Track and Manage Contracts More Efficiently in Deltek Vantagepoint

Managing master agreements efficiently is critical for firms with complex, multi-project contracts like government on-call agreements or large commercial clients. However, many firms still rely on manual systems such as Excel, which leads to inefficiencies and fragmented data. The Master Agreements Hub, a custom add-in developed by Stambaugh Ness for Deltek Vantagepoint users, solves this challenge by centralizing contract data, automating tracking, and providing real-time insights into project performance against contract ceilings.

What is the Master Agreements Hub?

The Master Agreements Hub is a custom add-in product for Deltek Vantagepoint 6.5 and 7.0 environments. This proprietary product aggregates and tracks awarded and pursuit-stage projects from the Project Hub into a new, custom hub – the Master Agreements Hub. With built-in workflows, stored procedures, and an intuitive user interface that mimics the Vantagepoint environment, the Master Agreements Hub seamlessly calculates the running balance of pursuits and projects against a master agreement’s total contract value.

Tracking master agreements has historically been cumbersome for many firms, often involving third-party systems, spreadsheets, or even paper files. A June 2024 poll of Deltek users during an SN’s Vision/Vantagepoint Virtual User Group revealed that over 40% of users track current master agreement data in Excel. Inefficient and ineffective, this approach separates critical data from Vantagepoint, which should serve as the source of truth for all project, firm, contact, and employee financial details and data points.

Maintaining data separately from the system increases the risk of human error, reduces visibility into the data, and prevents a complete and accurate financial picture of contract and project performance. With fragmented data across systems, strategic action is hindered and delayed due to the lack of a clear and accurate picture of the complete data in real-time.

Here’s a look at the Master Agreements Hub Overview Tab in a demo database:

The Benefits

Firms that incorporate the Master Agreements Hub into their project management tech stack will immediately experience a positive impact on their strategy discussions, pipeline, and client relations.

Key benefits include:

• Improved visibility into umbrella contract total value, pending values, and remaining funds available
• Aggregation of master agreement task order value against total contract value, helping users to stay ahead of reaching contract cap limits
• Close tracking of master agreement term dates, allowing users to stay ahead of expiration and renewal dates
• Clear performance history of master agreements for more robust internal strategy discussions, client reporting, and positioning
• Centralized contract data in Vantagepoint, ensuring a single, reliable source of truth

Tailored for Firms and Key Users

The Master Agreements Hub is built for firms managing complex contracts such as federal, state, and local government on-call agreements, MATOCs, IDIQs, term contracts, and large commercial clients with multiple locations. It enhances the existing contract management features of Deltek Vantagepoint, providing a powerful solution for tracking and managing master agreements.

Those who benefit most from the Master Agreements Hub are users responsible for overseeing contract performance and maintenance at the umbrella level, including:

• Controllers/Accounting Managers
• Project Executives
• Project Managers
• Business Developers
• Relationship Managers
• Marketing Management

Master Agreements Hub vs. Contract Management

Deltek Vantagepoint’s Contract Management Hub and SN’s Master Agreements Hub have a few overlapping capabilities. However, where Contract Management leaves off, the Master Agreements Hub picks up. For instance, Contract Management is designed to only track contracts (dates, values, and other details) on a project-by-project basis. While the Master Agreements Hub tracks umbrella-level, multi-year/multi-site contracts, including all of the awarded and pursuit-level projects within it (task orders, etc.).

Here is a snapshot comparison of Deltek Vantagepoint’s Contract Management vs. SN’s Master Agreements Hub custom add-in product.

Master Agreements Hub Design

The Master Agreements Hub is designed to seamlessly integrate into the Deltek Vantagepoint platform, mimicking the platform’s inherent design aesthetic, behaviors, and functionality. The project and financial data in the MA Hub are aggregated from the Project Hub’s project record, which serves as the source of truth.

The custom hub consists of seven (7) tabs, including:

• Overview
• SBE/DBE Goals
• Awarded Projects
• Pursuit Projects
• Team
• Files
• Activities

The data in the Awarded Projects Tab and Pursuit Projects Tab cannot be modified within the Master Agreements Hub. Instead, it needs to be updated in the Project Hub. However, the remaining tabs listed above are mostly managed directly from the Master Agreements Hub record, tracking and managing the team, files, SBE/DBE goals, and activities specifically as they relate to the master agreement. The project-level team, goals, files, and activities should be maintained in the Projects Hub on the specific project record.

Seeing all activities related to the master agreement at your fingertips within your project management source of truth – Vantagepoint, is highly beneficial. From the Master Agreements Hub, you can identify the last time action was taken related to the master agreement contract.

Calls, emails, meetings, and other actions can be documented related to:

• Pursuit decisions for master contracts
• Teaming for master agreements
• Renewal discussions
• Change order conversations
• Contract execution tracking

Summary Pane

The Master Agreements Hub summary pane is perhaps the most helpful section of the custom hub. It calculates the remaining contract value against the total contract value in real time, considering the awarded and pursuit stage projects connected to the master agreement.

When projects are connected to a Master Agreements Record within the Project Hub, the contract or estimated value is automatically deducted from the Contract Ceiling Amount, giving stakeholders immediate insight into the master agreement’s performance.

This information is valuable to Vantagepoint users for many reasons:

• Users can initiate conversations with their clients/owners if the Contract Ceiling Amount threshold is being reached.
• If the value of pending pursuits is greater than the Remaining Contract Value, users can initiate conversations with their clients/owners about change orders, extensions, or alternative delivery/contract methods for the pending pursuits.

Stakeholders no longer rely on manual tracking and calculations or standalone reports to get the same information. With the Master Agreements Hub, the financial performance of every master agreement is at your fingertips.

Next Steps

Managing and tracking master agreements has never been more streamlined than with SN’s Master Agreements Hub add-in. For a one-time fee, our Data Solutions Team will provide an install script tailored to your Vantagepoint version (6.5 and 7.0). You can submit it to Deltek for installation (SaaS subscribers) or install it directly on your on-prem system. Once installed, assign access to the appropriate roles, and your Master Agreements Hub is ready to go—it’s a true plug-and-play solution.

Ready to get started? Contact us today to request your Master Agreements Hub or check it out in action with this demo.