About PVBS : Success Stories

Case Study — Dovèl Technologies

Microsoft Dynamics NAV Financial Management and Project Accounting Solution Helps Fast Growing Government Contractor Effectively Manage Contracts

At-a-Glance

Company/Industry: Dovèl Technologies (McLean, VA) is a software developer and systems integrator that has built IT systems for government and private industry for over 18 years. The company services many government agencies such as: Department of Defense; Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Transportation; Securities and Exchange Commission; Food and Drug Administration; and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Dovèl offers services in the following areas:

• Software Development
• Computer Security
• Program Management
• Business Process Services

The company has created a strong service offering in transitioning organizations into Services Oriented Enterprises (SOE). Dovèl Technologies was one of the recipients of the Northrop Grumman 2007 Supplier Excellence Awards. From the more than 6,000 suppliers to Northrop Grumman, only 10 were selected for this award.

Champion: The Company’s co-founder and senior financial executive at the time knew that the growing company had well exceeded the capabilities of its existing accounting software: QuickBooks. As Dovèl continued to win contracts with the Federal Government, it was painfully realized that QuickBooks was not able to handle their fast changing business needs. They were in need of a financial management and project accounting solution that could support cost-plus contracts. They needed an accounting solution that the DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) would approve and were convinced that DCAA would not approve their usage of QuickBooks, if they were audited. If not addressed, this would be a huge problem in the future.

The company also eventually employed the services of a tenured government contractor accounting specialist to act as chief financial officer. He had used the Dynamics NAV solution previously and knew that it would help the company manage its growth.

Critical Issues: As the pipeline grew, to prepare for the company’s expected rapid growth, Dovèl had the foresight to look for a project accounting and financial management solution that would meet its future needs. The company was hampered by its use of QuickBooks, an accounting software solution that was not designed to meet the needs of government contractors least of all ones that were growing quickly. The company would be at significant risk if audited by the DCAA.

As the company grew, it saw a need for software that allowed it to give program managers more insight into their programs. The financial leaders wanted to provide financial information to program managers across the web on a secure self-service basis in near real time. Their existing system was unable to provide this type of access. The company was also growing and needed a system that could scale as its contract volume increased.

The company also had a web-based time and expense reporting system that worked well but was not integrated with QuickBooks. The accounting team needed to manually enter the data into QuickBooks, which was a very time consuming, error-prone, and inefficient process. Another limitation was that the company could not invoice out of QuickBooks and had to re-enter everything into Excel. All of these extra processes were unacceptable to the leadership who wanted seamlessness across all processes.

The company said that QuickBooks was enough to get the company started but once they started winning Federal Government business, QuickBooks quickly became a liability that threatened the company’s growth. The types of contracts they were getting needed a more compliant system to track costs and expenses. The project accounting solution needed to be more transparent, which means they could easily view all of the transactions and track their flow.

Existing System that Needed to Be Replaced: QuickBooks and a time entry system called Replicon (Canada). Dovèl wanted a Microsoft branded solution and was not interested in older technology that was difficult to support and did not integrate easily with their other Microsoft investments.

Strategy: Dovèl looked at Microsoft Dynamics NAV for Government Contractors from PVBS and was very pleased with the possibilities for their business that the software provided. Evaluators were also impressed with the multitude of reporting capabilities present in the solution. Another important factor was how well Dynamics NAV integrated with other Microsoft technologies.

Project managers at the company rely on the time accountability data that the accounting team supplies them with on a regular basis. Accounting has historically generated hard copy reports and sent them to the remote managers as soon as possible, which sometimes takes weeks. With Dynamics NAV, they have worked on ways to have the project managers get information from Dynamics NAV directly, in order to see project status in real time. Dynamics NAV is built with a complete set of reporting capabilities, including over 300 built in reports that help government contractors manage their business more effectively. They were also impressed with the built-in analytical capabilities that would give them a more comprehensive view of contract status and future expectations.

The company leadership likes the drill down capability in Dynamics NAV and that they can question why a project’s costs are particularly high and then drill down and see all of the elements that comprised the costs. They were not able to do this in QuickBooks.

The Result: In a very short amount of time, the Dynamics NAV solution has become the backbone of the company’s financial management and contract operations. While the accounting and finance teams have quickly immersed themselves in the solution, the company’s financial leadership looks forward to phasing in self-service reporting which would make the solution more valuable from an operations perspective as well.

“There are great reports available in Dynamics NAV that our project managers need to have access to,” said the company’s financial leader. “We want to make access to these reports as natural and seamless as possible.”

Dovèl also will be using the solution for budget analysis in the future, looking forward to comparing budget and rate submission year over year. They will also be doing more billing inside the system and generating invoices for clients.

Moving from QuickBooks to a much more comprehensive solution was eye opening to the company’s executives. The built in and highly-functional drill down capability has helped them see transaction flow and ensure that transactions were where they belonged and associated with the right contracts or expense categories. A quickly realized benefit was the elimination of double entries.

Executives now can go into the system and answer financial and accounting questions better. They can analyze transactions on the balance sheet and other financial statements (P&L, G&A) and understand why they are there or expensed a certain way. They could see it themselves in real time instead of waiting for accounting to review and print out a report. Instead of having to wait for the Accounting department to produce the report, they can see what actually happened and be prepared to ask accounting the right questions.