Better Project Visibility and Accuracy Mean Better Project Delivery with Deltek Vantagepoint

Deltek Vantagepoint is designed with project managers (PMs) top of mind, providing tools to help PMs efficiently and effectively deliver successful projects within scope, on time and on budget. To do this, Vantagepoint provides greater visibility into the status and financial performance of projects, helping PMs understand if they are on track or need to course correct. And, with powerful tools, PMs can feel more confident communicating an accurate and realistic view (current and future) of their project to the client, the project team and the business. Vantagepoint also helps PMs gain efficiency, not only making it easier to juggle their day-to-day tasks, but also help them find ways to deliver projects more efficiently and more profitably.

The latest release of Vantagepoint delivers in these areas, bringing even more power to the PMs. From columns added in Project Review, new visualizations and dashpart capabilities in dashboards, to powerful enhancements in Project Planning and Resource View, PMs are equipped with tools to deliver more successful projects. The latest enhancements help PMs update project plans more efficiently and accurately and have the information they need to keep projects on track, keep clients informed and keep firm leaders updated on project performance.

Increase Visibility

Project Review is often referred to as “my favorite place in Vantagepoint” by PMs due to the ability to quickly understand the current and future estimated/predicted health of their project in one place.  Project Review compares the contract against budget, planned and spent and stacks powerful KPIs from each, to get a solid picture of their project. With the latest release we’ve taken it a step further. PMs can now see their baseline, profit and variance amounts broken down in columns in Project Review alongside other existing fee values including compensation, planned, budgeted, and spent. This will help them to understand the current health of their project, how it compares to the original baseline plan and the estimated/predicted profit at completion.

Increase visibility into baseline, profit and variance amounts

In Resource View, PMs and Resource Managers have a new option to hide resources and/or projects when the ETC (estimate-to-complete) hours = 0, helping them focus only on those resources and/or plan assignments that have hours planned in a specified date range. This was a very popular idea for the Resource Management area and received great feedback during the early adopter program.

Hide resources or projects when ETC = 0 hours

Improve Accuracy

PMs can now plan expenses and consultants in calendar periods when they need that level of granularity or still plan in totals when they don’t. This feature can be enabled by company and with a new security setting, PMs can choose when to display and use the calendar on a plan-by-plan basis. This gives firms and PMs the flexibility to plan at a granular level when needed, but just plan totals without calendar periods when not needed. The ETC (estimate-to-complete) calculations adjust depending on the use of calendars. And, since receiving and vouchering consultant and expense invoices are often unpredictable, PMs can update planned consultants and expenses in any calendar period, even in the past. This flexibility has received great reviews and even applause during presentations.

Planning in units allows organizations to plan in quantities for site visits, labs, tests, etc.  In the latest release, you can compare planned vs. actuals vs. baseline for quantities and amounts for better visibility, tracking and decision-making. PMs can also export the plans with planned units when taking the data out of Vantagepoint is needed.

Gain better visibility by comparing planned vs. actuals vs. baseline quantities and amounts

Gain Efficiency

In Project Planning, from any level of the project plan you can choose a new option to Fill Hours Per Day. This allows you to specify the number of hours per day or the percent of hours per day to fill in for your resources for set amount of time. For example, you can choose from the top project level to fill in 50% of the project team’s working hours for the next 10 months all at one time in a single action. This saves PMs a significant amount of time when creating and updating planned hours.

Next, in Revenue Forecasts, you can choose to spread planned billing into your revenue forecasts and replace just the future or the entire forecast range from any level of the project. This will save PMs a lot of time if they intend to report revenue proportionally to the amount spent on their project.

In the project schedule Gantt chart, PMs can quickly and visually understand schedule risks with the new critical path toggle. When toggled on, Gantt bars that are on the critical path turn red, helping PMs immediately understand and communicate when changes, delays, efficiencies or inefficiencies on a project are going to impact the project end date. This feature was a fan favorite during the early adopter program.

And finally, with every release we are focused on enhancing our dashboard functionality. A powerful way to help a PM gain efficiency and increase visibility in Vantagepoint is with dashboards. PMs need to have a direct line of sight into consultants’ payment status, particularly for pay when paid contracts, and now they can see AP details directly on the dashboard.

Gain additional visibility into more information on dashboards

The latest release also makes it easier for PMs to monitor specific key performance indicators (KPIs) on the dashboard. PMs are often measured against specific targets or KPIs and the new KPI dashpart type puts specific KPIs for projects front and center making it easy for the PM to quickly understand trends when colors are used to show when a KPI is trending above or below expectations.

Help PMs quickly identify trends with project-specific KPIs

Vantagepoint continues to increase visibility, improve accuracy, and help project managers gain efficiency so that they can deliver more successful and profitable projects.