# Digital-Business Transformation focuses on modernizing technology, processes through lifespan

/ Published June 1, 2023
FORT BELVOIR, Va., 
James Johnson likens the Defense Logistics Agency’s Digital-Business Transformation to building a house.

“The outcome is all about the relationship. Do you want to be a customer or a partner? If you’re a customer, you get a final product; if you’re a partner, you get the opportunity to say I want my kitchen here and this is how I want my house to look overall,” said Johnson, DLA Information Operations’ acting program executive officer.

Gone are the days when DLA IT specialists linked logisticians to systems and then tinkered for workarounds or customizations when system and business processes clashed. Now, the agency is modernizing IT tools and reengineering business processes through D-BX to take advantage of new possibilities in logistics and customer support.

## What is D-BX?

D-BX began in spring 2020 as a strategy to modernize DLA’s IT infrastructure, which hadn’t been updated since Business Systems Modernization in the late 90s. It’s since become a key feature of the agency’s strategic plan and is geared toward elevating DLA performance and enabling data-driven decisions. Benefits are expected to include automated and hands-free warehouses, real-time data and a single sign-on for employees using multiple DLA systems.

“We found that to truly modernize and take advantage of our technical investment, we really needed to focus on the business outcomes and how those are going to help the DLA mission,” said Adarryl Roberts, acting deputy chief information officer. “We also wanted to improve users’ experience, internally and externally.”

Four overarching objectives make up D-BX: transformational IT capabilities, advanced analytics and automation, cybersecurity and technology governance. Each has milestones and team leads but they all intertwine, and the users of DLA’s IT systems have as much to contribute as IT experts themselves, Roberts added.

“We really need to have that end-to-end conversation between our major subordinate commands, technical functionalities and customers about what we’re doing,” he said. “If the tool supports the pay-to-procure process, for example, let’s get all the stakeholders involved in the business process reengineering effort.”

## Big wins

Rollout of the Warehouse Management System, which simplifies storage and distribution processes and aligns DLA Distribution with industry standards, is among the first successes of D-BX. Agency leaders agreed early in the process to start with out-of-the-box technology.

“We said at the start, ‘Let’s use it for its intended purpose and if there’s a need for customization from the business owner, we’ll customize in the appropriate technology.’ But first we wanted to maximize our investments and reach the optimal solution,” Roberts said.

Customization isn’t bad when necessary, he continued, but it can lead to business inefficiencies by clogging processes with more steps, negatively impacting users’ experience. It can also have cascading effects over a program’s lifespan, said Melissa Pratt, D-BX transformation IT portfolio manager.

“The more customization we do, the more additional coding that may be required for software upgrades, and that means it takes additional time for us to do all the things that are required,” she said. “It can also be more costly if the customization conflicts with a new capability you want to add to the system down the road.”

Other D-BX improvements include migration of the Enterprise Business System, used to conduct daily business transactions, from DLA servers to the Cloud. The project was completed eight months ahead of schedule in 2022 and is improving auditability, streamlining processes, decreasing cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and simplifying upgrades as better technologies and capabilities evolve.

DLA’s Customer Interaction Center also launched customer relationship management services on ServiceNow in August 2021. DLA Logistics Operations and DLA Information Operations representatives are working closely to harness ServiceNow capabilities to increase collaboration and make resolving customer inquiries easier.

Robotics process automation is another component of D-BX. Roberts said DLA is the first federal organization to develop unattended bots to execute tasks and interact with systems without human involvement. DLA Information Operations is working with employees in functional communities like operations and finance to develop bot capabilities that free employees from the time-consuming chore of collecting data so they can focus on more critical tasks.

“Rather than gathering information, we want our team to spend their time interfacing directly with customers based on data that’s been aggregated on their behalf,” Roberts said.

## Future expectations

D-BX is expected to connect DLA employees to data that drives deliberate decisions as situations occur. Technology now allows vendors to aggregate details on everything from the direction of the stock market to global stock positioning, Johnson said. He added that real-time data is “golden” for logisticians in situations like the COVID-19 pandemic that stripped basic supplies from grocery store shelves and left Americans in need.

Chrissy Shall, DLA Land and Maritime process management operations director, said she expects DB-X to help integrate separate business processes.

“This will give us better insights into our data and processes, leading to better and more efficient support to the warfighter,” she said during a D-BX offsite for senior leaders in March.  

DLA Energy Deputy Commander David Kless added that he expects D-BX to help his staff execute unique, complex business processes more efficiently.

Making D-BX a success across the agency will be a joint effort that requires employees to be knowledgeable of technology and IT staff to understand business processes, Roberts stressed.

“If you are delivering services on behalf of DLA but don’t understand the tool by which you’re delivering those services, that’s problematic,” he said. “And to deliver technology solutions to the enterprise, the IT team has to understand what procure-to-pay and order management really are. Those are basic skills that have to be met when we’re recruiting employees.”

D-BX is not a “fix it and be done” initiative, Roberts added.

“It’s not an actual IT product with a projected delivery date,” he said. “It’s about managing the lifecycle of our business processes and maintaining the technology continuously. Part of the strategy is cultural as we begin to behave differently and manage ourselves as a digital organization.”