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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Part I of this series analyzed the opportunities (as well as the 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 and interest by convening a separate “track” that was entitled “Stimulus & Beyond (Navigating the Brave New World).”

Part II of this series then analyzed why Deltek believes it can help government contractors and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms, as well as other public sector organizations in their endeavors to obtain ARRA funds (i.e., the opportunity part) and duly report on them (the strings part for transparency and accountability). Part III then expanded on the construction industry’s current challenges, its outlook, and market trends.

Although Deltek inspired this series and while the company caters to AEC firms, its focus and software capabilities are in the design or planning stage of an infrastructure object. But the entire infrastructure lifecycle management (ILM) encompasses the following phases that denote yet another three-letter acronym (TLA) – “PBO”:

• Plan: Manage project pipelines, site development, entitlements, etc.
• Build: Track budgets, contracts, changes, schedules, scopes, and quality
• Operate: Direct asset management, work orders, and maintenance management

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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 »

Part III of this blog series analyzed the relatively recently launched Deltek Vision 5 [evaluate this product] and Deltek Costpoint 6 [evaluate this product] suites. It also tackled the related potential opportunities for Deltek. For one, key up- and cross-sell opportunities should come from:

• Additional modules, especially from the newly minted Deltek EPM [evaluate this product] suite: The majority of new Deltek customers initially purchase a single module or a select few modules of the suite (e.g., project management, financials, human resources [HR] or timesheets) and add more modules a few years after implementing the initial modules; and
• Migration from entry-level and/or legacy products to Costpoint or Vision: Deltek GCS Premier [evaluate this product] is a low-cost entry-level application suite designed for smaller contracting firms. As GCS customers outgrow these systems, there is opportunity for migration onto Costpoint. Similarly, we expect legacy Deltek FMS, Sema4 and Advantage customers to migrate onto Vision or Costpoint (depending on industry), as their scalability requirements exceed system capabilities. These legacy products were designed for small professional services firms.

As for focused geographic expansion, due to largely offering products that support only English, Deltek’s initial focus will logically be on English-speaking countries such as Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. International geographies have so far represented only a few percentiles of total revenue, but the company plans to generate 20 percent from international markets over the next three to five years, mostly via expansion into the UK and Australia/New Zealand. Read the rest of this entry »

Part II of this blog series analyzed the relatively recently launched Deltek EPM suite, which came as a result of three focused acquisitions. It also analyzed the suite’s resulting potential cross- and up-sell opportunities and its prospective additional revenue for Deltek in a standalone manner. However, Deltek has not been sitting still when it comes to continually enhancing its core products either.

Deltek Vision 5 Series

For example, the new Resource Planning module of Deltek Vision 5 [evaluate this product] was devised to allow project managers to assign staff to projects and immediately see the impact on labor utilization. The managers can then modify resource assignments to meet project needs, whereby color coding provides focus on resources.

The new module also offers real-time insight into employee billing rates and actual labor charges. It provides visibility to align resources for upcoming projects in order to increase overall resource utilization. The available tools give project managers a view of employee utilization by project or across all projects by day, week, month or year. In addition, the enhanced Resource Search feature allows for projection of future staffing allocation. 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 »