0 respondents – whose roles ranged from Managing Partner to Senior Consultant to Manager – represented a variety of firms, with half below $50M in revenue and slightly more than 40% with 1,000+ employees.

1. 2013 Deltek / Consulting Magazine
Profitability Survey
Background
Participants
The Profitability Story
Deltek teamed with Consulting Magazine to bring you a better understanding of what drives
profitable projects. You’ll be surprised with what we discovered.
A diverse group of 250 respondents – whose roles ranged from Managing Partner to Senior
Consultant to Manager – represented a variety of firms, with half below $50M in revenue
and slightly more than 40% with 1,000+ employees.
We asked: What percentage of
your firm’s projects fail to meet
expected profit margins?
We asked: What are the top
3 reasons projects aren’t as
profitable as you might expect?
Interesting…
50% of firms find at least 1 in 10 engagements
aren’t as profitable as they’d hoped. And 1 in 5 firms don’t
know how often their projects miss expectations!
The first step to becoming more profitable is knowing how
often engagements aren’t meeting profit expectations.
Then you can figure out why. Can you know, at any point, if
an engagement is on-track for expected profitability?
Interesting…
Not every firm knows which projects are unprofitable, or how
often – but most have ideas about the reasons why. “Scope
Creep” is by far the guilty party, but in more than 50% of all firms,
Inaccurate SOW’s are a partner-in-crime.
Unsurprising that nearly 75% of firms say “scope creep” is the
most frequent profit drain... But could scope creep be avoided
through more accurate scoping? Or with more control over new
work requests before consultants could accept them? Perhaps
better information would lead to more accurate scoping, and
earlier alerts for when scope creep first starts.
THINK ABOUT IT.
THINK ABOUT IT.
29%
18%
8%
9%
36%
Not sure
More than half
31% to 50%
Less than 10%
10% to 30%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Disputed charges
Non-billable rework
Staff/resource cost
Staff/resource inefficiency
Unrecorded, (lost) time
SOW inaccuracy
Scope creep (Changing requirements) 72%
56%
39%
36%
33%
24%
13%

2. The Profitability Story
We asked: Where would you like to see more administrative efficiency?
We asked: How many separate systems do you use?
THINK ABOUT IT.
THINK ABOUT IT.
Deltek is the leading global provider of enterprise software and information solutions for professional services firms and government contractors.
For decades, we have delivered actionable insight that empowers our customers to unlock their business potential. 16,000 organizations and 2 million
users in over 80 countries around the world rely on Deltek to research and identify opportunities, win new business, optimize resources, streamline
operations, and deliver more profitable projects. Deltek – Know more. Do more.® deltek.com
Interesting…
2 in 3 firms indicate Tracking & Reporting on Project Progress
as one of their most cumbersome and time-consuming
administrative tasks.
Wow! Project profitability is among the most crucial success
factors for consulting firms – yet from the front lines to
management, all say tracking profitability is one of their
most cumbersome tasks. Perhaps missing hours, outdated
information, or inaccurate data is to blame. How many
e-mails and phone calls – or those pesky non-billable internal
meetings – does it take to figure it all out?
Interesting…
1 in 2 firms have 3 or more administrative or project-management
systems. So much information, in so many different places…
Is yours among the 50% of firms operating in a jungle of
disconnected project-management and administrative systems?
You’re not alone – and perhaps struggling to connect people with
the information they need. Getting on a path to consistent
project profitability means planning more accurately, and
responding correctly when plans need to change. Why not make
this a little easier? Look to a single management system that will
connect information and processes across the entire organization.
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
Invoicing and billing
Collecting, submitting, approving
time and expenses
Scoping work/preparing
SOW and job budets
Selecting and assigning resources
Reporting/monitoring of project
progress and profitability
66%
60%
58%
46%
38%
26%
22%
51%
1 2 3+
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