Eight ways Costpoint 8 Helps Government Contractors with Challenges Revealed In the Clarity Report

The 2020 Deltek Clarity Government Contracting Industry Report continues to be well received by those in the government contracting industry. From great commentary to over 1400 downloads, this year’s Clarity report is a valuable tool in helping government contactors size up where they’ve been while providing metrics and popular initiatives to navigate through today’s uncertainty.

Employees in nine key business areas within all sizes of government contractor companies, across the United States, provided their feedback on metrics, challenges and initiatives. We analyzed the results to arrive at six major themes ranging from people to IT.

What is exciting about all of this is just how many  of the new capabilities in Costpoint 8 help customers  conquer those very same challenges contractors mentioned in the survey. We not only listen to our customers, we listen to the market.

Here are eight ways Costpoint 8 helps government contractors conquer their top challenges:

Government Contractor Challenge #1:
59% of Business Development teams report being challenged by limited business development resources.

How Costpoint 8 addresses the challenge: Thanks to a new API integration screen, in addition to importing opportunity data with one click, Costpoint users will be able to import vendor information directly from GovWin IQ, a government contracting intelligence platform that enables businesses to manage public sector opportunities. More automation for less data entry.

Government Contractor Challenge #2:
33% of Finance teams cites increasing cash flow as a challenge.

How Costpoint 8 addresses the challenge: The burden purchase order and invoice status calls and disputes puts on the accounting and procurement teams is well known. The Accounts Payable Network reports that inquiries are made on approximately 11% of invoices and they take about 8 minutes to resolve. Gartner reports that “Procurement professionals spend more than 25% of their time resolving issues.”  Costpoint 8’s expanded Supplier Portal capabilities include invoice management. Now subcontractors, vendors and buyers can communicate on, and view and approve invoices generated by the payer.

Streamlining communications will facilitate the invoicing process, and catch errors earlier in the process, to ultimately shorten the invoice cycle time and increase cash flow.

Government Contractor Challenge # 3
43% of Project Management teams report collaboration and communication to be a challenge.

How Costpoint 8 addresses the challenge: Costpoint Planning’s New Business Budgeting has a new hyperlinked field that allows you to select and link to a specific opportunity.  You can create a New Business Budget using Opportunity information. You can also use Opportunity Labor Categories to define search criteria. Project Managers can easily collaborate with Contract Managers and Business Development teams with these new integration points.

Government Contractor Challenge #4
47% of Contract Managers report maintaining data integrity between opportunity, contract and project records as a challenge

How Costpoint 8 addresses the challenge: That’s right, tighter integration improves collaboration, accuracy and automation. Costpoint 8’s new hyperlinks, APIs and data-fields help teams work together more efficiently.

Government Contractor Challenge #5
29% of Manufacturing respondents report managing subcontractors as a challenge.

How Costpoint 8 addresses the challenge: Costpoint already makes it easier for subcontractors to directly enter their time and expense directly into Costpoint. Costpoint 8’s Supplier Portal, as mentioned earlier, facilitates the purchase order and invoicing process with subcontractors by streamlining communications and providing dashboards for buyers and subcontractors to view and make status updates.

Government Contractor Challenge #6
44% of Clarity respondents report labor and time keeping as a top audit challenge

How Costpoint 8 addresses the challenge: Costpoint Mobile Time and Expense, with the newly added Mobile Expense. Now users can add and capture out- of-pocket expenses as incurred, all without accessing Costpoint Time & Expense. The user interface includes two new screens, Capture Receipt and Expense Reports.

Government Contractor Challenge #7
53% of Human Resources respondents report attracting better qualified talent as a challenge

How Costpoint 8 addresses the challenge: While there are a many variables that go into this, one that may stand out is the systems used. Required familiarity with certain systems can say a lot about a company. (As a student in Vienna, I would never have taken the time to interview with a manufacturer if I had known stenography was a required skill.) Requiring familiarity with solutions that enable employees to do their jobs efficiently, foster collaboration and which utilize intelligence and innovation – a few of Costpoint 8’s strong points – may catch the right candidate’s eye.

Government Contractor Challenge #8
63% of IT respondents cite IT and data security as a challenge

How Costpoint 8 addresses the challenge: Costpoint continues to work hard at earning your trust and the trust of the agencies you serve. Our decades of experience in the government contracting industry translate into integrated compliance and data security support, throughout the entire project lifecycle. Costpoint 8 brings additional security to new capabilities such as new security groups, security within Business Intelligence security models, and new user security for navigation banners.

Costpoint 8 is the next major release of the solution that more Government Contractors trust that introduces new innovation to provide firms even more powerful intelligence around the entire project lifecycle.

This release continues our industry leadership the market expects and brings new and exciting innovation that customers have been asking for.

Stay on top of Costpoint 8 news using one of these methods:

• Costpoint Townhalls
• The Costpoint Product Blog
• Deltek Virtual Insight
• Deltek Learning Zone

Get your copy of the 2020 Deltek Clarity Government Contracting Industry Report.