Regent Systems Charts a Path for Growth with Upland PSA

Automating timesheet capture and project billing lets Regent Systems focus less on the day-to-day, and more on their long-term growth strategy 

As a mid-sized consulting firm, Regent Systems was challenged with how to better manage time-tracking of a mobile workforce, and accurate billing for government contracts.

Regent Systems began as a subcontractor in support of the United States government defense industry. After two years of successful contracting with the government, Regent Systems initiated the appropriate steps to accelerate its growth as an IT provider. The mission of regent Systems Inc is to provide opportunities for individuals to excel in the information technology profession while at the same time providing high-quality products and services for their customers.

How to Better Manage Hundreds of Mobile Consultants’ Time Tracking and Billing for Government Contracts.

By 2006, Regent Systems had grown into a successful government consulting firm specializing in IT services and support with a focus on information systems, telecommunications technologies, and logistics processing. Based in Dayton, Ohio, Regent Systems has many offices geographically located near Defense Logistics Agency centers and other key customer sites across the country. But with growth comes challenges. With an inherently mobile force, including hundreds of consultants geographically dispersed throughout the country, Regent Systems’ ability to effectively manage time and billing had far outgrown the capabilities of its antiquated, in-house system. The company had relied far too long on large numbers of manual entries and informal exchanges as well as multiple spreadsheet analyses. As a government contractor, the increasing burden of compliance created an imminent need to make certain the most accurate accounting was in place to withstand any potential reviews by the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA), an entity that ensures costs billed to contracts are legitimate and allowable under the government.

An “Intelligent” Project Cost and Revenue Accounting Solution.

After conducting a four-vendor review, Regent Systems selected Upland PSA. This integrated system measures the productivity and/or profitability of each project by providing real-time revenue and cost overviews. It also automates billing or chargebacks based on organizational or project breakdown structures.

“After conducting our due diligence, Upland PSA clearly demonstrated the ability to implement integrated cost and revenue accounting,” Jones said. “The other solutions we looked at would require that we adapt our processes to meet the platform functionality. This was not the case with Upland PSA. It offered significant flexibility to accommodate our organization.”

Upland PSA provided a flexible solution that conformed to our specific needs instead of the other way around.

— Carla Jones, Chief Accountant

Upland PSA easily addressed Regent Systems’s immediate requirements, and more, including their ongoing need to administer and track:

• Manager-employee notification
• Vacation and Personal Time Off (PTO)
• Cost and billing
• Hours used versus hours available
• Contract modifications

In addition, Jones was impressed with the overall intelligence behind the PSA solution. “There were so many ways of doing things that it made us really stop and think about our operations and accounting as a whole, and how we could work so much more efficiently,” she said.

The Result: Compliance, Efficiency, and a Strategic Look Ahead

Regent Systems rolled out the PSA solution in two phases to better manage user interface questions and issues among its 150+ users. Once fully deployed, the solution yielded immediate results for Jones and her department.

PSA has also given us the tools to take a strategic, big-picture view of what we’ll need to accomplish or change to stay successful in the future.

~ Carla Jones

“We immediately saved a minimum of 20 hours a week in terms of headaches, time, and effort,” Jones said. “We were in the process of hiring another full-time employee in the accounting department, but we quickly realized that wouldn’t be necessary with the new PSA system.”

The invoicing capability allowed Regent Systems to automatically generate invoices according to pre-set categories and deliver them directly to the accounting department, eliminating the need for midstream, decentralized checks, and balances that slowed down and disrupted the accurate flow of data. In addition, the highly configurable, detailed report views gave Regent Systems a new, 360-degree perspective on new projects, allowing the company to track hours compared to budget − in real-time.

“The PSA solution has streamlined much of the day-today accounting oversight and administration associated with project management, freeing more of my time to focus on more long-term planning,” Jones said.

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