Accenture’s Joe Chenelle Discusses Their Latest Defense Contract

By Rob Starr, Content Manager, Big4.com

When the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) recently awarded Accenture an eight-month contract to design a master blueprint for automating the department’s Earned Value Center, it marked another one of the firm’s successes in dealing with the defense industry.

Joe Chenelle, who leads Accenture’s defense and intelligence agency business, recently talked with Big4.com about how Accenture’s work will help the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) will ensure DoD contractors report costs and schedules efficiently.

“This is a plan analyze,” he started out saying. “This is not a full implementation at this time. This is just a blueprint for how the Earned Value Center would standardize their tools and processes.”

Focus on Analytics

Chenelle went on to say that Accenture’s focus was to design an analytics program to pull information together from various sources to enable on-site detailed analysis. As things stand, the DCMA sends local field representatives out to each project site.

“That creates the potential  for some inconsistencies in requirements and assessments,” Chenelle said. “I give the DCMA a lot of credit since they’re looking to automate a lot of these processes.”

He also noted the quality of the people the DCMA was looking for to work on this project was high.

“Specifically, they’re looking for Microsoft Certified Architects and analytics personnel with 20 y years of first-hand experience with assessing and analyzing project risk.”

The resulting analytics that will form the core of Accenture’s work will improve the work flow and streamline the reporting process. The need comes partially from a backlog of reviews that are presently handled manually.

Solution Web Portal

“The solution will involve a web portal where  the reviews will be tracked, monitored and then recorded,” Chenelle said  there will be a benefit to the contractors as well since they will have an increased insight into each program’s performance.

The final analytics program will be shared with regional field offices, program managers and DoD executives. On-site, detailed analysis will be one of the key advantages.

“It will really increase the access, visibility and consistency to shorten the turnaround time for everyone,” Chenelle said.