An interview with Leanne Mullin, Director, Financial Information Systems, KBR
A Deltek 2021 MVP Award Winner in the Enterprise Government Contracting category, KBR, headquartered in Houston, Texas, delivers science, technology and engineering solutions to governments and companies around the world. After successfully adopting Deltek Costpoint for their U.S. Government Solutions business, it came time to migrate their legacy systems across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). By implementing Deltek Costpoint internationally, KBR was able to automate processes, centralize their project setup, and utilize a flexible, all-in-one project and account management solution to support their global enterprise.
Successfully Supporting a Global Enterprise
KBR works with customers across the globe to provide technology, value-added services, and long-term operations and maintenance services to ensure consistent delivery with predictable results. The global organization had been using a legacy system that hadn’t been upgraded in years and required extensive customization. As a result of KBR’s international growth, they decided to move their entire global government business solutions to Deltek Costpoint.
In August of 2020, KBR began the process of implementing Deltek Costpoint with a targeted go-live date of March 2021. Once completed, KBR had one solid solution, with no disruption to their overall business. By implementing Deltek’s industry-leading government contracting solution, KBR was able to successfully automate numerous processes, including vendor payments involving multiple currencies and multiple banks accounts across geographical locations.
“We wanted a project-based solution that met 90 percent of our business and accounting needs and that could handle international multicurrency.” Also important, Mullin says, was not spending additional time and money on extensive customizations with a new solution, which had become a growing concern with their legacy system.
The tipping point that brought us to Deltek, was we could implement Costpoint out of the box.
An All-In-One Solution
After conducting a feasibility study and evaluating the impact an ERP solution like Deltek Costpoint could make, the decision became clear. “We were at a point where our software was antiquated. It was so customized, it was unable to be updated and we had to make a decision. And the decision was, let's get the best product for our business.”
Mullin added, “The fact is that we can look at our projects and know where we are at any point in the contract. We know our revenue. We know our profitability. We know our billing. We know what's not billed. We can track our cash. Having all that in one system including the inventory piece, makes a significant difference. It's all in one place.”
Partners in Success
For KBR seamless implementation and support were critical parts of making the project a success. “During the implementation process we had a lot of questions about the international and multicurrency aspect of the product, and I have to say Deltek Customer Care, have been phenomenal for support. “ Mullin went on to say, “Deltek has been extremely responsive. We’ve always had a good experience with the people that we interact with on a weekly and biweekly basis.”
Getting employees up-to-speed has been an important part of the projects success as well. “We leverage the Deltek Learning Zone, which we offer to all our Deltek users, and we definitely appreciate that since it's self-paced,” said Mullin. “Our international team in the UK and India are new users of Deltek Costpoint and are impressed. They’re getting used to it and like the features of Deltek Costpoint. ”
Innovation and the Future
KBR has been impressed with Deltek’s ongoing investment in innovation and helping their customers grow − even large enterprises with evolving business requirements. “Deltek continues to help us move our business forward, providing new tools to better manage the complexities of our business. We have unique business needs that require multicurrency, multi-company, international, and materials and inventory, so to have one system that works across different areas is a necessity. Deltek Costpoint allows us to effectively and efficiently meet all of our varied business needs.”
Overall, Mullin says, “We've had great collaboration with Deltek. We're really looking forward to continued collaboration so that when we bring on our commercial teams to Costpoint, which operate very differently and have different needs than a government solutions business, they are just as successful.”
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About KBR
KBR, Inc. is a U.S. based company operating in fields of science, technology and engineering. KBR works in various markets including aerospace, defense, industrial and intelligence.
