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Consulting Matters Business essentials
See the wood, and the trees
New technologies such as 3D printing, virtual reality and BIM hog the limelight in the AEC sector, but back-of-house digital tools have the capacity to deliver significant improvements to business performance and outcomes. Recent Deltek research asserts that consulting firms need to embrace technology to minimise risk and remain relevant, but many are not sufficiently equipped to deal with market challenges such as increased financial pressures, procurement processes and legislative and compliance issues. Users of Deltek’s Project Information Management (PIM) tool—an intuitive system that integrates document and unstructured information management with project accounting functions—have discovered several unexpected benefits. Sharon Rowland, HR and Practice Manager at DesignInc in Melbourne, rolled out PIM in 2016 and has noticed a shift towards more strategic thinking as a result. “Because forecasting is something that we’ve started tracking and publishing, simply looking at those figures has improved our performance by making us more aware,” Rowland explains. “That’s had an impact on how we manage our finances, and a side effect has been a desire to get more accurate data in other areas of the business that are less clear, such as how many submissions are in the pipeline,” she says. “It’s helped us to look further out to the horizon.” Deltek’s Insight to Action report argues that professional services firms must grapple with greater competition and new technology in order to thrive, and Peddle Thorp in Brisbane provides a positive example of the benefits of early adoption. Mark Cronin, Senior Executive, Design Systems & Technology, oversaw the roll out of PIM across the firm’s three Queensland offices which yielded productivity benefits and a rich trove of data that can be analysed in different ways. “It’s improved our business performance as a whole as we capture a lot more information and start compiling a big picture,” Cronin says. “Now, four years since we introduced Deltek PIM, we have opportunities to analyse not only which project teams and leaders offer more profitability, but which project types, clients and regions are better for our business. “Deltek PIM gives us the ability to use data in a smarter way, and now it’s just a matter of time until there is an AI or data miner to slot over the system to harvest trends that we may not even have thought to look for,” he adds. “The fact that information is being captured in a standardised way means we are able to capitalise on it in unexpected ways.”