Conventional wisdom would imply that a software company that changes its owners and CEO in the same year might be in some kind of trouble or facing stormy waters. But, Deltek vigorously claims that nothing is farther from the truth. Quite the contrary, in fact—via its 2012 acquisition by Thoma Bravo, Deltek believes it has found a dedicated and committed financial backer. In addition, there was nothing sinister in Deltek’s CEO change in late 2012. After a transformational seven-plus years with Deltek, former CEO Kevin Parker left the company under his own volition. Seven-and-a-half years is a nice run at an enterprise software company, and Parker felt that it was the right time for him to step back a bit after accomplishing a lot of the goals he set out to accomplish back in 2005 (plus, he might have begun to miss the US West Coast where he hails from).

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A few weeks ago I discussed Deltek’s journey from its founding in 1983 until its recently announced impending delisting from NASDAQ and going private under Thoma Bravo’s ownership, for the second time in its history. The article presented some opposing views on what this acquisition might mean for Deltek, its customers, and partners.

In light of the company’s recent quarterly results and the upcoming Deltek Insight 2012 user conference in mid-October 2012, this post features my conference previews discussion with Patrick Smith, Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Communications at Deltek.

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It would be an understatement to say that Deltek, the leading global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for professional services firms and government contractors, has had an interesting journey since it was founded in 1983 by the deLaski duo of father and son. In 2005, the original founders sold their majority ownership and gave up day-to-day involvement in the company, and Deltek was recapitalized by a private equity organization called New Mountain Capital based in New York, NY. The software company went public again in November 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

TEC’s mid-2011 article, which reported on the Deltek Insight 2011 conference, indicated that Deltek has lately become the leader in market intelligence for government contractors (in addition to long being the leading provider of GovCon enterprise software solutions and professional services). By using Deltek’s market intelligence services, companies are able to benchmark their performance against their GovCon peers.

As of late 2011, Deltek has been hosting a number of in-person seminars and Webinars that are related to Deltek’s Clarity survey — the industry’s largest annual survey of government contractors (Deltek also does similar surveys for the architechture and engineering [A&E] and marketing agency space). Deltek’s third annual Clarity Report for Government Contracting, available today, unveils the results of Deltek’s annual study of top performance benchmarks in government contracting.

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Part 1 of this blog series started with me lamenting my inability to attend the Deltek Insight 2010 conference. However, I recently had an in-depth post-event recap instead with Deltek’s in-the-know staff members.

What then followed in Part 1 were descriptions of the major developments that transpired at Deltek Insight 2010 in terms of already released products and those that were only sneak previewed (but will be released down the track). Part 2 will analyze the corporate announcements and some new (perhaps refreshing) directions, as well as provide a glimpse of what we might expect at Deltek Insight 2011.

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The month of May is usually the high season of software vendors’ conferences, but mid-May 2010 was a bit extreme: I was invited to four major user conferences that took place on or about the same dates all over the United States (US). Given that cloning and teleporting technologies are decades away from us, I had to minimize the “damage” by at least picking two events that were relatively physically close to each other.

One event that I had to regretfully decline due to the scheduling conflict was Deltek Insight 2010. I certainly kept my eye on the event via the Twitter chatter and blogosphere (e.g., see a conference report from SPI Research’s principal Dave Hofferberth). More recently, I had an in-depth post-event recap briefing with Deltek’s in-the-know staff members and what follows now are the major developments that transpired at Deltek Insight 2010 (I attempted to put them in logical groups of announcements).

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Both the “old” Deltek (pre-2005) and “new” Deltek (from 2005 on) have not been strangers to acquisitions, but these were largely well thought-out and appetizing (“nip in”) purchases of smaller companies that had either an attractive piece of technology or install base (or both). However, in early June 2010, immediately after its Insight 2010 user conference, Deltek announced its intent to acquire Maconomy A/S, a Denmark-based provider of solutions to the professional services market. On July 6, Deltek announced the completion of its tender offer to acquire the European enterprise resourceplanning (ERP) provider.

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Part I of this blog series tried to analyze not only the opportunity but also the many related strings attached stemming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), a.k.a. the Economic Stimulus Plan. The inspiration came from my attendance of the Deltek Insight 2009 user conference last May, where Deltek decided to fill a market need by convening a separate “track” that was entitled “Stimulus & Beyond (Navigating the Brave New World).” 

