U. S.

Army ERP
Implementation

Prepared By: Group 5

Apoorv Gupta[F018]
Ankit Jain [F021]
Shakshi Jajoo[F022]
Sonam Khubchandani[F026]
Aditya Singal [F053]
Himanshu Singhal[F055]

Introduction
The modern U.S. Army has its roots in the Continental Army, which
was formed (14 June 1775) to fight the American Revolutionary War
(177583)before the U.S. was established as a country. After the
Revolutionary War, the US Army was formed on 3 June 1784, to
replace the disbanded Continental Army.
In the fiscal year 2016, the projected end strength for the Regular
Army (USA) was 475,000 soldiers; the Army National Guard (ARNG)
had 342,000 soldiers, and the United States Army Reserve (USAR)
had 198,000 soldiers; the combined-component strength of the U.S.
Army was 1,015,000 soldiers.

The mission of US Army is:

Preserving the peace and security and defense for US.
Supporting the national policies
Implementing the national objectives

BEFORE ERP
Large number of system were used to manage legacy accounting,
financial and asset management.
Customization was very difficult and so officials have to manually make
report needed in a particular format
When US Army was at war locations it took time to manage supplies and
provide with necessary items, adding a lead time in providing arms,
backups etc
Reverse logistics functions werent existing and acts like measuring delay
time in reverse pipeline and efficient replacement of those same items
elsewhere werent performed efficiently
It was difficult to maintain interface between various organizations
because of conflicting goals.
Forecasting of arms and force needed was done manually taking a lot of
time

CASE BRIEF

The case talks about the implementation strategy for ERP system in
US Army.

Institutional & Operational Army

Mission areas of Institutional Army as designated by BMMP

1. Acquisition
2. Financial Management
3. Human Resource Management
4. Installation & Environment
5. Logistics

CASE BRIEF

Mission areas of Operational Army as designated by BMMP

1. War-fighting
2. Intelligence
3. Enterprise information environment

. Critical Steps for Success

1. Change Management
2. Governance
3. Performance Measurement
4. Customization & Configuration
5. Interfaces and Integration

CHALLENGES
1. Army as an organization has a lot of history and tradition and so
people are resistant to change.
2. The Army is faced with a reduced budget and force levels that make
automation and technology vital.
3. ERP require sustained leadership but army leaders rotate often and so
it is important that all the sponsors are engaged and understand the
importance of ERP.
4. Army has been traditionally Stove piped and so ERP implementation
needs tradeoff in certain areas
5. Massive ERP (enterprise resource planning) software projects under
way at the U.S. Army are in danger of missing crucial deadlines due to
inadequate planning and management on the part of officials.

Strategic Decision
1. The Logistics Modernization Program (LMP), fully deployed in
2010, replaced 35-year-old legacy systems with a single, fully
integrated enterprise solution. LMP users include the following:

The Army Materiel Command.

The Communications-Electronics Command.
The Aviation and Missile Command.
National Maintenance Program users.
The Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

2. Similar to LMP, Global Combat Support System-Army (GCSSArmy) is an ERP solution that combines several automated
sustainment information systems into a single, integrated, webbased system. GCSS-Army will bring the same benefits to
brigades, battalions, and companies that LMP brought to the
national level.

Case Questions

What were the Key goals in the

army using an ERP system

Common View of the rapidly changing operational environment

Optimize the Army at the operational level
Eliminate boundaries between One Army and One enterprise
Transform the army from end-to-end
Rapidly affect combat operations by anticipating change and
providing decisive combat capability
Synchronize boundaries between Institutional and Operational
Army

What were the key implementation

considerations related to using an
integrated and transforming the culture
1. Sponsorship/Leadership

The army has a unique situations where leaders rotate and an ERP
implementation can span over multiple sponsors

2. Stakeholder Alignment

Requires each area to work together

3. Cost

When there are cuts to the budget it is the first thing to be cut

4. Project Lifecycle

Transformational Management needs to be a part of the project

5. Culture

Change will be a challenge

6. Communication

A good communication plan must be put into place

How was the change management

process incorporated into the
implementation ?
Army used Blueprinting which is a comprehensive set of pilots to
test proposed change
Comparing customization of the software v/s changing the process

What are the important points to remember for smooth

implementation in army?

Engaged leadership

Highlighting the importance of change management and thus

justifying the cost allocation

Internal sponsorship

Excessive communication

Discuss the pros and cons to

customizing the ERP system.

Pros:
1.
Legacy processes can be restored and will better meet the needs of the
Army
2.
Statutory and Regulatory rules can be accommodated
3.
Users will not have major changes and adjust to the new system more
readily
Cons:
4.
Upgrading to a newer version of the software will be more time consuming
and expensive
5.
No advantage of proven industry practices
6.
Increased project estimate and investment diversion
7.
Complexity in integration of standard ERP module & customized module
8.
Increased dependency on external contractors other than the ERP vendor
9.
Customizations are not supported by the vendors
10. Customizations can cause unseen delays and destabilize the whole
software

Key Takeaways
Realistic expectations should be set about the initial
productivity after an ERP system has been implemented.
Importance of proper communication for overthrowing the ageold systems
Importance of senior leaders getting involved in the project
from the start and communicating effectively and showing their
full support for the ERP project
There should be in-depth training and proper explanation of
why a process was happening the way it is happening
Collaboration and revamping of the infrastructure on such a large
scale requires a lot of pre-planning and efficient handling of
tasks.
Several changes in the top leadership with varying support has to
be kept in mind and proper timeline should be set to implement

THANK YOU