrective actions.
• Dynamic closing checklists integrated with Vantagepoint’s fiscal calendar.
• Timely collaboration to assign tasks, track progress, and share notes.

Controllers and CFOs can now identify issues before they escalate, freeing more time for strategic analysis and forecasting. It’s a fundamental shift from reactive accounting to intelligent financial management. 

“With the introduction of the Accounting Control Center, Controllers and CFOs can shift from compliance and historical recording keeping to planning for the future.” — Ed Zanaty, Sr. Product Director

Beyond the Agents: Continuous Innovation in Vantagepoint

The excitement around the future of the Dela Agent Workforce was matched by a wave of platform enhancements. Bret shared several ongoing innovations that strengthen Vantagepoint’s foundation:

• Quarterly Releases: Delivering new features and improvements faster than ever.
• Deltek Data at Your Service (DaYS): Expanding access to cloud data for more powerful reporting and analytics.
• Harmony UX: A modern, intuitive interface built for simplicity and efficiency, coming to Vantagepoint in 2026.
• New Integrations: Including Replicon, UKG Pro, and expanded Vantagepoint Payments, enabling digital payments and workforce optimization.
• Customer-Driven Enhancements: Through the Deltek Idea Portal, customer feedback continues to shape product direction — from multiple plans per project to enhanced billing term views and improved contract management features.

Looking Ahead: Your Mission Continues

As Deltek ProjectCon 2025 wrapped up, the message was unmistakable: Deltek Vantagepoint’s innovation isn’t slowing down — it’s accelerating.

The Dela Agent Workforce for Vantagepoint represents a new era for project-based businesses — one where humans and AI collaborate to win smarter, plan better, execute faster, and analyze deeper. But this mission isn’t over. In fact, it’s just beginning.