Challenge

The U.S. Army Software Engineering Center (SEC) needed support in developing and sustaining the Army Contracting Business Intelligence System (ACBIS). ACBIS is a Web-based business intelligence (BI) system that provides the capability to analyze data using standard reports or ad hoc queries. ACBIS provides users with near-real-time operational contract data depicted as business information and cross-indexed to other data sources. ACBIS interfaces with contract writing software, legacy personnel systems, and financial systems.

 

Solution  

McLane Advanced Technologies (MAT) has been providing business consulting and product development/sustainment support to SEC since 2005. Areas of support include testing, client consulting, end-user support, training, information assurance (IA), IT services support, operations support, quality improvement, and program and project management support. ACBIS was developed by to interface with legacy personnel and financial systems, as well as provide the capability to link to other web-based management information systems. ACBIS was designed to share and exchange key management information vertically and horizontally between and among the Army contracting agency headquarters, the regional headquarters, outside the continental United States (OCONUS) contracting commands, and other external agencies/commands using commercially available web browsers. Using ACBIS, contracting offices located at each Army installation can access the management data necessary to analyze contract workload, budget, and personnel trends. They also can conduct benchmarking and obtain quantitative comparative data necessary to support business case analysis (BCA). MAT engineers have been providing support in the design and development of the ACBIS data warehouse; reporting interfaces; and the Extract, Transformation, and Load (ETL) software that pulls data from various Army legacy systems.

Results   

MAT helped SEC successfully develop a BI system that the Army contracting agency can use to effectively and efficiently manage its worldwide Army contracting mission using secure web-based technology. ACBIS was developed for flexibility and scalability and has grown significantly since its inception. One major benefit derived from the ACBIS was the elimination of costly manual data calls across the Army to respond to congressional inquiries. Since its inception, ACBIS has played a vital role in helping the Army and DoD to make better contracting and procurement decisions.