​New Business Issues & Processes for GovCon: Deltek Insight Conference Recap

Background

At the Deltek Insight Conference on Nov. 5, the major theme was addressing consolidation in the market and the corresponding squeeze on mid-tier organizations through technology-enabled solutions. BDO contributed to several sessions that highlighted how new processes and organizational changes—driven by a need for continuous improvement—can mitigate those risks and help businesses become more competitive. Specifically, organizations are turning toward solutions that enable enterprise financial and project management processes, and support client collaboration.

BDO was pleased to contribute to the dialogue with the following presentations:

How a Changing Organization Can Impact Your Critical Information Systems: Organizational changes affect every part of the business–governance, financials, processes, people and information systems, explained Jonathan Reynolds, director in BDO’s Industry Specialty Services. Reynolds reviewed common changes organizations experience, including leadership and staff changes, corporate restructuring, growth and rescaling, new contracts, customers and capabilities, and the related need to evaluate systems and processes for continued success. He provided an overview of BDO’s methodology for identifying and adapting to these changes with a myriad of support services, including Integration, Organizational Change Management, Project Management and Execution, and related best practices.

Success Story: Cobra 4.7 to 8.1 Upgrade: Cheryl Saccucci, Principle Program Planning and Control lead at BAE Systems, joined Jessica Coral, senior manager in BDO’s Government Contracting practice, to discuss BAE Systems’ Cobra upgrade. In the span of six months, BAE moved approximately 40 projects from Cobra 4.7 to 8.1. In addition to the Cobra upgrade, multiple points of integration were also addressed to ensure DFARS compliance and create efficiencies by eliminating custom utilities where possible.

Best Practices for Variance Analysis Report Write-Ups: BDO’s senior associate Roupenn Sayadian discussed how Variance Analysis Reports (VAR) include specific information about the cause, impact and corrective actions associated with program performance metrics that deviate from the Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB). Deficient VARs are crucial hindrances to disciplined Earned Value Management (EVM), while properly developed VARs provide management the early insight required to implement timely and impactful corrective actions.

Estimates to Complete Using Cobra: Coral presented again, this time on the forecasting features of Cobra. In the session, she highlighted three primary methods of updating forecast: direct schedule integration, csv/xml integration and resource assignment import and export. She highlighted the pros and cons, and provided an introduction to implementation, for each approach. Project forecasts are often required by your government customers and are an important tool for communication and collaboration.

A Perfect Marriage: Converting/Integrating Accounting Systems from M&A activity: Aaron Raddock, national leader of BDO’s Government Contracting practice, joined Reynolds and Giacomo Apadula, managing director in BDO’s Government Contracting practice, in discussing how, despite proper planning and the best efforts, post-acquisition integration always presents some challenges. But system migrations, including merging companies on the same platform, upgrading an acquired company to the parent company’s system, or converting and migrating the acquired company from another system to Costpoint, does not have to be on the list of issues.

Success Story: Ready to migrate from MPM to Cobra? Robert Ameen, senior manager in BDO’s Program Optimization & Project Controls Solutions, discussed converting from Deltek MPM to Cobra. This can be a daunting task because of multiple factors, including new licensing, environments, architecture and interfaces. In addition, years of legacy data often need to be analyzed, prepped, migrated and reconciled. Active projects must also continue to execute during migration and testing, and seamlessly transition to Cobra without interruptions to customer reporting.

Preparing for the new Department of Defense (DoD) IPMR requirements using PM Compass and Cobra: I joined Coral to discuss how organizations may prepare for the new Department of Defense (DoD) Integrated Program Management Reporting (IPMR) Data Item Description. They addressed the challenges organizations may face in providing the data electronically and supporting the compressed government reporting timeline. They also reviewed the new Office of the Secretary of Defense Performance Assessment and Root Cause Analysis (OSD PARCA) JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data exchange instruction (DEI) requirements, and what organizations may need to consider to align their EVMS systems to support this new file format, which enables collaboration with government customers.

Improving EVMS processes using Data Driven Metrics from Acumen: Coral and I discussed how organizations may use the new Data Driven Metrics (DDM) developed by the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) for EVMS surveillance, internal surveillance and continuous improvement of EVMS processes.

 

Client Spotlight

Peraton, the winner of the Deltek Most Valuable Project (MVP) Award for Government Contractors—accepted by Eric Ruscheinski, Vice President of Enterprise Applications at Peraton—best exemplifies the approach organizations should take toward digital transformation. As a trusted provider of highly differentiated capabilities, Peraton is a critical partner to the Intelligence Community, DoD, and select federal agencies and commercial entities. Headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, the company employs approximately 3,500 people across the U.S. and Canada. Peraton’s next-generation IT organization led a massive digital transformation of all aspects of its IT infrastructure to seamlessly integrate and automate data flowing inside and outside of their network. BDO is pleased to have supported Peraton in its implementation of Deltek’s Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions.