Embracing AI & Enhancing UX: A Glimpse into Deltek WorkBook Innovations

By Teresa Robbins, Product Director at Deltek & Mike McLean, Product Director at Deltek

Deltek WorkBook is a total agency management system that helps agencies in the marketing and creative industries streamline projects, people, and finance from end-to-end. It provides better control, insight, and visibility at any time, so you can focus on what matters most: delivering great work for your clients.

But how does WorkBook do that? What are the new innovations that make WorkBook smarter than ever? At Deltek ProjectCon 2023, the annual event for project-based businesses, the Deltek WorkBook product team unveiled their vision for making the project lifecycle smarter through purposeful innovation in the product. The kick-off session provided insights into recent enhancements and the product roadmap of key features coming soon to WorkBook.

In this blog post, we’ll explain those enhancements and features and how they map to the four main strategic focus areas that guide all of our innovation decisions:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Agile
• Automation
• User Experience

Let’s take a closer look at the enhancements coming soon under each of these pillars and how they can benefit your agency.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way we work and live. It can help us automate tasks, optimize processes, and enhance outcomes. At Deltek, we believe that AI can also empower agencies to work smarter and faster.

That’s why in 2024 we will be unveiling a smart assistant as well as intelligent assistance for completing manual tasks such as suggesting resources for task bookings.

 The AI chatbot will be your personal assistant that can help you with various tasks in WorkBook, such as searching for how to perform tasks and get more information about the solution. With AI, you can save time, reduce errors, and improve quality in your project lifecycle.

Agile

Agile is a methodology that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and customer satisfaction. It’s widely used by digital agencies that need to adapt to changing requirements and deliver value quickly. At Deltek, we want to support agencies that work in an agile way. That’s why we have introduced functionality to better support agencies that use agile methodologies in WorkBook.

As part of a phased introduction of functionality in the recently released version 13.4, we have added the ability to rank or prioritize Tasks within Sprints and added the construct of ‘effort’ that can be applied onto those tasks. Beyond 2024 we plan to deliver retention of capacity values as part of an agile methodology.

With these features, you can plan and manage your agile projects more effectively.. You can assign tasks to sprints, prioritize them based on their importance and urgency, and estimate the effort required to complete them. When WorkBook supports your agile workflow, you can deliver faster, respond better, and satisfy more clients.

Automation

Automation is the process of using technology to perform tasks without human intervention. It can help agencies save time, increase efficiency, and reduce costs, while allowing them to focus on what matters most: creating great work for their clients. That’s why we are planning to incorporate features that automate components of important processes like batch billing and revenue recognition in upcoming releases of WorkBook.

• Batch billing: This feature will allow you to create and manage multiple client invoices at once, based on various criteria and preferences. You will be able to preview, edit, and delete the invoices as needed.
• Revenue recognition: This feature will automate the generation of revenue adjustments across multiple jobs, based on a new 'revenue profile' on a Price Quote, rather than the billing plan. You will also be able to see the impact of the revenue plan on your pipelines and forecasts. This will give you and your team more time to review and approve revenue adjustments and improve the accuracy and consistency of your financial reporting and compliance.

These features will eliminate the need for manual adjustments and provide you with more accurate and consistent revenue numbers.

User Experience

User experience (UX) is the overall experience a user has when interacting with a product or service. It includes aspects such as usability, design, functionality, and satisfaction. With an improved user experience, you can work better, faster, and happier.

At Deltek, we care about the user experience of our customers. That’s why we have made user experience our continued focus since release 13. We want to make WorkBook easy to use, intuitive to navigate, and pleasing to look at.

One of the newest features that enhances your user experience is “In-App Guidance.” In-App Guidance is a powerful tool designed to provide you with personalized and contextual guidance while using your Deltek solution. Simply put, In-App Guidance refers to interactive walkthroughs and communications that will appear within the Deltek WorkBook application as you navigate through various screens and perform different tasks. These walkthroughs are carefully crafted to deliver relevant information, guidance, and tips tailored to your specific needs and usage patterns. Additionally, in 2024 we’ll be updating componentry including the rich-text editor in the Jobs and Tasks modules, and tree view to offer better usability.

With these improvements, you can enjoy using WorkBook more and get more done with less hassle. This is a team effort that includes our partners, user experience team, and YOU. The more vocal you can be by submitting your ideas into the Idea Portal, the better.

Key Takeaways

The key theme was leveraging new technologies like AI and automation together with UX improvements to make the project lifecycle smarter. But ultimately, the focus is on providing solutions to empower users and organizations to power project success and boost the bottom line.

This effort demonstrates Deltek's commitment to transforming WorkBook into an intelligent client, project and financial management solution that goes beyond basic ERP functionality. The coming innovations should provide real productivity and performance gains for any project-based business.

About the Authors