Customer Success Story
Concurrent Technologies Corp. (CTC)
Premier Technology Solutions Provider Successfully Expands Business Scope Using Deltek Solutions
The Challenge
Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) is an independent, nonprofit, applied research and development professional services organization that provides management and technology-based solutions to a wide array of clients representing state and federal government and the private sector. The company offers a broad range of services and capabilities. Areas of expertise include advanced materials & manufacturing; command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR); force readiness; energy & environmental sustainability; and more. CTC has grown steadily since its inception, exceeding $230 million in revenue last fiscal year. With growth has come expansion. CTC now operates from more than 35 locations with a staff of over 1,400 employees.
“Our organization is incredibly complex, including our cost structure,” said Tracey Maher, Director of Finance & Systems. “But this complexity is easily accommodated in Deltek Costpoint. It is a remarkably open system that can develop rates, make calculations, and create, track and manage hundreds of projects right down to the finest level of detail, with complete flexibility. It's a powerhouse of data.”
CTC has continually grown in both size and scope. The Company now provides services through contracts that are much more complex. CTC has also expanded geographically, opening several new offices while also welcoming a large number of remote employees. Several years ago it became clear that many of CTC's key business processes, including forecasting project revenue and labor utilization, were becoming a challenge. Since planning data was not integrated with core project information, employees were manually tracking this data, mainly with spreadsheets, creating inefficiency and the potential for human error. This quickly took its toll on CTC's staff.
“Because these processes were not automated, employees were becoming overwhelmed by the amount of manual effort they were putting forth to manage key project data, especially planning, budgeting and forecasting information,” said CTC General Manager and Treasurer, Margaret DiVirgilio. “With no standardized budgeting format, it was a significant effort to summarize project data into a total Company Projection.”
The Solution
The firm realized it would need to update all of its planning processes to eliminate the inefficiencies spurred by its fast growth. In 2003, CTC purchased Deltek Enterprise Planner to replace the spreadsheets they were using to track and calculate critical forecasting data.
“We first discovered Deltek Enterprise Planner at a user conference and saw the direct impact this tool would have in streamlining our planning and forecasting processes,” Maher said. CTC knew firsthand how automating a manual process could improve efficiency. Back in 1999, CTC's timekeeping processes had become inconvenient and cumbersome due to its rapid growth. The company had quickly outgrown its paper timesheet methodology, and was spending significant time and effort to track and manage labor distribution data for more than 1,000 employees. Consequently, CTC decided to deploy Deltek Time Collection as well, replacing the organization's manual timekeeping processes.
The Benefits
Today, CTC uses Deltek Costpoint, Time Collection and Enterprise Planner to service hundreds of contracts of all sizes and types. Enterprise Planner, in particular, sparked a cultural change among the company by standardizing many disparate business processes within CTC. Today, nearly 400 users are noting vast improvements in the company's forecasting, planning and budgeting processes. With increased visibility into staff utilization, CTC is now able to maximize time spent on billable projects.
For Maher, having all critical project data in one location is the biggest benefit of Enterprise Planner. “Enterprise Planner has eliminated manual entry of all our Costpoint information into spreadsheets — now it's an automated process,” Maher said. “It also saves our forecasters time because all of the data has been standardized — they can get the same level of detail on every inquiry, every time.”
In addition, the company is finally able to produce accurate staff utilization reports using Enterprise Planner. “Deltek allowed us direct insight across our whole enterprise, so we could see how our project managers were planning and validate the accuracy of key data,” she said.
CTC's timekeeping processes have also improved, according to Jeffrey DeLisa, Manager, Information Resources. “Our days of tracking paper timesheets are over now that all CTC employees record their hours in Time Collection,” he said. “Not only have we seen cost-savings equivalent to that of a few additional hires, but timesheets are processed and posted to Costpoint with virtually the push of a button and we've also seen a significant reduction in manual data entry errors. Time Collection validates the data at point of entry drastically reducing the need for correcting timesheets.”
“Deltek has helped to expand our entire business model,” Maher added. “Deltek's solutions effectively manage our planning and timekeeping processes, helping us grow and maintain our sophisticated cost structure while providing us with detailed, accurate reporting across our entire company.”