Product User Community Government Contracting

Innovation & Automation: Evolving the Deltek Costpoint User Experience

October 30, 2023
Deltek, Inc
Deltek

Deltek Costpoint customers deliver projects that are transforming the world we live in and are critical to our nation and its warfighters. To ensure our customers can successfully deliver projects, Deltek is committed to making product investments that power their businesses and optimize project execution. With that as a backdrop, Vice President of Product Management, Todd Walker, kicked off an exciting week at Deltek ProjectCon for more than 1,300 Deltek Costpoint customers. Attendees gathered together in Orlando, Florida, for our annual user conference to dialog and learn how innovation and automation are continually shaping our industry-leading ERP solution and helping to make the project lifecycle smarter.

Todd relayed that the Costpoint team looks at Costpoint product investments through the lens of evolving the Costpoint user experience, with the goal of making Costpoint more familiar, more accessible and most importantly, making our customers’ jobs easier. Peaking behind the curtain, this is accomplished by (1) automating everyday processes for increased efficiency, (2) leveraging new technologies to make the project lifecycle smarter, and (3) helping our customers meet compliance and cybersecurity regulations.

Meeting Our Customers’ Needs in a Changing Industry

Last year at Deltek ProjectCon, our product management took the stage to discuss how we were working to release the next evolution of Costpoint (8.2); this year, they were able to share what we delivered!

The anticipation and excitement for the over 300 newly released features and innovations was palpable. At the forefront are enhancements to the Costpoint User Experience (UX), which make users’ everyday tasks quicker and easier. A few highlights seen and heard at Deltek ProjectCon include:

  • No more missing or late timecards! - The improved time collection experience will help more than 1.2 million time users submit their time cards more quickly. Plus, with the addition of interactive emails, users have an additional option to enter time directly through email, without logging in to Costpoint.
  • Streamlined subcontractor management with the addition of Intracompany Work Assignments (IWA’s), automates cross charges for labor and expenses across companies and removes the need for duplicate entry in different systems.
  • Vendor transactions were made easier with the addition of vendor management and the ability for vendors to update their own profiles through the Supplier Portal

  • Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) to streamline outbound payments by converting the contents of a paper or PDF invoice to populate an accounts payable (AP) voucher automatically.

  • A simpler way to ask questions with the Business Intelligence AI Assistant, which creates data-driven answers using Natural Language Processing (NLP).
  • Greater insight into performance measures with the addition of more Smart AI content, including new Executive and HR Manager dashboards.
  • Our new Project Health Dashboard shares a detailed status of projects and leverages Project Role Security to ensure project managers have the needed visibility into their own projects but restricts access to other data based on their role in the company.
  • Our Manufacturing customers can now automate customer returns with digital tracking of all purchasing and manufacturing orders, including financials
  • And lastly the addition of TIP Technologies to the Deltek family, which brings our customers the ability to automate quality processes and shop floor operations.

 

The Next Evolution of Costpoint


Costpoint 8.2 brings more innovation and automation to the entire project lifecycle


Learn More

 

Deltek’s Approach to User Experience

Lisa Rabideau, Senior Director of our UX Team, joined the stage with our product management team to share their approach to learning about our customers and their needs, exploring ways to support our users and their tasks through informed design decisions, and measuring the success of implemented design choices.

Lisa’s team worked closely with our product leaders to influence key user experience improvements released as part of Costpoint 8.2, including our new welcome screen that allows users to customize their landing page, helping users pick up where they left off or easily navigate to their most-used applications. We also added Info Cards, which allows users to receive additional details about an item in a list, such as a list of vendors, directly on the selection screen. This helps ensure you’re making the right selection quickly, saving users time and potential errors. We’ve also expanded the use of navigation banners that connect multiple applications into a single cohesive workflow, simplifying everyday processes for your users.

Lisa reminded attendees about the importance of sharing their experiences and influencing future releases through the Deltek Idea Portal and UX testing.

Getting Ready for What’s Next – More New Features More Often

Deltek ProjectCon attendees also had an opportunity to learn more about our new Costpoint Release Methodology, which will allow the Costpoint team to deliver enhancements and new features faster while ensuring a higher level of quality and stability.

Coinciding with the launch of Costpoint 8.2, Deltek moved to a Continuous Delivery release methodology with Costpoint 8.2 becoming Deltek’s Innovation Release, which will receive enhancements and new features on a continuous basis through monthly Maintenance Releases and quarterly feature releases. This change supports our commitment to innovation, speeding up time to value for our customers with informed enhancements and feature requests being delivered faster to our customer base.

Coming Soon - Fall 2023 Feature Releases

For customers that have already been upgraded to Costpoint 8.2, they will begin seeing maintenance releases (MR’s) with minor features and enhancements beginning in October 2023. Some of these enhancements build on features released in Costpoint 8.2; for example, the interactive email functionality will be expanded to include the ability for managers to approve timecards over email. Additional releases coming this Fall will include:

  • Enhancements to the Costpoint Progressive Web Application (PWA) interface to streamlines navigation and improves the initial launch experience.
  • Accessibility features like being able to enter timecard charges via voice entry, making this daily process easier to do, whether you’re in the office or not.
  • Highly requested improvements to the outbound ACH payment process, which is now simplified and has added support for Same Day and International payments.
  • A configurable subcontract closeout checklist to help you streamline this process and ensure all items have been reviewed and completed during contract close-out.

A more detailed description of new features being released this fall as part of Costpoint 8.2.4 can be found in the Release Notes.

An Exciting Future for Costpoint

After a week of learning and networking, attendees and Deltek employees left Deltek ProjectCon inspired about what’s to come! For our customers, Deltek’s strategic product investments and new release methodology mean innovative new features will be released in the product faster, including additional AI-driven features that will make the project lifecycle smarter.

To stay up to date on what’s to come, make sure you subscribe to our blog and join our Customer Community Town Halls to hear more about what’s to come in our upcoming releases!


 

Want to Learn More about Deltek Costpoint?


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Deltek, Inc
Deltek

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