This month I attended the annual Deltek Insight conference, and learned a good deal more about Vision, Deltek’s popular accounting software platform used by a significant slice of the AEE (architecture, engineering, and environmental consulting) market.  The experience has me wondering again why it’s so pervasive that organizations don’t more fully utilize the capability and functionality of their accounting systems?  A common experience:  buy the system, install it, and get it up and running with core accounting functionality, and then stop – leaving much of the power of information reporting, business analysis, client account and relationship management, and such for another day.  System functionality, user groups, transparency and training are all minimized.  The company acts as if it’s determined that using the system as little as possible is the desired outcome.

I’ve seen this experience repeatedly, throughout my career, and in all sorts of organizations – manufacturing, distribution, sales, professional services, even Fortune 50 firms.  Using just a small part of the accounting system is prevalent, pervasive, even pandemic in the business world.  And it just doesn’t make sense.

Sure there are resource constraints – money, time, people.  But this is only a part of the story.  Accounting system projects are often poorly conceived, justified, and planned.  Firms don’t think enough about project objectives, metrics of success, or return on investment.  And they miss much of the critically important opportunity of business process reengineering – designing and improving firm operations to best use the new system (unfortunately the reverse is more common – managing the firm to accounting system constraints).

Deltek’s Vision platform (and there are others) is designed specifically for project focused and project driven organizations – for professionals services firms just like those in the AEE industry.  The capabilities of these systems – for gathering, analyzing, and reporting firm (and project) performance is useful, relevant, necessary, and important.  Similarly these systems continue to develop and improve functionality and connectivity with other enterprise-level processes – such as business development, client relationship management, and staff talent development.

Shortchanging the firm’s investment in accounting system development is saving too many professional firms broke.  I think it’s time to put information, knowledge, and business performance management back on the front burner.  Recommitment to fully exploiting the accounting system you already have is a great first step.

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