Deltek is hosting Deltek ProjectCon this week in Washington DC. During the keynote on the second day, it announced several product innovations and updates for its project-based solutions. With over 3,700 attendees, Deltek claims that its conference is the largest conference for project-based businesses. The event brings together customers, product experts, employees, sponsors, partners and analysts between November 12th and 14th for a range of sessions for networking, learning and fun.
During the keynote it announced Deltek Harmony, a new user experience that it is rolling out across its solutions in the future. It also revealed the outcome of huge investments in AI, notably within Dela, its AI-powered business companion. It has added more generative AI capabilities for Government contractors, Professional Services, Architecture and Engineering firms. The firm also revealed product updates that aligned with the conference theme of Powering Transformation.
Warren Linscott, Chief Product Officer at Deltek, commented, “We’re thrilled to introduce Deltek Harmony and showcase how much Dela has grown since our launch earlier this year. Deltek is committed to providing a best-in-class product experience that is more streamlined, cohesive and intuitive than ever before.
“By fusing an excellent user experience with AI capabilities, along with deep product functionality, Harmony and Dela will provide customers with a competitive edge. We’re proud to be a trusted technology partner to our customers and to continue adding value through innovation.”
Deltek Harmony
One of the key announcements at Deltek ProjectCon was the unveiling of a new generation of user experience for its solutions. Deltek Harmony will reimagine the user experience for customers. It is designed to deliver a consistent, intuitive experience across Deltek’s entire portfolio.
The aim is that it is simpler to use and more intuitive and should accelerate onboarding and increase adoption rates through its flexibility and simplicity. The new UI was developed after extensive research and customer engagement as it has applied modern best practices.
Deltek Harmony includes several key features:
- A quick access icon that allows users to switch applications rapidly, with mouse clicks only.
- Contextual navigation presents up to three layers of navigation options suitable to the screen users are accessing.
- A set environment colour so users can quickly identify which type of screen they are in.
- The ability to switch companies for organisations with multiple tenants within their Deltek instance.
- A contextual toolbar that includes icons for the actions relevant to the current screen.
- Multiple Tabs at the bottom of the window so users can open and switch between different screens within the application.
- Harmony has embedded Dela, its AI assistant, to help users wherever they are in the application.
Enterprise Times asked Deltek when customers can expect to see Deltek Harmony on their applications. The responce from Deltek was, “Costpoint customers will be the first to get the update in mid-2025, with updates to other Deltek solutions to follow. Once the updates are available, existing customers can choose to opt into the new UI when it makes sense for their business.”
Deltek Dela
Deltek Dela was first launched in April 2024. Dela combines artificial intelligence, machine learning and generative AI. Combined with natural language processing to assist users with their project management tasks. Since then, Deltek has continued to enhance Dela, helping users generate content, inform decisions, and prescribe and automate actions. Dela also has Ask Dela, its digital assistant, that lets users ask questions to surface information around their data and to help make data-driven decisions.
Deltek has now added several new Dela functions within its applications.
The Costpoint MS Team app now has access to Ask Dela from within Costpoint. It enables users to access the assistant in their place of work and conduct tasks using a conversational interface. Tasks include:
- Submit Timesheets
- Approve Timesheets
- Generate Reports
- Access Project data through natural language questions
Deltek Vantagepoint users can now leverage Dela to generate project summaries. Dela will interrogate project data and distil information from across multiple project data sets into an easily consumable summary, named Smart Summaries.
Smart Summaries are also available within GovWin IQ, expanding the ease of use of GovWin IQ’s Company Profiles. Smart Summaries will leverage Gen AI to deliver an executive briefing of companies’ historical performance and key insights about it.
Ask Dela is now available in Deltek Specpoint. The AI assistant can answer questions to accelerate the specification process, the AI leverage information held with the AIA MasterSpec library, supporting documents, and Specpoint Help. Thus enabling users to extract information and insights from those databases to answer a wide range of questions. Questions that might historically have taken a long time to find.
Other announcements
Earlier this year Deltek acquired ProPricer. It has now integrated that best-in-class estimating and pricing capabilities into Costpoint. Users can now leverage existing data from those platforms when creating pricing proposals and maximize the chances of winning contracts.
Replicon, a firm acquired in 2023 for Replicon Time and Polaris PSA, was also introduced to the government contracting industry this year. Deltek has added Dela’s AI-driven resource management to Costpoint, helping them to prevent cost overruns and ensure compliance. Replicon also offers several ERP integrations to help government contractors and professional services firms to comply with global labour regulations or complex labour union rules.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Deltek has made some significant announcements at Deltek ProjectCon, not least the completely new user experience with Deltek Harmony. Attendees will be able to have a close look at what is coming. Customers will also be satisfied that this will not be a change enforced upon them straight away. They will be able to review the new UI and conduct the necessary change management and training effectively.
The updates to Dela AI are also welcome as Deltek continues to develop horizontal technologies across its platform. What will be exciting is what it will offer next. Once the new UI is available across all solutions, there will be hooks and interfaces in place for Deltek to add, mix and merge new features across the portfolio.
