Systems Integration, Systems Automation, Data Warehouse Development, Fiscal and Operational Improvements

The Client

Headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, AFMC researches, develops, tests, acquires, delivers, and logistically supports every Air Force weapon system as well as other military systems. Working closely with its customers—the operational commands—AFMC ensures that each has the most capable aircraft, missiles, and support equipment available. To do this on a consistent basis, it must be able to track financial and logistics information not only at the aggregate level but also at the division, manager, analyst, and operations levels. And with help from BearingPoint, AFMC has achieved that goal.

The Challenge

Air Force Materiel Command managers and analysts had a range of stand-alone, non-integrated solutions to meet specific business needs. Decision-makers had to access data from multiple sources, in different formats, across multiple legacy operational systems, or request other personnel to unlock these data assets. Managers and analysts lacked an integrated solution that could transform massive quantities of data into actionable knowledge. BearingPoint, working with the Financial Management and Comptroller Directorate, proposed to AFMC that data warehouse technology could provide a cost-effective, flexible, and reliable solution to address its need for information.

The Solution

Building on the business requirements gathered and the technical assessment performed during this proof-of-concept phase, our consultants collaborated with the client’s software division to build and deploy a 250-user, web-based data warehouse in just six months.

Our team of experts fulfilled an integral role in developing the first operational data warehouse-based decision support system in the Air Force. Known as the Keystone DSS, it has received positive feedback throughout AFMC. Never-before-available functionality now exists providing financial and logistics managers access to large volumes of data contained in Air Force legacy systems. Decision makers now have access to monthly financial and logistical information—consolidated through one system—much earlier than ever before, allowing business issues to be rapidly identified, analyzed, and addressed.

The Benefits

With BearingPoint’s help, AFMC now has the following benefits through their Keystone Decision Support System.

• A data warehousing system that helps managers and analysts more effectively leverage data across the organization through streamlined and consolidated operations
• A web-based system supporting 250 users enabling analysis of sales, back orders, expenses, inventory, trial balance, forecasting, all general ledger account transactions, budget information and financial statements
• Access to monthly financial and logistical information—consolidated through one system—enabling business issues to be rapidly identified, analyzed, and addressed

Keystone DSS has become a valuable tool in the client’s effort to improve support for the Air Force operational commands. The result of having visibility into the large volumes of data contained in Air Force legacy systems impacts two very important areas for the AFMC, contributing to improvements in: 1) Financial performance through visibility of direct and indirect costs, visibility of the drivers of cash flow, insight into financial statements, identification of erroneous general ledger transactions, identification of unprofitable business lines, and validation of prices; and 2) Logistics performance through identification of problem items, inventory levels and shipments, item forecasts, sales, returns, and back orders.

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