VPVI-67: Woodard & Curran’s Road to Ready -Preparing for our Deltek Vantagepoint Upgrade

Amy Burke, Woodard & Curran

My Info

Amy E. Burke

ERP Program Manager

Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification, PMI

MS, Business Administration (MBA), Clarkson University

BS, Business Administration, Saint Michael’s College

• Managed Deltek Vision ERP at Woodard & Curran for almost 7 years

• 16 ½ years of Product and Project Life Cycle experience

• 10 years managing configuration, security, workflow, training and upgrades

for Deltek Vision and Advantage ERP systems

• 6½ years as a Business Analysis/Quality Assurance Consultant

implementing state tax software and Project Manager implementing

hospitality software, telephony, managed services, application

development and virtualization solutions

Woodard & Curran Info

• Woodard & Curran was founded in 1979

• Corporate Headquarters in Portland, Maine

• W&C is an integrated engineering, science, and operations firm,

offering a diverse range of services to help our clients address

infrastructure, environmental, water resources, energy, and

manufacturing challenges

• Expertise in Environmental Remediation and Permitting; Water

Supply, Usage, and Treatment; Energy and Power; Manufacturing

Facility Design; Plant Operations and Management

• Over 1,130 employees

• 30 office locations and 50+ plants under operational management

across the United States

Company Overview

F O U N D E D

1979 30+OFFICES

1100+PEOPLE

Site Investigation & Remediation | Contract Operations

Industrial Wastewater Treatment | Site Civil Engineering

Compliance, Permitting & Sustainability | Design / Build

SCADA | Water Services & Engineering

Climate Adaptation & Hazard Resiliency

Sanitary Wastewater Engineering

Industrial Engineering

OVER80%

of work is from

repeat clients 34%

of staff has

20+ years

experience

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Manufacturing

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EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP

Woodard & Curran Projects

Woodard & Curran Projects Achieving Ecological Restoration:

The Saraland, LLLP Clean Water Act Enforcement Case

Woodard & Curran’s environmental experts were instrumental in the effort to

remedy what the U.S. Department of Justice and the Environmental

Protection Agency described as “the largest violation to Section 404 of the

Clean Water Act in recorded history of EPA Region IV.”

In 2006, a Georgia landowner began construction to build a 250-acre lake,

an associated 525-foot dam, and a perimeter road around the lake on his

property. He did so without a permit. The illegal construction was discovered

in 2012 by air as part of a joint program between the Georgia Forestry

Commission and the EPA. The result was the flooding of 94 acres of wetland

and damage to 3.3 miles of stream, which far exceeds the 5,000 square-foot

regulatory limit that requires Army Corps of Engineers involvement under the

Clean Water Act. Woodard & Curran led the design, permitting, and

oversight of the activities required to restore the wetlands and waters within

the Altamaha River Watershed impacted by the impoundment.

Woodard & Curran ProjectsWater Reuse Facility Enables Economic Development

The City of Victorville, CA built an

innovative treatment plant for their

community in 2010, which takes both

sanitary wastewater as well as

industrial wastewater from a beverage

bottling facility and provides recycled

water to a nearby power plant. It

handles an average flow of 1.7 million

gallons per day. As the designers and

operators of the facility, Woodard &

Curran has been there every step of

the way.

Woodard & Curran ProjectsThe North Valley Regional Recycled Water Program (NVRRWP)

California’s water crisis has severely limited

the amount of water available for irrigation,

devastating highly productive farmland and

causing serious economic hardship

throughout the state. The North Valley

Regional Recycled Water Program

(NVRRWP) is a regional solution to water

supply and reliability issues on the west side

of California’s San Joaquin Valley. By

delivering more than 30,000 acre-feet of

recycled water per year at full capacity, the

NVRRWP provides an estimated direct

annual economic benefit of approximately

$30 million, contributing nearly $70 million

per year to the region's economy.

Woodard & Curran’s Vision Info

• Vision 7.6 Enterprise Cloud client

• Vision Modules:

• Accounting, Billing, CRM, Custom Proposals, Expense, iAccess, Payroll Interface, Project Control, Purchasing, Resource Planning, SF330/SF255/SF254 Proposals, Time, Touch CRM, Touch Time & Expense.

• Integrations: Workday, Concur Expense & Concur PO/AP (with Full Sail’s

Blackbox Connector), Open Asset, Adaptive Insight and Procore, Coming

Soon:

• EleVia Electronic Invoicing (EI)

• Custom W&C Vision Development:

• PM Dashboard

• Project Central –Power PCF

Woodard & Curran’s Vision Info

• We have not upgraded to Vantagepoint

• We use Proposals with Merge functionality, Resource Planning,

Purchasing, Integrations using APIs, Emailing and SQL where

clauses searches

• Our plan is to upgrade to Vantagepoint 3.0 or 3.5 depending on

timing next year

• We are currently on Vision 7.6 CU41, I suspect we will be on

CU 44 by November

W&C Road to Ready Agenda

• Have you been putting off database clean-up effort?

