WHO IS THE CUSTOMER?
STRYKING OUT
Students in the Scout Leader Course at Fort Benning drive M1126 Stryker Combat Vehicles. Knowing your customer and understanding your customer’s requirements are fundamental to the success of any service industry. (Photo by Patrick A. Albright, Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning Public Affairs)
timely manner, and at a fair and reason- able price.” (Emphasis added.) Te term “user” is synonymous with “warfighter” when referring to desired operational capa- bilities.
Embedded and implied in the purpose and objective of defense acquisition is the concept of delivering products and services of the desired quality. A fundamental principle of quality is an understanding that quality (and thereby value) is defined by the customer. For acquisition, the customer is the end user (that is, the warfighter) of the product or service, who also determines whether the product or services provide the required value.
IT DEPENDS AND IT’S COMPLICATED In the 15th Annual Acquisition Research Symposium on May 9, 2018, Anne Rung, as the director of government sector for Amazon Business and as the former U.S. chief acquisition officer under President
Barack Obama, presented her insights into the challenges facing federal acquisitions.
Rung highlighted that one key to success in acquisition, whether in the federal government or in a commercial industry, was first listening to the customer (getting early input and continuous feedback) and truly understanding the custom- er’s requirements. Amazon obviously has mastered the art of delivering what the customer wants and providing value to its customers. During the question-and- answer part of the symposium, several questions centered around the differences between private sector and public sector acquisition, such as, “Who is the customer in defense acquisition?”
Te collective group of hundreds of the most experienced acquisition profession- als and researchers struggled to agree on a definition of the customer. Probably the most basic formula for success in commer- cial industry was somehow not universally
understood by acquisition professionals. Why is this question difficult to answer for acquisition professionals? Because, of course, the answer is, “It depends, and it’s complicated.”
During the subsequent symposium proceedings, several senior defense acquisition leaders passionately attempted to clear up any misunderstanding by stating that defense acquisition knows that the warfighter is the customer. But is it that simple? Why the confusion?
THE USER PERSPECTIVE I’m surprised by how many times the inability to answer this simple ques- tion for acquisition programs has led to a lack of unity of effort (one of the princi- ples of war that also applies to acquisition management) and has resulted in a higher risk of acquisition failure. Te first exam- ple comes from my own experience as I prepared for duties after being Depart- ment of the Army centrally-selected as the
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Army AL&T Magazine Winter 2021
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