Last week I spent a few days in Nashville with 2500+ excited and engaged Deltek customers. I have to admit that out of all the conferences I attend Insight ranks very high in customer enthusiasm for the products and for the company. This year I was interested to see the customer reaction to Deltek's recent take private acquisition by Thoma Bravo in addition to the usual batch of product announcements. Overall the mood of the customers was as solid as usual and there seemed to be a lot of interest (in a positive way) on where the move would take the company. The consensus is that with the influx of capital and the strong backing of Thoma Bravo Deltek is poised to do some acquisitions that will broaden the overall solution footprint and increase its overall capabilities significantly, but I guess we'll have to wait for the next chapter to unfold.
I previously posted about one of the biggest announcements at Insight this year, Kona, so I won't rehash it again. It is sufficient to say that I'm very interested to see how the adoption of the social PM solution continues to expand now that it's in public beta. So on to the other announcements. first the new release of its flagship Services Resource Planning (SRP) system for A&E / professional services firms, Vision 7. In Vision 7 there's the usual list of enhancements that touch on increasing visibility into critical business drivers, tighter business control and deeper business insights. Probably the best received enhancement though, was the addition of Vision Navigator, a new project management portal that enables project managers to plan, review and execute projects from any browser capable device. Vision is now available in a SaaS model with the release of Deltek Vision First Essentials and I also learned that Navigator and Kona are to be integrated as well.
For Deltek's government contracting customers there were several relevant announcements. First there was the release of the GovWin Capture Solutions, a business development suite that helps contractors bid more effectively and presumably win more business. The suite includes tools to help firms manage opportunities, team more effectively, automate the proposal process, manage task orders and more effectively manage the relationship with its clients. In addition to the capture solutions Deltek also launched an enahnced version of its GovWin IQ research and information platform that also assist firms in winning more business.
Professional services and government contracting businesses are inherently strong candidates for mobile solutions. The problem with many vendors' approach to mobile access to its products has been the access to a very limited feature set on the mobile device. Employees want robust access to most, if not all enterprise functionality on any number of different mobile devices, which has proven challenging. Deltek is rolling out a new mobile platform, Deltek Touch, that provides a unified and dynamic mobile interface for all Deltek solutions. The platform will make all information from Deltek's various product suites available and actionable on the mobile device, and all applications will be intelligently related to each other to provide a complete view of all projects and tasks. Alerts and notifications will be tailored to match the individual role of the employee as well and will leverage all of the assets of the mobile device. The first Touch-enabled applications will be time time collection for Costpoint, Maconomy and Vision and will be available by the end of 2012.
Tags: deltek, costpoint, vision, maconomy, thoma bravo, navigator, kona, SRP, CRM, social business
