Environmental Works, Inc. Boosts Efficiency and Profitability by Streamlining Projects

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Environmental Works, Inc. (EWI) prides itself on offering comprehensive environmental consulting and contracting services, covering everything from site characterization and environment drilling to compliance and due diligence consulting.

“There are a lot of different kinds of environmental consulting, field services and drilling companies, but our company offers all those elements,” says Katie Wendt, Chief Information Officer at EWI. “We can fulfill needs our customers didn’t even know they had.”

These services extend to areas such as site remediation—helping companies quickly identify sources of contamination and develop action strategies to address them—and emergency services, such as responding to oil spills and chemical leaks.

Being one of the only companies of its kind, EWI is always finding new avenues for growth. And with that growth comes a continuous effort to optimize its internal processes and software solutions.

Consulting To The Cloud

EWI had previously been using Deltek Ajera as its primary enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, but as the company continued to scale it needed an easier way to manage data and projects across its teams.

“Ajera worked really well for us, but when I came to EWI six years ago, we only had around 150 employees and didn’t have as many active projects,” explains Katie. “Now, we have 10 different locations and need to segment the information we’re viewing more easily. We kept seeing ourselves growing and kept wanting to explore new areas, but we didn’t feel like we had the right information to make those smart decisions.”

To gain the energy and inspiration it needed to transform data and project management, and to support its growth, EWI worked closely with Deltek to move from Deltek Ajera to Deltek Vantagepoint, a project-focused ERP software to better meet the needs of their growing and evolving business.

“Deltek Vantagepoint was a real turning point for EWI. It really transformed how we think about what makes a project successful,” says Katie. “We’re no longer just looking at revenue—we can also look at other key pieces of information like project costs and utilization percentages in real time and change our project strategy midcourse.”

Easier Segmentation Makes For Smarter Project Planning

In the six years since Katie joined EWI, the company has more than doubled in size, with more than 300 employees and an average of 1,500 projects running simultaneously. By using Vantagepoint, it’s been easier for the company’s teams to manage those projects, even as they continue to grow.

“It’s really helpful that Vantagepoint allows us to segment our company, and slice and dice information in a million different ways,” says Katie. “I can look at location vs. location, department vs. department and dozens of other combinations. That way, we can really see which projects are winning, which aren’t doing so well and learn lessons from both cases.”

Being able to segment their data has also helped EWI’s teams reimagine some of their roles to gain more value from their people.

“Having Deltek Vantagepoint as a single source of information has really helped us rethink the way we collect data. Previously, our project managers would have to collect all the necessary data and send the right information to the client,” explains Katie. “Now, we’ve split those roles and our project managers can focus on managing projects, while invoice managers can service the client’s needs.”

Ultimately, it means the client gets more accurate and more timely invoices and EWI can improve its cash flow.

Faster, More Organized Emergency Responses

One of the service lines that’s benefitted most from EWI’s move to Vantagepoint is emergency response, which involves servicing callouts from clients with little to no notice.

“There’s no planning, boilerplate or specific budget for our emergency response services. Someone calls with a need and we service it,” explains Katie. “Now, with Deltek Vantagepoint, we have a repository for all the chaos that can come with these callouts. Each one has a project number that we can give to our people in the field and they can enter all the necessary data while they’re working on the job.”

Vantagepoint is helping keep these services more organized and making it easier for EWI to invoice more efficiently and accurately for these callouts.

“We can track profitability for our emergency responses more accurately and get an invoice out to the client in a timely way, which is crucial, because a lot of our emergency response clients have very quick turnaround times,” says Katie. “Just being able to have a single-source repository for the chaos has been really instrumental for us.”

Easy Project Management That Supports Growth

Since moving to Deltek Vantagepoint, EWI has greater visibility into projects and has streamlined several processes to make project management more efficient. These efficiencies have led to an overall increase in project profitability of eight percent.

“Eight percent might not sound like much, but considering we run around 6,000 projects in a given year, that value quickly scales. Whenever you have a robust system that’s really able to scale that large, you know you’ve really got a winner,” says Katie.

Now, EWI plans to expand into new markets and Vantagepoint will be a key tool in helping its teams succeed.

“We’re going to be bringing in a new service line within the next 18 months. It’s exciting, it’s growth, it’s change, it never stops,” says Katie. “We’re excited to be partnering with Deltek to really help us grow those new service lines.”

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