• Clean-up projects often get pushed to the back burner since there isn’t perceived ROI on these projects

• Where to start when creating your project plan?

• Review what we will be doing to clean-up our database by

looking at our mini-projects

• Review where to find Vantagepoint documentation

Do I need all this stuff?

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondō

• Discard what doesn’t bring you joy.

• Tidy by category instead of by room.

• Fold items vertically.

• Show deep appreciation for your

belongings.

• Dedicate a whole day to cleaning.

• Shoeboxes are the best organizers.

• Live in the present.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondō

• Get rid of duplicates

• Get rid of things you haven’t used in a year

• Digitize nostalgic items

• Don’t keep items out of guilt

• Put things back where they belong…

• …And find a home for them

• Sell, give away, donate, upcycle, or throw away

Project Plan Outline

• Document your mini project list

• Document high level list of tasks

and owners

• Determine how you will document

your project plan

• Determine level of effort for these

tasks to determine your project

timeline

• Here’s a snapshot of our outline

Smartsheet for Project Planning

Smartsheet Project Plan

Create Detailed Task list in one Smartsheet Worksheet based on your outline and estimated level effort

Smartsheet Project PlanCreate a separate Mini Project List where you build timelines based on task level of effort to build individual GANTT Charts

Custom Invoice Templates• Document Custom Invoices

• Create Standard Invoice based on Custom Invoice needs

• Test Standard Invoices to compare to Custom

• Replace Custom with Standard

Custom Invoice Templates

Unicode Upgrade

• Review Stored

Procedures

• Determine updates

need to prevent Stored

Procs from breaking

post Upgrade

• Upgrade database in

Sandbox database to

test changes

Role Security Audit / Clean-up

• Perform a Security Audit

• Determine which roles may be

eliminated

• Determined which roles need

updated security access

• We have 58 Security Roles

• 8 roles for Billing Team

Example of O&M Security Clean-up

New Security Role -Exact Name TBD Role on Project/SBU Fields on Project/SBU

Access to

Labor

Access to

Expense

Access to

Project/Phase/T

ask Notes

Senior O&M Management O&M Senior Principals No field on Project Yes Yes

All

Projects/Phases/

Tasks

O&M Plant Mgmt with Cost

Area Manager/Plant

Manager/Department Head

Principal in Charge/Project

Manager /Task Manager Yes Yes

Projects/Phase/

Task they are

assigned

O&M Plant Mgmt without Cost Assistant Plant Manager

Technical Lead or Other field

TBD No Yes

Projects/Phase/

Task they are

assigned

Project Admin O&M Project Administration Project Assistant Yes Yes

All

Projects/Phases/

Tasks

Add O&M PAs to General PA role if access

needed is same

Marketing O&M Marketing No field on Project No Yes

All

Projects/Phases/

Tasks

Add O&M Marketing to General Marketing

role if access is the same

Proposed Changes

Example of User Mapping to new roles

Role Security Audit / Clean-upProject Info Center Fields PM/TM/PIC Lookup Data

Role Security Audit / Clean-upProject Info Center Field Technical Lead Mapping Data

Custom and Standard Report Clean-up

• Document Custom Reports

and client’s needs

• Create new Std. Reports to

replace Custom

• Test Std. Reports

• Remove/Replace Custom

Reports with Standard

Global Report Clean-up

• Document Global

Favorites

• Determine which

reports may be

removed

• Remove Reports

not in use

• Determine Report

Options and

Selections to

recreate in

Vantagepoint

Develop Dashboard Report Replacement• Determine if out of the box Dashboards may replace commonly run Std. Reports

• Develop new Dashboards to replace needs for Global Reports

Workflow and Overnight Process Clean-up

• Review/Document

Workflows

• Determine which ones

can be removed

• Determine if updates

are needed

• Update prior to setting

up Test Environment

Database Clean-up Efforts• Opportunity and Project Association / Clean-up efforts

Database Clean-up Efforts• Client and Vendor Association / Clean-up efforts

Field Security Audit / Clean-up

• Review/Remove Merge fields marked Hidden Fields

• Determine additional fields per Info Center to remove

• Review/Remove other known fields not in use

• Determine/Document Updated Field Security Plan

Field Clean-up as part of our Database Merge

Field Clean-up as part of our Database Merge

Field Clean-up as part of our Database Merge

Field Clean-up as part of our Database Merge

Field Clean-up fields no longer in use

Review/Document Current Field Design

Determine New Field Design

Create/Update End to End Test Script

• Create/Update End to

End Test Script

• Determine Additional

Testing Efforts needed

based on Vantagepoint

Checklist

• Add additional testing

efforts including

Integrations

Communication / Training Plan• Create Targeted Training based on role

• Project Manager/ Project Administrator

• Biller/Accounting

• Business Development/Marketing

• Timesheet user

• Create training based on new Apps and URLs

• Examples of some of the New Functionality Training

• Dashboards

• Searches and Reporting

• Outlook Integration

• Simplified Transactions

• Consolidated Projects view

• Consolidated Firms and Settings

W&C’s Challenges Preparing to Upgrade to Vantagepoint

• Analysis time needed

• We have used Vision for 15 years

• What did we setup correctly?

