Helping defense organizations develop and impliment readiness solutions
The mission readiness of US military forces is under siege on multiple fronts. A decade of war has cut into readiness resources, while constrained budgets have reduced funding for training, equipment maintenance, and other readiness components. At the same time, today’s warfighter must be trained and equipped to confront a variety of potential adversaries on battlefield that are evolving irregularly, asymmetrically, and rapidly. Consequently, the Department of Defense (DoD) must find innovative ways to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the readiness production process in the face of growing readiness requirements and shrinking readiness resources.
Can Help You Implement the Right Decision-Support Solution
Booz Allen Hamilton, a leading strategy and technology consulting firm, has helped DoD organizations develop and implement readiness decision-support solutions that provide decision makers with a clear understanding of the tradeoffs among requirements, resources and capabilities, costs, and risks. Booz Allen combines in-depth knowledge and experience with military operations with capabilities in technology and analytics to develop solutions that enable military leaders to measure, visualize, and analyze how their decisions affect readiness.
We work closely with DoD organizations to create decision-support solutions that:
- Enhance understanding of readiness production processes
- Gain insight into readiness gaps and shortfalls
- Identify cost drivers and readiness degraders to enable a better focus on activities that improve readiness efficiencies, processes, and activities
- Measure progress toward readiness requirements
- Improve decision making to minimize risk, allocate resources more effectively, and make informed tradeoffs between current readiness and future readiness investments
Methodology for Readiness Decision-Support Solutions
An effective readiness decision-support solution is composed of four major building blocks. Although readiness solutions must be tailored to the unique requirements of each organization, we have found that all successful implementations are built on these four foundational building blocks:
Focus on the Specific Readiness Challenges or Goals to Be Addressed.
A thorough understanding and assessment of an organization’s readiness production process is required to ensure the solution focuses on the organization’s mission needs and readiness challenges and goals.
Create an Analytical Framework to Form the Right Relationships Among Requirements, Resources, and Costs.
Begin the design of your analytical framework by establishing the readiness questions that need to be answered and the outputs that need to be produced. This helps guide the complex task of analyzing and weighting (measuring) the complex interdependences among readiness components.
Analyze, Integrate, and Aggregate the Data You Need.
Getting the right data for readiness decision making is a complex process, but validating and ensuring reliable data is essential to achieving actionable results.
Apply the Right Tools and Technologies.
The solution should guide your technology selection (not vice versa). Start with the end-state vision when designing the solution and then select the technology to ensure that it will be scalable to support long-term as well as near-term needs. Always approach the solution from a technology-agnostic perspective to allow the requirements (operational, functional, data, analytical, security) to drive the solution.
Solutions built on this foundation enable organizations to allocate readiness resources in ways that maximize readiness while minimizing risks and costs. They also provide analytical rigor to support readiness planning and budgets.
