If you’re using Deltek’s Micro-Frame Program Manager (MPM) stand alone Earned Value Management (EVM) System, then you likely know software support will disappear within the next year.
Before you blindly convert over to Cobra, Deltek’s sister EVM system, we encourage you to use the interim time to evaluate your current vendor experience as a whole. Trust us, there are “greener pastures” on the other side of Deltek’s EVM products, where MaxTeam earned value management software resides.
Our clients tell us that Deltek's Cobra has 5 big problems—problems we've solved with MaxTeam. Let's talk about those problems and how we built MaxTeam to solve them.
1) Lackluster customer service support
Most engineers we talk to say they’re frustrated with Deltek’s support desk. Many times, the person answering the “help line” doesn’t fully-understand the problem, why it’s important, or how to fix it. You don’t have to settle for subpar customer service.
Our help desk professionals know the ins and outs of our EVM software, MaxTeam. And they’re trained to respond to issues within 2 hours and fix problems within 24 hours.
2) Managing change control is tough
Cobra is a standalone program that plugs into your scheduling and financing tools—but that shared data is never integrated. Most every configuration is pieced together through manual uploads and downloads performed by multiple team members, making it difficult to track and report change control.
True integration makes your job easier. Our EVM software, MaxTeam, works in conjunction with our estimating, pricing, and proposal management software—BOEMax proposal software. Data moves bi-directionally through the two programs, so you can perform complete change control updates and produce reports, including Baseline Change Requests (BCRs)—all within a single platform.
3) Too difficult to track and manage material variances
Deltek’s EVM products don’t come equipped with tools to help you manage bill of material variances. You have to do all your tracking offline by hand. Your only option is to keep pulling data from your Material Requirements Planning (MRP) system, transferring it into excel spreadsheets, and manually manipulating the data into reports for the Department of Defense (DoD).
MaxTeam makes it simple to manage bill of material budgeting, earned value and actual quantity tracking. You can import data directly from your MRP system to automatically calculate and track price and usage variances. Then, you can quickly aggregate the data into easy-to-read reports to comply with DoD guidelines.
4) No way to do project forecasting
Cobra doesn’t have tools to assist your CAMs and engineers with forecasting. So you have to pull all that information out of separate systems, dump it into a large excel document, and let your team piece together a forecast. And then it’s up to you to circulate the information for approval.
MaxTeam makes it easy to enter enter time-phased hours, dollars, FTE numbers and cost directly into the system. And once the data is there, you can see the entire project from one grid-view without ever leaving the system. And you can also automatically route the information to third-parties for approval.
5) Limited reporting capabilities
Deltek’s EVM systems produce cookie-cutter data-only reports, making it hard to stand out in a sea of excel spreadsheet reports. There’s no reason for you to have to make do with antiquated report formats when EVM features exist to make it easier.
Our drag and drop feature makes it possible to combine rich text data with estimate data to create a single, customized report. And MaxTeam EVM project management software has all the formatting features you’d expect from Microsoft Word, so you can display your data in an easy-to-read reporting format.
MaxTeam lives in greener pastures
We hope this article helped you recognize there is a viable alternative to Deltek’s Cobra EVM system. We designed BOEMax and MaxTeam with one goal in mind: To make your job easier. It’s simpler to use one automated EVM system as a Single Source of Truth (SSoT) than it is to hop in and out of multiple systems and run calculations by hand. So what are you waiting for? Cross over today.