Army gets Binary help

Binary Consulting officials announced May 2 that they received a five-year, $40 million contract to help the Army manage the complex General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS) program.

Binary Consulting and team members Analex, Altarum Institute and Enterprise Research Performance will provide change management planning, enterprise resource planning oversight and program management support services. "Our team's leadership will help guide the GFEBS program forward to achieve its objectives while meeting cost and schedule," said Rose Wang, the company’s chief executive officer, in a May 2 statement.

GFEBS represents a six-year, $850 million initiative to implement enterprise resource planning software to update the Army’s financial management systems. The service currently operates the legacy Standard Financial System and the Standard Operations and Maintenance Research and Development System to dispense its general funds account that tracks the balance and financial transactions.

The program has fallen a year behind schedule partly because Defense Department and Army officials debated the best way to build a contract for GFEBS. DOD officials wanted a firm, fixed-price contract using blanket purchase agreements for enterprise resource planning integration services with five vendors already under the department’s Enterprise Software Initiative.

Army officials wanted to use a hybrid contract containing cost-reimbursable and fixed-price contract line items with incentives and a few time-and-materials line items. DOD won.