The Client

The Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) directs all Department of Defense (DoD) security coopera-tion programs, including the Foreign Military Sales program—the sale of military hardware and services to allied and friendly foreign governments—and International Military Education and Training program—the training of foreign forces by U.S. military personnel. DSCA’s headquarters is in Arlington, VA, and it includes satellite organizations that work in close collaboration with each military department.

The Challenge

DSCA needed to develop improved cost measures that would enable heightened visibility into the costs of its core functions across all military departments (MILDEPs). DSCA’s budget faced close scrutiny by the U.S. Congress, General Accounting Office (GAO) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB), all of which required cost visibility. Also, DSCA was interested in providing detailed cost justification to support its annual budget. Consequently, DSCA was intent on devising better costing and performance-based processes. The agency recognized that it needed a shared environment that integrated the entire security cooperation community.

The Solution

Working closely with DSCA leadership and staff, as well as other significant stakeholders, BearingPoint implemented enterprisewide costing tools grounded in activity-based costing and management (ABC/M) methodologies. Our work empowered DSCA to identify current and projected costs more accurately, justify its budgets to federal regulatory agencies, and identify areas for cost savings and process improvement.

The Benefits

We not only developed the overall performance-based costing infrastructure, but our approach enabled the individual military departments to customize the ABC/M models to their own specifications. At the same time, we helped the organization achieve the critical cultural changes that were necessary to institutionalize the new processes and ensure successful use of the ABC/M tools.

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