New system saves time, improves processes for procurement techs

FORT GREGG-ADAMS, Va -

During an average workday, the Defense Contract Management Agency 1106 Request System Performance Dashboard (employee login required) receives a new 1797 request almost every two-minutes to be processed by a procurement technician. Due to this high volume, DCMA headquarters began looking for a system to automate the receiving, tracking, and notification of 1797 requests agency wide.

After reviewing many contract management office specific solutions, the Equip Team of the Procurement Tech Functional Working Group decided on expanding the system used at the Manassas CMO (now DCMA Mid-Atlantic), said Stacy Soldon, Equip Team lead.

"We brought in experts from various CMO's and had them demonstrate their system to us," Soldon said. "We considered how widely the system was currently being used and if it could scale to meet the demands of the whole agency."

After the beta test, 30 CMO's volunteered to enter a beta test between December 2022 and March 2023, said Michael Bono, Equip Team member.

"We needed to first baseline the time it took technicians to receive and respond to incoming requests to determine if the tool would actually save them time" Bono said. "We found the new tool saved about 90 seconds for each communication transaction and there are usually three communication transactions per request."

After the beta test, the team conducted surveys to measure success. They then created version 2.0 of the system, incorporating many user-suggested changes.

"The biggest request we had was to add the ability to send a request to just one technician," said Angelyn McKeever, Equip Team member. "This was how some of the CMO's were already set up, so we wanted to accommodate them as much as possible."

After the improvements were implemented, the system launched for any CMO that wanted to join. Use increased from 30 to 55 CMO locations in the next six months. To date, the system is voluntarily used by more than 75 CMO location - both domestically and internationally.

In the first year of operation, the system processed more than 60,000 requests with more than 110,000 requests received since its deployment. This equates to over 8,250 person-hours saved. With such a large database of previous requests, the Equip Team released a new dashboard that can quickly organize, filter, and display previous requests in many ways.

This new dashboard also improves the reporting capabilities of both technicians and requestors. Now each can provide supporting information for weekly status updates or annual appraisals.

The system serves as a rich source of information about technician workload. This data became an integral part of the workload resource model and provided decision makers with invaluable information about the day-to-day responsibilities of technicians.

With representation on the Equip Team from the agency's Functional Information Resource Management, or FIRM Center, both systematic and individual issues are discovered quicker and responded to as they occur.

The feedback provided to first line supervisors of requestors allows for targeted training when requests are rejected. Supervisors now know which employees need help with specific submissions.

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