A Small Business Government Contractor’s Journey to Growth with Deltek Costpoint

An interview with David Koirala, Director of Finance, Red Gate Group Ltd.

Red Gate U.S. federal government defense and intelligence agencies reach functional excellence by optimizing their operations and using resources to achieve their most critical missions on the battlefield and deliver better services to American citizens. A certified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), its core capabilities include advanced analytical services, organizational transformation, solutions integration, and technical services. To support their growth journey, Red Gate turned to Deltek Costpoint to fulfill their company’s current and prospective needs and integrate critical functions through one single platform.

Onward and Upward, Path to New Contracts

In general, the notion of growth and diversification may seem daunting at times for small businesses, especially when competing for new contracts in such a vast government contracting market. 

Evolving industry compliance requirements and potentially limited in-house staff might also pose challenges for small businesses like Red Gate – but they have options.

“Small business government contractors have access to a variety of set-aside vehicles and smaller Time & Materials (T&M) Firm-Fixed Price (FFP) contracts, but Red Gate was striving for a more ambitious and long-term goal,” says David Koirala, director of finance. “Given the company’s growth momentum and a promising outlook in further expanding our customer base, Red Gate was aiming for a company-wide effort that would enable us to strategically transition from a small business completing set-aside contracts to a mid-tier business targeting full and open contracts. This company-wide effort will allow us to remain competitive as a small-sized business with a tool comparable to what large companies use and will allow us to shift into a CRM-based sales model,” Koirala adds.

Expanding into this new realm of contracts requires more than having the right people in place. It is also necessary to implement “an integrated set of applications and facilitate the automation of the majority of service delivery and back-office functions as a single unified cloud-based ERP solution,” shares Koirala.

With business growth and diversification comes the need for a more mature and established enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution such as Deltek Costpoint. Before implementing Deltek, Red Gate used a competitor’s product, which could not fully meet their needs when supporting their new contract expectations. Koirala explains, “We wanted to explore a more mature system to meet our ambitious business goals, and that is why we decided to switch to Costpoint.”

Costpoint is the industry’s leading solution that delivers more innovation and greater intelligence through an all-in-one system across the entire project lifecycle for government contractors. With automation workflows, Red Gate can now build efficiencies and optimize specific components of different modules – tailoring requirements based on unique business and compliance needs.

An additional value-add for Red Gate was Costpoint’s ability to separate duties and manage each with numerous workflows in a single system.Costpoint makes it easy and painless – saving countless hours and avoiding human error related to manual data-entry.

For Red Gate, its previous product lacked the integrated budgeting and planning module that they desperately needed to successfully fulfill the new contract types because, “Planning not to plan is a plan to fail,” Koirala states. Red Gate needed an established planning tool to help them scale for the future.

When operating a small business, employees likely wear multiple hats, making change more difficult, especially when utilizing a new system and embracing new technology. Luckily, Red Gate did not face resistance to change when it came time to implement Costpoint. By anchoring Deltek’s strong partner network, Red Gate minimized the learning curve of moving to a new ERP solution.

Red Gate decided to leverage one of Deltek’s trusted small business-centric partners, Infotek. “They had the necessary technical knowledge and understanding of Costpoint to help us better the platform and migration process,” Koirala states. “They have a solid technical team that had the grit to decipher and make the two systems talk – ultimately standing up Costpoint for us.”

The timing couldn’t have been better, as Red Gate decided to deploy Costpoint in the Deltek Cloud. With an on-premises system, there is a significant increase in IT infrastructure, exhausted resources, and no workforce to ensure solid and secure systems.

Since transitioning to Costpoint from its previous system and implementing a series of other business efforts, Red Gate has further strengthened its competitiveness and differentiation, and is aiming for new and larger types of government contracts. The company is also gaining further traction in its government certifications and other industry credentials to meet industry standards regarding the quality of its services, including its ISO 9001, ISO/IEC 20000, Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 3, and others we are aiming for in the future,” says Koirala.

It is all about adding value to the overall business, whether it be the bottom line, internal processes, cost savings, or revenue generation. Leveraging an all-in-one project management accounting solution can be that value-add.

Watch this on-demand webinar to learn more about how Costpoint supports small business government contractors like Red Gate Group to power project success!