The conclusion of the keynote session was that while public sector organizations stand a fair opportunity to receive unprecedented amounts of economic stimulus funds, the catch is that they need to provide unprecedented transparency and accountability into how those funds are spent while measuring the achievements of those programs. Indeed, many of the “lucky” recipients of funds from the ARRA must meet legal requirements to publish timely and accurate accounting, allocation, and results data for every dollar received.

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Part I of this blog series explained Deltek’s ebullience despite a hostile and depressed environment, and also analyzed the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s Professional Service line of business, which is largely represented by Deltek Vision [evaluate this product]. Part II then analyzed the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s Government Contractors (GovCon) line of business, which is represented by Deltek Costpoint [evaluate this product] and Deltek GCS Premier [evaluate this product].

This final part will focus on Deltek’s Enterprise Project Management (EPM) line of business, which helps companies deal with the ever-growing reporting regulations being imposed by government agencies. Read the rest of this entry »

Part I of this blog series explained Deltek’s ebullience despite a hostile and depressed environment. The continued cash-generating operation has been complemented by in-house developments, acquisitions, and partnerships.

The previous blog post also talked about the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s Professional Service line of business, which is largely represented by Deltek Vision [evaluate this product]. Parts II & III will analyze the recent developments (and anticipated future developments) at Deltek’s remaining lines of business. Read the rest of this entry »

Time and again during my decade or so of covering the enterprise applications market as an industry analyst I have witnessed what difference a year can make. And boy, would 2008 be such a year!

A year ago or so, I concluded an in-depth four-part series on Deltek (NASDAQ: PROJ), whose executives were recently happy to tell me that 2008 was not that terrible a year for the company. Quite the contrary, Deltek feels comfortable as a company even in these troubled economic times. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, a few months after Part I of this blog post was published, which focused on Deltek’s pre-New Mountain Capital private equity investment era, the time has finally come for us to analyze why being again publicly traded should (or should not) work better for Deltek this time. If one is to judge merely by the most recent financial figures, it would appear to be working well, but my focus here is on some lingering “softer” issues too.

So, when the new management team took the helm at Deltek in mid 2005, it realized that many good things had happened over the previous two decades at the company, but that one can never be too complacent. Indeed, room for improvements existed in many regards, or at least  some challenges could always be turned into opportunities. Read the rest of this entry »

In the last decade or so of covering the enterprise applications market, I’ve witnessed so many products and vendors disappearing and reappearing under a different name, ownership, etc., but it is for the first time now, at the end of 2007 that I saw basically the same vendor go public for the second time (and in a 10 year timespan). Namely, Deltek (evaluate its flagship product), the leading provider of enterprise applications software designed specifically for project-focused businesses (those with business processes revolving around the engagement, execution and delivery of projects), has done it again. Its common shares begun trading November 1, 2007 on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the trading symbol “PROJ”. Previously, the company, which was founded in 1983, used to be publicly traded under the symbol “DLTK” from 1997 till late 2002/early 2003, when it was de-listed and went private again (for the time being).

I don’t intend to bore you with the financial figures (about the number of shares offered, its current share value, market capitalization, etc.), since many wire alerts have repeatedly already done so. What is more interesting here is Deltek chief executive officer (CEO), Kevin Parker’s statements that the company — which, as mentioned above, was taken public 10 years ago before being taken private about five years later by the founding deLaski family — launched its second initial public offering (IPO) as a means to boost recognition of the Deltek brand. Parker believes that it is an important time to have a broader audience, and the company is thus focusing on expanding globally. Proceeds from the offering will be used to pay down debt, which Parker said will give the company greater ability to reinvest in the company.

In his recent blog post, Ray Wang of Forrester Research is quite positive and upbeat about the IPO, and fully agrees with Parker’s ideas and justifications. Myself, I often tend to mostly agree with Ray, with the difference that one should always mention some caveats too (and please, can anyone show me a single company without some challenges?). On the other hand, a report that preceded the Deltek IPO by a few months (i.e., it was posted after Deltek’s pre-IPO S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] ) was quite negative, berating the S-1 filing (especially the “Description of business” part) as sounding so outdated (so 1990-ish), and without any references to the contemporary trends like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Software as a Service (SaaS)/On-Demand, Web 2.0, etc. Also, the article opines that the heydays of the Professional Service Automation (PSA) market (one in which Deltek competes) are far behind us (I might agree with the fact that the PSA acronym might be a “goner”, but not really the market opportunity – certainly not in a services economy). Read the rest of this entry »