Background

As the prime contractor for the Army Enterprise Systems Integration Program (AESIP), EDC was responsible for systems integration for the Army’s Business Objects Metadata Management (BOMM) program.  EDC provided the Army with a data governance capability by implementing the SAP® BusinessObjects™ Information Steward and Data Services solutions on an enterprise integration platform based on SAP NetWeaver components. The combination of the two solutions allows the Army to fully capitalize on the data that it owns and to invest in enterprise information management to ensure the availability of the highest quality data at all times and to implement the necessary data policies that will ensure data quality within the organization.

Challenge

To develop a capability that delivers an enterprise view of data instead of a stove-piped application-centric approach by reducing the number of tools and manual steps required to integrate the various types of metadata that the Army relies upon. This capability was required for increased operational efficiencies of online transaction processing as well as analytics by capturing and analyzing metadata from various AESIP source systems such as SAP ECC, SAP Master Data Management (MDM), Oracle databases, and SAP Business Warehouse (BW). Specific capabilities included the ability to perform analysis on data creation audit, data usage, change impact, and data lineage and quality analysis via reports, printed or viewable in a web application.

Strategy

To instill a new way of thinking and to help our client develop a new understanding of what  their existing data represented and how it could be leveraged.  Buy-in from data owners was critical from the beginning to ensure a high level of collaboration during each step of the implementation process. Our teams kept users aware of each milestone and conducted progressive workshops to demonstrate the capabilities of the evolving solution. This led to a seamless cutover and deployment process and the final adoption of the solution by the user community.

Execution

EDC developed a centralized solution that provided capabilities across many disparate technologies that required strict adherence to a systematic software development lifecycle methodology to integrate, configure and deploy the solution given a very aggressive timeline.  Our team leveraged industry best practices and aligned them with established DoD processes and procedures to streamline an implementation that was delivered on schedule and under budget.

Results

With the implementation of the SAP® BusinessObjects™ Information Steward  and Data Services, the Army is now positioned to reap the resulting benefits of analyzing, consolidating, monitoring and reporting on the quality of their data, to adopt a single solution for data stewardship, to create a collaborative environment for their various programs such as LOGSA, GFEBS, GCSS-Army, AESIP and LMP and the ability to turn quality data into a strategic advantage and making the day to day operations of the warfighter more efficient.  This enhanced capability is now referred to as the Army’s “secret decoder ring” for understanding and managing data from their numerous organizations.