architects—Alliance Unlocks Total Project Visibility With Deltek Vantagepoint

Buildings Designed to Inspire

architects—Alliance (a—A) is obsessed with city design—and it shows. Since 1999, the Toronto-based studio has developed many of Canada’s boldest metropolitan and rural buildings for academic, residential, commercial and mixed-use.

“We care about creating meaningful spaces for people and we care about modern city design,” says Elena Lokchina, Chief Financial Officer at architects—Alliance. “It’s also important that we align our customer’s goals with our commitment to delivering meaningful buildings.”

a—A refers to itself as a design practice of lowercase and uppercase architecture, hence its curious naming convention. The award-winning studio is also committed to practicing sustainable urbanism and strengthening the bridge between people and place—a goal it delivers by managing every project from the ground up.

“Our projects can take years to complete,” says Elena. “That’s why it’s so important to be able to monitor every aspect of every project and be able to respond to changes as they happen, to stay on track and stay true to our vision.”

A Purpose-Built ERP

As former users of Deltek Vision solutions, a—A knew that upgrading to Deltek Vantagepoint would better meet their long-term needs. Learning about Deltek Vantagepoint and its cloud-based accessibility would allow everyone to engage more directly within the system.

To help upgrade from Deltek Vision to Deltek Vantagepoint, a—A leveraged the Deltek Learning Zone for on-demand product training. The team also exchanged ideas and experiences with other Deltek customers in the Toronto area user group.

“After discussing our goals with other Deltek users, we developed a detailed testing plan that would first take us to the Deltek Cloud,” says Elena. “It took us a year to complete the upgrade to Vantagepoint, which was the time we needed to get comfortable with the new system as our team grew from 60 to 80 employees.”

a—A also sought help from Deltek Partner Rhodium Digital, to guide its team through the Vantagepoint upgrade and configure its system to meet the company’s specific requirements.

“Rhodium offers the personal touch you can’t always get from large companies,” says Elena. “They delivered a seamless upgrade and we’re very grateful for the time they took to answer our questions and solve our challenges.”

A Groundbreaking Shift in Project Management

With Vantagepoint, a—A has a single hub for project data and configurable dashboards to visually track project performance.

“Deltek Vantagepoint is a groundbreaking system for us,” says Elena. “We can visualize each project from its initial concept design right through to construction. And everything we need is all in one place, making it easy to run reports and track our progress.”

a—A is also using Vantagepoint Resource Planning to manage staffing and move away from manual spreadsheets.

“The planning model gives us a more proactive view of where we are in the project cycle with accurate, automated reporting,” says Elena. “For example, we can see how well our staff are being utilized and what we need to do to keep our non-billable time low.”

Plus, Vantagepoint empowers employees with access to Vantagepoint data from anywhere and mobile access to key areas like timesheets, which helps ensure everyone knows what’s required of them and when.

“Deltek is always listening to our wants and needs,” says Elena. “And there’s still more we can achieve together.”

What’s Next for A—A And Deltek

When asked about the company’s future with Deltek, Elena is happy to share that they have plenty of exciting plans for Vantagepoint.

“We just finished upgrading to Deltek Vantagepoint a few months ago,” says Elena. “And while we’re only at the start of our journey, we’re looking at introducing new modules very soon. In fact, our business development manager is interested to start using CRM for added agility and automation.”

Is Your Firm Getting the Most Out of Deltek Vantagepoint?

View the Gallery of architects-Alliance’s Projects