MODERNIZING ARMY BUSINESS
“You can ask me for anything you like but time.” —Napoleon Bonaparte
T
he Army’s logistics and finance business systems are reaching their end of life, putting us at a cross- roads for the next phase of modernization—and it’s coming via Enterprise Business Systems – Conver-
gence. Technology upgrades on the battlefield equip today’s military to fight and win. Te time is now to also modernize the Army’s support structure, including enterprise sustainment systems that enable force readiness and lethality.
Globally, the Army has more than 190,000 users on its logistics and financial management enterprise resource planning systems. Every day, hundreds of thousands of Soldiers and civilians process 75 million business transactions, managing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets. Tese platforms interact with and impact every
aspect of the Army’s business operations, from ordering supplies in theater to supporting maintenance activities in garrison.
However, the business systems we currently use—while state of the art for their time in the early 2000s—will soon reach their end of life and become unsustainable.
When the Army developed its current enterprise resource plan- ning systems, we allowed business mission areas to customize the systems to meet their own specific needs, in areas like logis- tics, supply chain and financial management. Because of their separate, customized nature, the systems do not have a single transactional core. Instead, they share information through interfaces that are inefficient. Errors often require a great deal of manual labor to resolve. Tese inefficiencies delay decision- making and prevent timely allocation of resources.
Beyond providing a tactical advantage, employing a system that promotes accurate reporting is critical for the Army to achieve full audit readiness—meaning that the Army fully meets stan- dards that test our ability to properly manage our systems, be accountable for our assets and, most importantly, be good stew- ards of taxpayer dollars. A converged system will allow the Army to pull more complete data and provide real-time information on the expenditure of funds. We must be able to trace where every dollar is going to ensure we are responsibly managing funds, while enabling Soldiers and civilians to complete their missions.
Tat is why, in March 2020, the undersecretary of the Army approved a modernization effort called Enterprise Business Systems – Convergence (EBS-C), which is focused on trans- forming the way our Army does business.
NETWORKING IN THE FIELD
EBS-C is seeking enterprise resource planning commercial off-the-shelf software solutions to support 24 major capability areas spanning logistics, supply chain, finance, real property, environmental management and defense operations. It will enable effective weapons and equipment management, maintenance and engineering, and force deployment operations. (Photo by Spc. Giovanny Lopez, 173rd Airborne Brigade)
WHY MODERNIZE NOW EBS-C is necessary because the Army’s current enterprise busi- ness systems are not able to efficiently drive readiness, nor do they provide modern capabilities to execute sustainment or fiscal management operations. For example, one system manages the procurement of parts and associated costs using process A, while another tracks procurement and costs using process B. While the systems talk to each other, they are not completely speaking the same language or tracking things the same way, which affects reporting, inventory, cost management and more. Moderniz- ing Army business systems to track and manage things the same way, in the same language, in the same system will streamline sustainment and finance business processes to increase velocity and fidelity of decisions on the battlefield.
26
Army AL&T Magazine
Fall 2021
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