Introducing Costpoint 8.1 – Applying Purposeful Innovation to Enable Your Digital Transformation Strategy

We are thrilled to announce that Costpoint 8.1 is now available. Costpoint 8.1 brings even more innovation and intelligence to the project accounting and resource-planning platform that the government contracting industry has trusted for close to four decades. Building on the theme of digital transformation that began in Costpoint 8.0, Costpoint 8.1 enables automation and digitization of the entire project lifecycle and provides enhanced tracking and visibility into project cost data.

We didn’t get here on our own.  Although many of us have experienced significant change these last two years, Deltek continues its commitment to supporting government contractors of all size by developing purpose-built solutions to help optimize and transform project-based businesses, while pushing the boundaries of innovation. Small, midsized and large customer influence has brought to life many of the innovative capabilities included in Costpoint 8.1, and we appreciate your input which helped us deliver the purposeful innovations designed to help your teams work better together and do their jobs faster.

Over the next several weeks the Costpoint Product Blog will showcase the new features and enhancements in Costpoint 8.1 that we believe will bring the most value to our customers. In today’s post, we are shining a light on four areas where Deltek’s purposeful innovation, such as Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR), Voice Recognition, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Process Automation, enable a path to Digital Transformation for government contracting firms.

1. Improved User Experience

Costpoint 8.1 usability enhancements will provide noticeable improvements for everyday users. An emphasis on accessibility and in-app learning aides are just two of the ways Costpoint 8.1 accomplishes this.

Navigation Banners will simplify daily functions for new users by guiding them through core tasks, requiring fewer clicks and eliminating the need for new employees to remember complex processes, helping them get up to speed on accounting and project workflows quickly.  With more small and mid-sized firms adopting Costpoint, this key enhancement is purposely designed to ensure their end users can learn Costpoint faster than ever.

To streamline time and expense tracking, we have improved the mobile and desktop experience in Costpoint to now include: offline time entry for employees on the go; interactive voice commands to add hours, save, sign, and close timesheets; automatic overtime calculations to provide users, approvers, and administrators confidence in overtime calculations; and enhanced receipt capture powered by ICR (intelligent character recognition) to save time when capturing credit card transactions into the Expense application. 

Another example of user requested additions includes the new billing worksheet which provides at-a-glance visibility into costs that have already been billed as well as the remaining outstanding amounts to be billed. This view into project costs will help to streamline month-end close and improve invoice accuracy.

2. Purposeful Innovation in Support of Project Success

Costpoint’s commitment to purposeful innovations that deliver real-time project visibility for our customers and support digital transformation initiatives continues in Costpoint 8.1. In today’s business environment, where agility is key to successfully executing and delivering on government contracts, having accurate data at your fingertips has never been more important. Some of the new features supporting digital transformation include new earned value calculations added to Costpoint Planning and expanded multi-currency support for key applications, making it easy to monitor foreign exchange gains and losses.

Enhanced Smart AI features in Costpoint 8.1 not only provide greater visibility into performance measures on current projects but aide in planning for future business pursuits. With new out of the box dashboards powered by artificial intelligence for executive leadership, project managers, human resources managers and procurement managers, data analytics can be performed and key insights hidden in your data can easily be visualized.

3. Enhanced Collaboration Across Project Teams and Suppliers

In Costpoint CRM, help boost your business development and sales team's effectiveness. For example, Costpoint users can now add important meetings and pursuit activities to their Outlook calendar without ever leaving Costpoint, eliminating duplicate entry and ensuring client engagements or follow-ups are kept. Some other Costpoint 8.1 innovations that can help power your project success include CMMC level tracking on opportunities that takes advantage of an enhanced integration with GovWin IQ, new visibility and printing controls that let buyers and suppliers prioritize purchase orders that have a Defense Priorities and Allocation System (DPAS) rating associated with the project, and key enhancements to the Supplier Portal to collaborate with vendors on RFQs and responses. 

4. Improve Resource Utilization and Distributed Workforce Capabilities

With Costpoint 8.1 we’ve made several enhancements to our Professional Service Automation (PSA) capability.  We recognized the competition for top talent has never been greater. Helping you get people in the door and billable, more quickly, is the spirt of this next enhancement.  When planning resources for a new business budget, Costpoint now provides customers a way to seamlessly automate and integrate their project workforce, allowing them to search for employees and create requisitions quickly. Additionally, multiple single user functions can now be accessed by multiple users at the same time, enabling a more efficient workforce.

What Hasn’t Changed – Government Compliance and Cloud Security

With deployment options on premise and in the Deltek Cloud, both small firms and enterprise businesses can continue to rely on this latest release of Costpoint to enable compliance and drive value for your businesses safely, securely and at scale. Deltek has two Costpoint Cloud offerings that meet the unique cybersecurity needs of government contractors. Costpoint GovCon Cloud (GCC) offers support for handling Federal Contract Information (FCI) and most CUI. Costpoint GovCon Cloud Moderate (GCCM) is enhanced with support for International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) and now FedRAMP Moderate Ready to effectively handle more sensitive CUI data types like export-controlled, Covered Defense Information (CDI) and Controlled Technical Information (CTI).

Deltek continually monitors changes to Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) and cyber-security requirements like the recent release of Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0, in order to swiftly implement controls to help keep your business compliant.

How to Get the Most from Costpoint 8.1

Costpoint 8.1 is now available for on-premises customers to download and upgrades to 8.1 for Costpoint GovCon Cloud customers are beginning this month (March 2022). As you can see, the latest release is full of exciting new features and powerful enhancements to help you automate more of your government contracting business, better manage your distributed workforce, and create a digital thread tying all your project financials together to provide one source of truth throughout the project lifecycle. To learn more, you’ll want to check out the upcoming blog posts on the latest release, read the release notes or join us for upcoming town halls to stay informed about the latest details.  You can also check out these Deltek resources:

• Costpoint 8.1 Customer Readiness and Upgrade Portal
• Costpoint On-Premise Information Center
• Costpoint Cloud Information Center
• Costpoint 8.1 Release Notes