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SMS and General Fund Enterprise Business System

Monday, February 23, 2015

What is it?

The Army’s Strategic Management System (SMS) is the Army Enterprise performance measurement platform. The General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS) is the Army’s financial management system, able to provide timely cost data in great detail. Integrating cost and performance measurement data in SMS can provide useful performance management information, especially during a period where fiscal realities have made efficiency and effectiveness extremely critical. A technical solution in SMS was deployed to allow import of GFEBS data.

The combination of financial and performance data has now been established to assist leaders and managers in allocating available dollars against mission requirements.

What has the Army done?

Fort Hood’s Logistics Resource Center paved the way to using SMS Connect, the web-services companion to SMS, as the means to import GFEBS data. Building upon this initiative, the SMS Program Office modified SMS Connect, a web services tool, so that any user with access to the GFEBS Business Intelligence-generated Status of Funds (SOF) report can quickly build financial metrics in SMS with minimal effort, and populate those metrics in SMS with financial data from GFEBS. With just a few clicks of a computer mouse, financial data can be easily imported into SMS as frequently as necessary.

What continued efforts does the Army have planned for the future?

Army users of SMS are expanding use of this new capability to integrate financial data into performance measurement. Users can assess the cost of doing business and employ program management techniques, such as Lean Six Sigma, to optimize performance and increase efficiency.

Why is this important to the Army?

The fiscal handwriting is clear – the Army is undergoing significant cuts to its budget. Rather than using the “Salami Slice” method of budget reduction (cut by the same percentage, regardless of consequences), many organizations are now using the performance management capabilities of SMS, coupled with the financial data available in GFEBS, to ensure that informed resource allocation leads to efficient and effective outputs, and that the organization’s acceptance of risk mitigation ensures the most important things are accomplished first.

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