Automate Your Schedule Submission Process With Deltek Acumen Touchstone

Enforcing organizational standards and best practices while ensuring schedule quality from subcontractors, vendors and internal projects is a costly, labor-intensive process. To avoid working to an unrealistic plan you must assess every schedule submission for realism and accuracy. Projects rely on a solid and reliable schedule to safeguard against late deliveries, cost overruns and customer dissatisfaction. 

Deltek Acumen Touchstone fully automates the schedule submission process, adhering to your company’s schedule quality criteria, best practices and standards. If a schedule does not meet your required score it will be rejected and sent back to the submitter. Instead of wasting time manually reviewing every schedule for quality and deliverability, which significantly affects project success, Acumen Touchstone takes that burden off your shoulders. You can now spend your valuable time managing and analyzing your projects and programs, instead of squandering resources validating every schedule submittal.

Acumen Touchstone is the first product in the evolution of Deltek’s Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) tools into the Project Intelligence Cloud (PIC). The PIC is a technology refresh designed to solidify Deltek as the industry leader in the PPM space.  The web based PIC will ultimately have many functions designed for project-based business, from cost, schedule and risk management to analytics and workflow. 

Here are three key benefits of Acumen Touchstone:

1. Automation - Managing the many project schedules received on a weekly or monthly basis is an exhaustive and expensive activity. You depend on these schedules for project success and must ensure they adhere to your organization’s high standards. Through Acumen Touchstone, all schedule submissions are automatically analyzed based on your company’s metrics, best practices and quality standards. Each schedule is saved in your database along with the scoring report and essential information including the current finish date, project percent complete and cost. If it does not meet the required standard, the submitter is automatically emailed a report showing the metric score and deficiencies to be corrected. The submitter then has the ability to make the necessary changes and resubmit – as many times as needed. Acumen Touchstone completely automates the entire process.
2. Configuration Management - You must ensure you are always working from the most recent, official version of the schedule or any analysis you do is wasted. Without strict configuration management, locating the most recent schedule file can be an unpleasant chore. Acumen Touchstone has every schedule, by period, at your fingertips.  Simply select the project and you can view and download any or all submitted snapshots. The ability to pull the correct version of the schedule at any time significantly minimizes mistakes, while saving time and resources.
3. Status Visibility - Meeting schedule submission dates from your contractors are critical because you need time to analyze and integrate them into your projects. Keeping track of when each schedule is required is a chore itself but Acumen Touchstone simplifies the process. You define each project’s reporting period and upload window for schedule submissions. Each project has a snapshot view that easily identifies submitted and missing schedules. Now you have the ability to proactively reach out to the missing submitters instead of finding out too late, possibly affecting project performance. 

Successfully managing the many subcontractor, vendor and internal schedules across the organization, all while managing projects within budget and delivery dates, is a monumental task.  Acumen Touchstone automates the schedule submission process, all while adhering to your organization’s best practices. Take the next step in project management maturity while gaining an edge against your competitors, reducing costs and delivering successful projects and programs.

Join Us at #DeltekInsight 2019

Want to learn more about Acumen Touchstone or the Project Intelligence Cloud? Then join us in Orlando, FL for Deltek Insight 2019. Registration is still open. Don’t miss out on the exciting keynotes, product sessions and networking opportunities at this year's event taking place Nov. 18-21. Be sure to visit deltekinsight.com and register today!