Leading Gov’t Contractor CFO Talks about Software Selection Criteria

Sherry Craighill, the CFO at government services provider Higgins, Hermansen, Banikas, LLC (HHB), has selected, implemented, and managed many project accounting and financial management solutions for companies, non-profits and government contractors. We posed the following questions to her.

 

PVBS: Why are companies still using project accounting and financial management software solutions that do not meet their needs?

Sherry Craighill: There are many reasons why companies possess software solutions that do not match their business needs:

1.     Company outgrows software that cannot scale.

2.     Company changes business direction and software no longer matches the model.

3.     Software is antiquated, with few revisions, too many bugs, too inflexible, and poor reporting capabilities.

4.     Companies merge and maintain multiple systems rather than integrate.

5.     Persuasive sales people oversell for the need.  In these cases, the software may be too complicated for the business.

6.     The software might otherwise fit but the implementation was poorly or incompletely executed.

 

PVBS: What advice do you have for companies to help them select the best solution to meet their needs?

Sherry Craighill: The first step in identifying a best fit is to map a company’s business processes.  You need to examine how things get done and why and then how you’d like to get things done. Then you need to win acceptance from the management and accounting and finance teams on the best fit solution, and map a plan to get from A to B before purchasing a system.  Acceptance is important for successful, committed change.

 

PVBS: What other critical things should be considered? 

Sherry Craighill: You need to know that the right implementation team is equally as important as accounting software.  You’re buying a solution, not a package.  The best software in the world is only as good as the fit for your particular purpose.  Select a solutions provider that understands your business needs and can design the backbone of the software to meet the requirements.

Wash Tech Top 100 Contractors Posted

Washington Technology posted its annual Top Federal Contractors last week. The top ten usual suspects are listed below.

1		Lockheed Martin Corp.		$13,448,719,816		1
2		The Boeing Co.		$9,706,621,413		2
3		Northrop Grumman Corp.		$7,914,924,473		3
4		Raytheon Co.		$5,170,829,645		6
5		Science Applications International Corp.		$4,919,829,998		5
6		General Dynamics Corp.		$4,900,416,938		7
7		KBR Inc.		$4,130,649,651		4
8		L-3 Communications Corp.		$3,944,840,524		9
9		Computer Sciences Corp.		$3,670,742,772		11
10		EDS Corp.		$2,457,890,300		10

The Pentagon’s $1 Trillion Problem

Conde Nast Portfolio.com posted an eye-popping article by Scot Paltrow this month called The Pentagon’s $1 Trillion Problem.  While the government’s financial systems might be in disarray, at least government contractors have solutions available to them to make their business flow much more smoothly.

Says the article:

Since 2004, the Pentagon has spent roughly $16 billion annually to maintain and modernize the military’s business systems, but most are as unreliable as ever—even as the surge in defense spending is creating more room for error. The basic defense budget for 2007 was $439.3 billion, up 48 percent from 2001, excluding the vast additional sums appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to federal regulators and current and former Pentagon officials, the accounting process is so obsolete and error prone that it’s virtually impossible to tell where much of this money ends up. While the department’s brass has made a few patchwork improvements, billions are still unaccounted for. The problem is so deeply rooted that, 18 years after Congress required major federal agencies to be audited, the Pentagon still can’t be. (Read a chronology of efforts to modernize the military’s financial systems.)