FORT BELVOIR, Virginia –
Defense Logistics Agency Energy’s Energy Convergence transition to the Enterprise Business System has concluded, reducing the number of systems needed to process transactions and decreasing costs for the organization by millions of dollars.
The Energy Convergence Program encompassed the transition process to EBS, which began with the first system roll-out in October 2011 and ended with the Sept. 30 memorandum to the workforce announcing legacy systems have been fully decommissioned.
Steady progress through gradual organizational changes and staged system rollouts over the years were the hallmark of the program, with the decommissioning of the Business Systems Modernization-Energy legacy system serving as the final chapter.
A joint effort between DLA Information Operations, DLA Finance and DLA Energy is responsible for the decommissioning, with DLA Energy’s Business Process Support Directorate assigned the lead in March 2015 to work with DLA Energy’s users, said Greg Andrilenas, integration supervisor with BPSD.
“All of the offices who had worked on the legacy systems in production had a role in developing the requirements, reviewing the technical approaches and then testing the developed solutions. It was truly a joint solution where all the parties understood that we had a short timeline with a hard date of Sept. 30 to close down the old systems,” Andrilenas said.
“We were confronted by issues, workarounds were identified and we continued to the final destination. Many times the situation was less than optimal, but everyone worked on and made it a success,” he added.
The decommissioning of legacy systems will result in more than $11 million in cost reductions from contracts and system hosting, according to Mytrang Dotrang with DLA Information Operations.
The decommissioned BSM-E legacy system included six sub-systems:
- Oil Enterprise Downstream/Oracle Government Financials
- The Fuels Enterprise Server
- Paperless Ordering Receipts Transaction Screens
- The Defense Fuels Automated Management System/Automated Voucher Examination Disbursing System
- The Requirements Manager Suite
- The Web Distribution Planning Authority
Driving the end of these systems were two core reasons: the Office of the Secretary of Defense required the change and funding for the individual legacy sub-systems would be lost, said Jim Mandziara, director of the Business Process Support Directorate. Tied to those reasons are the needs to be auditable, fulfill mandates for business process reengineering and simplify the transaction process.
At the most basic level, DLA Energy simplified the processing of transactions by removing systems, Mandziara said.
“This reduced the number of ‘hops’ required for a transaction to move from our Accountable Property System of Record to the financial Enterprise Resource Planning tools,” he explained.
Under the legacy system and sub-systems, transactions hopped from DLA Energy’s APSR, Fuels Manager Defense, to FES, then from FES to either OED or DFAMS, and from OED or DFAMS to OGF or AVEDS, Mandziara said.
“That processing architecture represents three ‘hops’ for each transaction coming from FMD. With Energy Convergence, transactions move from FMD to EBS – one ‘hop,’” Mandziara said.
“While the learning curve is very steep, since DLA Energy had been using some of the legacy applications for more than 20 years, the system reconciliations are much easier,” he continued. “Now we reconcile which transactions made the ‘hop’ from FMD to EBS.”
Helping with the learning curve are several other aspects of Energy Convergence implemented over the years to ease the agency’s transition to the new way of doing business. One such change was how DLA Energy operations shifted to align with the EBS organizational tenants, including reorganization of activities, job roles and some position descriptions, Mandziara said.
Examples include the creation of the director for Customer Operations, the director of Supplier Operations, the Procurement Process Support Directorate and the Business Process Support Directorate. Job roles and position descriptions changed to include business process analysts, customer account specialists, resolution specialists, demand planners and supply planners.
DLA Energy operations have already changed to align with the EBS organizational tenants, and with the legacy system decommissioning complete nothing else is required under the Energy Convergence Program to ensure a smooth transition, Mandziara said.