PSA Solutions Improving Business Operations for Government Contractors

How the Market Has Shifted IT Investments

The current landscape of the government contracting space is more nimble and shifting at a faster rate than before. It’s difficult to find qualified talent with the right skills, the government is going through a digitalization process, IT spending priorities are changing, and large businesses that deliver on government contracts are relying more heavily on small and medium sized businesses, while the smaller organizations are trying to diversify their portfolio to support different agencies.

Deltek’s GovCon Clarity study revealed that more than 65% of participants are actively looking to do work with new agencies. We are seeing small and medium sized businesses that solely work with the Department of Defense (DoD) expanding their business to do work with the Department of Energy (DoE) or Health and Human Services (HHS) – increasing the competition in the marketplace. That’s why it’s critical that government contractors have the ability to identify the right opportunities before it’s too late and ensure they have the right resources with the necessary skill set to win and execute on these opportunities.

As teams are more mobile and global, the industry is also becoming concerned that employees are not engaged or as productive as they might be on-site without the necessary tools for success. Additionally, our recent Clarity study found that there is a war on talent in the current ecosystem, as employee retention rates have decreased from 84% to 81% over the last year. That said, there is an increasing need for Professional Services Automation (PSA) solutions that support teams from bid to invoice and track resource utilization, skills, and competency to better focus on retention and planning for tomorrow.

Aside from talent challenges, improving cash flow is top of mind for the majority of government contractors. With remote teams, there is no room for error - accurately tracking project costs is key for accelerating the “fill to bill” process to receive payment in a timely manner. Now is the time for government contractors to digitize their internal processes and make the shift to a more modern and innovative, PSA platform, like Costpoint.

Costpoint as a PSA Solution

But, what is PSA? Professional Services Automation (PSA) software helps companies, both small and large, manage front-office tasks to accurately track operations and costs. Complete PSA solutions like Costpoint provide support for managing pipeline and new opportunities, insight into all business processes for project and portfolio management to ultimately improve efficiency, increase productivity and drive growth.

Did you know that over 90% of the top government contractors rely on Costpoint to help manage their business? By running on Deltek’s Costpoint, you bring together CRM capabilities, Contract Management, Planning, Project Accounting, Time & Expense, and Deltek Talent Management through seamless integration, supporting government contracts across the entire project lifecycle.

Additionally, with Costpoint, users have the ability to accelerate opportunity management to track and win contracts quicker by reducing data entry with seamless integration with GovWin IQ. This integration enables users to import opportunities and have a 360 degree view, from pursuit to post award, whether on a mobile device or via the pipeline dashboard to jumpstart project management and budgets once the contract is awarded.

Costpoint also helps automate processes and match skill sets to opportunities and budgets, ensuring the right people are on the right projects, at the right time. With Costpoint it’s easy to plan for the future and forecast tomorrow’s resource needs by leveraging resource planning tools and near real-time data, to make more informed decisions – faster.

Why Costpoint is the Preferred Choice

By integrating processes such as resource planning, costing, hiring, retention, and billing into one system, under one roof, you eliminate the guess work and become more predictive versus reactive, making for more accurate data. In the recent release of Costpoint 8, we introduced intelligent resource forecasting capabilities to help Project Managers and Resource Managers intelligently predict if they have the right resources in place to staff a project and calculate the percent match for them, so they can really see how well the resources are aligned for a specific opportunity.

We also updated the Budget by Resource application, enabling the rescheduling of start and end dates of an assignment for a selected resource and reassigning budget hours from one resource to another, for an entire period or a specific date range. These changes provide users with improved flexibility, and better resource planning and optimization – to help stay in line with planned budgets.

Similarly, we rolled out ‘What if’ modeling within the Planning domain in Costpoint 8, where users can create and compare various versions of a project budget, allowing them to generate an unlimited number of “what if” scenarios, leveraging accurate data to better determine outcomes and results. This capability is critical for government contractors as the market continues to shift, so they can be resilient and be prepared for the unexpected.

Accurately Predict Your Needs for 2021 with Costpoint

After a year of unknowns and the unexpected, let's kick 2021 off strong. Costpoint can help you start the year on the right foot by providing the appropriate tools to accurately predict your needs for the future. For example, users have the ability to leverage GovWin IQ to follow government spending trends and track new opportunities as they arise or utilize Costpoint’s Smart AI to allocate resources for future projects by tracking hours and utilization rates sourced from Costpoint’s Planning module.

Here is an example of Smart AI in action!

How prepared is your business for 2021? Are you confident that you have the right people on the right projects? Click here to learn more about Costpoint as a PSA solution.