Accelerating system and process modernization.

The US Army and its commands are striving to transform their processes and systems to power flexible and rapid modernization, increase efficiencies with optimized operations, and build a foundational technology platform that can support long-term mission priorities.

But the prevalence of legacy systems that require high cost and effort to maintain and the resulting siloed data now hinders transparency and collaboration.

Using the Appian Platform, the US Army—along with other branches of the DoD—is implementing automation, cloud, and data analytics to form the IT backbone of their modernization initiatives across weapons, personnel, and strategy—with the goal of making better, faster, and more proactive decisions while delivering exceptional experiences to agency stakeholders, warfighters, and civilians.

In a groundbreaking approach, the Appian Platform serves as an “agility layer” that seamlessly bridges the gap between old and new systems:

• Intelligent, end-to-end process automation connects the Army’s people, systems, bots, AI, and business rules with a flexible low-code design experience.
• Appian’s data fabric unifies data sources across the enterprise without the need to replicate or move data. It enables workflow elements to access consistent, accurate, and compliant data at any point in the process.
   

Enhancing force management decisions.

The Global Force Information Management (GFIM) program is the Army's cloud-based suite of applications used to man, equip, train, ready, and resource the Army’s global force. By leveraging Appian’s Data Fabric and automation capabilities to consolidate 14 legacy systems into a single platform, GFIM aims to eliminate “swivel-chair” operations for its users. Stove-piped systems become a unified capability with a 360 degree view of the Army’s global force structure.

GFIM provides force management insight of Army formations down to the team level, giving 160,000 Army users real-time access to data to make the best strategic decisions for the workforce. It covers the full scope of the Army, including active, guard and reserve soldiers and Army civilians.
 

Achieving better procurement outcomes.

To modernize acquisition, the Army implemented the Army Contract Writing System (ACWS) to replace two outdated legacy systems. Built on the Appian Platform, ACWS provides a single, next-generation, enterprise-wide system that standardizes Army Procurement business processes and seamlessly integrates with the Army’s ERP system.

ACWS dramatically improves process efficiency throughout the acquisition lifecycle and offers agencies a FAR compliant, IL5-authorized secure platform for end-to-end visibility into the acquisition process. Appian’s data fabric unifies once-siloed data and provides actionable insights that reduce procurement action lead time (PALT). Fueled by AI, built-in automation technology minimizes errors and manual effort and increases efficiency.

The Army leveraged the US Air Force’s CON-IT contract writing system, also built on the Appian Platform, which rapidly enabled the Army to go live in production with ACWS in less than five months.
 

Democratizing data access.

One of the US Army’s digital transformation objectives is to become more data-centric to optimize decision intelligence capabilities and support overall readiness. One recent project addressing this goal is the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) Integrated Mission Management System (AIMMS).

Prior to the AIMMS project, ATEC personnel could not readily find, reuse, and share test and evaluation (T&E) data and information with internal and external stakeholders. ATEC AIMMS makes data more accessible, understandable, and secure for a geographically dispersed team of mission test officers and evaluators. Built on the Appian Platform using low-code development, AIMMS, replaces three legacy systems and integrates with existing Army/DoD environments such as SAP/GFEBS, MSFT, and project management software. It creates an intuitive, collaborative workspace within a cloud services environment with federated search capabilities to find and analyze data.

AIMMS satisfies the Army’s modernization priorities to provide a cloud-based application compatible with other Army business systems. The command also uses AIMMS as a means to combine project and portfolio management, content management, workflow management, application integration and business intelligence functions.
 

Deploy future-ready systems and processes.

For more than two decades, defense agencies have relied on Appian to accelerate digital transformation and support mission priorities. Appian supports the rapid construction of mission-critical applications by automating processes, leveraging AI, and unifying your systems in a process and data fabric. And Appian assures secure data and application sharing in its IL5-authorized Appian Government Cloud.

Visit appian.com/defense to learn more about how you can accelerate digital transformation and modernize processes at your agency.