Case Study: NASA
 
Project: Integrated Financial Management Program

Technology: SAP R/3 Version 4.6C

Executive Summary:
Optimal Solutions Integration, Inc. has partnered with prime contractor Accenture to help NASA streamline financial management and accounting operations and improve project management processes by implementing a NASA-wide financial management system as an integral component of NASA’s Integrated Financial Management Program (IFMP).

Overview:
NASA’s unique mission of exploration, discovery and innovation has preserved the United States’ role as both a leader in world aviation and as the preeminent spacefaring nation. Success begets growth, and with growth comes complexity. Since its inception in 1958, NASA has grown considerably and today employs more than 18,000 civil servants across nine field centers and numerous contractor-operated facilities throughout the United States. While advancing the nation’s science and technology agenda remains NASA’s foremost mission, the agency also must adhere to strict performance and accountability measures by carefully monitoring and controlling limited budgetary resources.

Business Challenge:
NASA’s financial and human resources management systems process millions of transactions annually, with several thousand employees as active users. Lacking a transaction-based, integrated system for the entire agency, NASA centers relied on their own unique systems to support financial management activities. As a result, NASA’s financial and business management environment was comprised of decentralized, non-integrated systems characterized by enterprise and center-unique policies, procedures, and practices. In general, data formats were not standardized, automated systems were not integrated or interfaced, and on-line financial information was not readily available to NASA managers. In addition, the cost to maintain these disparate systems was very high since both data and software were replicated at each center.

To improve and modernize the agency’s financial management and accounting processes, NASA implemented its Integrated Financial Management Program (IMFP). The goal of IMFP is to streamline and standardize business processes, and to acquire and implement an integrated financial management system throughout NASA. NASA is working with Optimal Solutions Integration and Accenture to implement a standardized, centralized financial accounting system based on SAP R/3 technology to replace the 10 disparate accounting systems used by the individual NASA centers.

Optimal Value
Drawing on the company’s unparalleled experience gained from spearheading many of the world’s largest, most complex SAP implementations, Optimal team members worked closely with Accenture personnel and NASA managers during all aspects of the implementation process:

Business needs assessment

  • Improve NASA’s financial management and accounting processes to enable full cost management
  • Provide timely, consistent and reliable information for management decisions
  • Improve efficiency and effectiveness of business processes to support mission program requirements
  • Provide information internally and externally to increase NASA’s accountability
    Achieve integrity of data and information to better communicate cost effectiveness of NASA programs

System architecture development

  • Map out NASA business processes
  • Define security and control profiles
  • Identify training needs and data conversion strategies
  • Define a detailed technical architectural blueprint
  • Perform gap assessment and develop strategy for managing risks
  • Develop plan and schedule for system implementation

System testing

  • Configure and test NASA business processes in the SAP software
  • Identify, develop and test legacy system interfaces, reporting capabilities, and security and control profiles Design and construct programs to extract legacy system data, transform data into SAP format, load data into SAP database
  • Conduct system and integration testing

System rollout

  • Develop rollout plan and schedule
  • Transition pilot system for NASA-wide rollout
  • Perform site assessment and preparation for system rollout
  • Integrate site-specific processes and systems
  • Test site-by-site system performance

Business Success
The Optimal / Accenture partnership with NASA, and the development and implementation of a SAP-based financial management solution, have been highly successful due to an on-time, on-budget delivery of the final solution set.

NASA now enjoys an agency-wide, fully integrated, federally compliant financial management system capable of implementing full cost accounting. The system dramatically improves business processes by minimizing data redundancy, standardizing information and electronic data exchanges, processing and recording financial events effectively and efficiently, and ensuring consistent information is available to all managers throughout the agency.
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