[Watch] Elevation architecture: Deltek Saves Us $100,000 + In Productive Time Each Year

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We recently caught up with Rachel Tillyshort, office manager of Australia-based practice, Elevation Architecture, to understand why they chose Deltek software and where their growing team are seeing the benefits.

Tell Us About Elevation Architecture

"My name is Rachel. I'm the office manager at Elevation Architecture. We started out doing mainly residential and commercial. These days, we specialise in childcare, aged care, health, community, churches, schools, and a lot of, projects in commercial and industrial."

Why Did You Make The Move To Deltek PIM?

"We were using a practice management suite. And whilst the accounting side of it was quite good, we found that the document and email management of it was insufficient for our growth. Finding a new solution was a lengthy process. It took us a few years. We looked at quite a few products. It's very high stakes for us because it's so integral to our business. And we kept coming back to Deltek Project Information Management (PIM)."

"We plan on continuing our growth, so we needed to make sure that whatever we had wasn't going to become redundant in two or three years. The most important things to us was that it was easy for our staff to use, wasn't going to add a burden to them to be using it every day, and it's something that was very low maintenance from our perspective."

What Impact Has Implementing Deltek Software Had On Your Firm?

"When we initially evaluated Deltek, one of the things that we identified was the time saving with the email management. That's proven to be in excess of what we anticipated. We worked on figures of saving 10 minutes per day, per staff member, which worked out at over $100,000 a year in productive time. We've found that it would exceed that. 

One of the unexpected benefits that we had was the process that we went through when spec'ing for Deltek meant that we actually picked apart all of our business processes. We looked really hard at how we were doing things and why we were doing things. And it enabled us to streamline a lot of our processes and actually move them forward with where our company was headed rather than having dead wood hanging around where we didn't really know why we did those things. 

We had our first go-live with project accounting in July of 2016. We also used the basic document functionality then. And then we went live with DLM in September of 2016. We've staggered it just to make it a little bit easier on staff to get used to new things, and we've found that that was really good."

Would You Recommend Deltek To Other Firms?

"I do feel that Deltek PIM has given us a competitive edge and enables our project teams to access real-time information on the projects, particularly financial information which enables them to make good decisions. It's enabled us to collaborate really well with clients and consultants. The DLM issue is fantastic that we can send files through without being large emails, that they can click on the direct links. Now that we've mastered Deltek, we're looking at expanding our use of the resourcing and forecasting module as well as using a lot more via mobile. I would definitely recommend Deltek PIM to other architects. I have actually had that discussion with other architects. It's been fantastic for us."

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