• What could we change?

• Company has worked in Siloed Groups

• Trying to meet needs of the company but there isn’t a cohesive process put into place

• Is Vision being used efficiently and effectively?

• What’s needed across the organization?

• What’s not needed?

• Requirements Gathering

• Redefine what it means to define Business Requirements

W&C’s Challenges Preparing to Upgrade to Vantagepoint

• Fields in Green have

been added this

year to

accommodate

Company changes

on how to categorize

projects,

• Red are fields which

should go away but

there is some

resistance to making

the change.

W&C’s Challenges Preparing to Upgrade to Vantagepoint

• Making time with Regular Day Job

• Getting others to make this project their priority

• Prep/Clean-up and Planning in addition to testing efforts

• Analysis –Decision making based on how are things going to change

• Need a Champion –Leading Effort/Promoting it across the

organization support clean-up and promote change with promotion of

the updates available once we upgrade

• Challenging to estimate level of effort and time needed to complete

tasks if task requires many folks participating and their priorities don’t

match yours

W&C’s Advice for Preparing to Upgrade to Vantagepoint

1. Clean-up everything you can prior to upgrading

a) Extra fields, security roles, reports, invoice, etc.

b) The more conscience your data is prior to the upgrade the easier it will be to configure and test

2. Develop an upgrade project plan to divide clean-up and testing

efforts into mini projects to ensure there is a clear understanding of

all the aspect needed to change by key stakeholders

3. Ensure your stakeholders see the return on investment (ROI) by

rolling out the new Dashboards as part of the upgrade. Immediate

win for folks who aren’t looking forward to the changing User

Interface

Vantagepoint DocumentationDeltek Learning Zone –Vantagepoint Readiness Portal:

• Important Release Documentation• Upgrade Considerations• Frequently Asked Questions

• Upgrade Checklist

• Videos, documentation and training

Vantagepoint Documentation

Important Release

Documentation

• Release Notes for

DPS 1.1x to

Vantagepoint 2.0

• News and

Enhancements for

DPS 1.1x to

Vantagepoint 2.0

• New and Enhanced

Features from Vision

to DPS 1.1x

Vantagepoint DocumentationUpgrade Considerations

• Upgrade Considerations: Functionality That is Being Eliminated

• Upgrade Considerations: Things That May Not Upgrade Without Intervention

• Upgrade Considerations: Functionality That Is Temporarily Unavailable

• Upgrade Considerations: Functionality That Will Be Different In 2.0 In Comparison to Vision

Vantagepoint DocumentationFrequently Asked Questions

• Update History

• General

• Search

• Resource Planning

• Reporting

• Convergence of Opportunities and

Project

• Insight

• Accounting and Finance

• CRM & Proposals

• Billing

• Firms –Clients & Vendors

• Transactions

• User Defined Component and

Screen Designer

• PIM

Vantagepoint DocumentationAPI Documentation

Vantagepoint DocumentationResource Planning - Feature Parity with Vision and iAccess Features

Vantagepoint DocumentationResource Planning - Considerations, Upgrade and Settings Guide

Vantagepoint DocumentationLabor Cost Rates/Amounts Security Cheat Sheet

Vantagepoint DocumentationPrevious Desktop Menu to Vantagepoint 2.0 Menu Mapping

Vantagepoint Documentation

Upgrade Checklist

Pre-upgrade Tasks & Post-upgrade Tasks per section

• General

• Security Roles

• Screen Designer

• User Defined Components

• Firms

• Projects

• Accounting/Transactions/Billing/Payments

• Saved Searches

• Reporting

• Workflow (User Initiated/Scheduled/Approval)

• Resource Planning

• CRM

• Proposals

• Mobil Apps (Touch)

Vantagepoint DocumentationResource Planning - Upgrading Vision Plans to Vantagepoint 2.x for On Premise Customers

Resource Planning - Upgrading Vision Plans to Vantagepoint 2.x for Cloud Customers

Vantagepoint DocumentationVideos, documentation and training

Client Assistance Program

Questions

Email:

aburke@woodardcurran.com