By Pam Gray, Public Affairs
Project Manager, General Fund Enterprise Business System (PM GFEBS)

The General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS) deployed to Wave 7 sites worldwide on October 1, after a six month delay due to the earthquake and tsunami which devastated parts of Japan earlier this year. The launch added an additional 3,200 transactional end users from Okinawa, Yokota Air Force Base, and Camp Zama in Japan, and continued the most aggressive deployment of any financial management system in Army history.

On Apr. 1, with Wave 5, the Army added more than 7,900 transactional end users to GFEBS in locations throughout the United States, Europe and Korea. Only three months later, on July 1, Wave 6 added additional 12,500 users from the Army National Guard (ARNG) covering 49 states and territories, completing the ninth GFEBS “Go-Live” and fully deploying to the ARNG. The massive ARNG effort began 15 months prior to the Wave launch and culminated in the largest single addition of new users in GFEBS to date, which now totals more than 38,000 transactional end users.

These deployments move GFEBS toward ultimately including the Army general funds into a core-centered system for financial management worldwide. “Full deployment of the GFEBS solution will represent a significant advancement in cultivating a cost culture in the Army and is critical to the overall Army transformation effort,” said Edward Quick, deputy project manager for GFEBS.

GFEBS is the Army’s premier Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, designed to transform Army financial management and accounting practices. The strategy is to insert the GFEBS solution across all three Army components:  the active Army, the ARNG and the U.S. Army Reserve. The GFEBS solution fully or partially replaces more than 100 of the Army’s existing legacy systems and integrates with 54 additional systems. “GFEBS supports the Army goals of producing auditable financial statements, moving the Army to a cost culture, and enabling better informed decision making across the Army,” explained GFEBS Assistant Project Manager Zachary Lindsay. 

Navigating the Army’s ERP solution for financial and asset management to its numerous, geographically dispersed locations presented significant challenges to the GFEBS Team. Len Cayer, the Global Deployment Chief for the GFEBS project, remarked, “Global deployment is an enormous undertaking under any circumstances, but especially in our accelerated, 15-month deployment timeline. It is the dedication of our project team members and the commitment of our Army partners around the country and around the world that make GFEBS possible.”

Using the Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Tool, the Army used a first-of-its-kind process to pre-deploy and provision over 25,000 new users to GFEBS this year. “The GRC Tool gives commands control over the selection of users for access to appropriate roles,” Steve Brown, the GFEBS operations manager, stated. “The use of this tool, in conjunction with job aids on the milWiki and a system availability of 99% for the GFEBS system, has truly made the deployment provisioning process a viable and healthy approach for the users.”

On June 24, the Department of Defense Deputy Chief Management Officer approved the Full Deployment Decision (FDD) for the program. This decision solidified the system’s Army-wide implementation and asserted the solution’s deployment readiness. “The FDD cements GFEBS as the Army’s financial cornerstone for saving money by enabling an Army culture that efficiently balances cost and resources for effectiveness in wartime and peace,” Quick added.

Col. Patrick Burden, the GFEBS project manager, expressed his understanding of this achievement.  “The success of the GFEBS deployment would not be possible without the dedication and hard work of numerous organizations across the Department of Defense,” Burden said. “This includes the GFEBS Program Management Office, Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller, the system integrator (Accenture), Defense Finance and Accounting Services and all Major Commands of the Army. Our effort epitomizes the concept of one team.”

In 2012, GFEBS will complete its deployment schedule, and carry Army financial management into an era like no other. GFEBS will manage a significant portion of the Army General Fund and enable the Army to meet its financial compliance requirements.

For more information on GFEBS, visit the milWiki page: https://www.milsuite.mil/wiki/Portal:GFEBS