Deltek Vision

Easily grasped concepts to charge time and expenses for projects and clients.

In 2004, the professional services firm I worked for was managing a $10M/year business using Quickbooks. It was clunky and problematic, with no real analytic capability (i.e., where and how were we making money). I investigated various solutions, and discovered Deltek Vision. We hired an outside consultant to install and configure Vision for us,and life changed. We suddenly had a true business management solution. As the CFO, I finally had a tool that could give me true insight into the underpinning of our business,and where were profitable (and where we were not).

Two years later, at a architectural firm, I inherited Axiom Protrax, practically a DOS-based solution. I quickly tired of operating with a 20-year old platform, and advocated for Vision. Having experienced one implementation,I was not enthused with dropping $60K for an outside party to tell me what to do to configure the system. So, over three months,I single-handedly configured and implemented Vision at a 50-person architectural firm. And it has made all the difference. Vision has continued to grow, through internal development and outside acqusition, and through it all they have maintained a consistent look and feel to the product. Adding functionality without detracting from the user experience. And their customer support has remained top-notch. I love the quick chat. If I just have a quick question, I can go quick chat, and quickly resolve my issues.

I love this produce, and it meets the needs of my business.

I've been the Vision champion in our organization since 2008 when we began to use it. Vision has been steadily improving over the past 10 years and also been getting left behind in innovation. Over our time with Vision we've evaluated other software at a few points and have not found a single solution that can provide a similar integrated experienced. The power of Vision and the reporting is built on Microsoft's SQL engine, but it does require users to be invested in learning it's use to get the most out of it. Without proper time devotion, training, and some trial and error it does leave users frustrated.

Along with the power of the product comes a lot of over-complication and reported amounts that often aren't as expected or isn't fully explained or clear on where the data is coming from and what it means. This is probably the primary problem with Vision in my eyes - data labeled in one area of the program isn't the same as data reported under the same or very similar label in another part of the program.

The end user experiences and ease of use is greatly lacking, but should be vastly improved as Vision is (finally) becoming modern and migrating from a .NET platform to a HTML/web-based platform. This upgrade shows promise of having better end user use and intuitiveness. We are hopeful that Vision will continue to be a tool for our company for many more years.

I believe this program is a significant upgrade over my firm's previous time tracking program. We should see the benefits within several months.

I sometimes consider Deltek a necessary evil, but it is as good a software as I have seen and used.