SWCA Embraces Deltek Solutions to Institute a Single System for Reliable Data and Project Efficiency

Recently Deltek published a case study entitled: SWCA Growing environmental consulting firm empowers project managers, reduces DSO and increases efficiency by 50% using Deltek Solutions.

SWCA has provided comprehensive environmental planning, regulatory compliance and natural resource management services to both businesses and government clients across the United States for three decades. As an employee-owned firm comprised of scientists, planners and technical specialists, the firm combines scientific expertise with sound technical skills to provide solutions for a full spectrum of environmental projects. SWCA has enjoyed a successful career, from its beginnings as a small office in Flagstaff, Arizona. The company has recently celebrated its 30-year anniversary with growth to over 750 employees across more than 20 offices.

Even with an average of 12% growth a year, SWCA still experienced some significant inter-company challenges when it came to project management and financial management. The company’s multiple standalone systems did not distribute data to all those decision makers in the company who needed to see it. Perhaps the finance and accounting teams got the information but the project managers would be left out.

Michael Truax, Director of IT for SWCA, said: “Project managers had a hard time wrapping their minds around the data, because it was in two separate systems with two completely different databases. Also, most of our tools were homegrown, so besides not having a consistent feel, it would take weeks of back and forth to report on how projects were doing.”

SWCA knew that the solution to this problem would have to connect the entire organization around its projects that was delivered on a single, secure system and provided accurate, reliable data in real-time as well as unlimited visibility for project managers so they could track the health and status of its projects. Making sure the project data was all under a single solution, SWCA could ascertain that the project’s success would grow concurrently with the developing workforce.

SWCA chose Deltek because Deltek has fully-integrated capabilities to connect the entire firm and can make certain that project managers always get the right information for their business role, so they can measure project performance as needed.

“During the selection process, we initially considered six vendors including Deltek and BST. We evaluated each solution, and after that review, only Deltek demonstrated that it was really in tune with the factors that we felt were important to our continued success,” Michael Truax, Director of IT for SWCA said.

For Truax, the difference between the old systems and Deltek’s system were so apparent the new system promised that all levels of the organization were apprised of project performance at the same time.

“Now that we’re all in the same system, everyone across the company has access to the same financials and the same project information—all at the same time. We went from it taking two or more weeks to do sales forecasting, to now doing sales forecasting daily. That’s not the only process that has been dramatically streamlined either: with Deltek we get financials for the office daily and the health of our projects daily. All of our employees are seeing the same data and that’s huge for us, making us much, much faster as an organization.”

SWCA gains many additional benefits from Deltek, including the ability to use CRM capabilities that seamlessly matched its business. Because SWCA’s success model focuses on identifying top-quality proposals to win jobs, the firm uses its new solution to streamline high-end proposals directly into its opportunity pipeline. SWCA’s newfound workflows also help the firm become more billable, faster.

Rather than using two separate processes that slowed the transition of opportunities to projects, the firm gained a single version of the truth that empowered timely administrative tasking. “When we were previously using two separate processes, it caused redundancy and extra work to compare them for accuracy. Now that we have all critical data in the same system, we’ve been 50% faster in getting our project contracts through the review process so we can instantly start working on it as a billable item.”

Data accuracy makes for greater internal efficiency, customer satisfaction and achieved revenue. Invoices can now be Q&A’d  better so customers have a better idea of what they are billed for. Because of all of this, SWCA has significantly shrunk their Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) from 90 days to 70 days dramatically increasing cash flow.

The time spent on financial reporting has been reduced from weeks to days for SWCA. Under a single, integrated system, the firm is able to centralize and mitigate unnecessary costs.

SWCA’s future strategy is to double the company’s size in the next five years. Deltek is helping with that goal by allowing SWCA to train quality project managers and bring them up to speed quicker.

Tags: AEC, construction, engineering

Categories: 2D, data archiving, Deltek, engineering

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