I’ve just kicked off a rather large project with a well established engineering firm based out of Ohio.
In reviewing their business processes and the day to day operations of some of their accounting and project management functions, I have come up with a good rule of thumb for looking for inefficiencies in any business using Deltek Vision.
Here it is:
Anything you’re using excel for right now, should probably be looked at as a process that needs to be properly automated.
I’ve seen lots of companies taking data out of Vision, putting it in excel so they can sort and manipulate it, perform calculations and generate reports.
The problem with doing this is… just off the top of my head:
1. how do you know you did it right? Who is vetting your work?
2. how do you know you just did it exactly the same way you did it last time?
3. did it take you longer than 1 minute? If it did, that was too long.
4. are you trying to do calculations that your ERP platform is supposed to be able to do? examples: overhead allocation, revenue generation, WIP, AR aging, Payroll or other journal entry “adjustments”, “truing up the accounts” etc. etc. If so, then you’ve wasted money and time on a platform that is not living up to expectations, and time being wasted on work arounds.
5. Version control
etc.
Can you think of more reasons to not use excel? Go ahead and leave comments… or drop me a line.
