Defense Commissary wants IT system for grocery shelves

The Defense Commissary Agency is considering a six-year, $256.8 million contract to update its enterprise business system to get a fully integrated commercial-off-the-shelf supply chain solution.

DeCA wants to incorporate industry best practices to support a 21st Century supply chain model while lowering the total cost of ownership. The agency is looking for a retail business solution that supports standard industry grocery operations, adheres to industry and technical standards, is commercially proven, and reflects the best practices for the grocery industry.

DeCA also aims to improve its data to help with analytics and business decisions. The solution should allow electronic information sharing vertically across increments and horizontally between stores, headquarters, and all customer touch points. All of this should happen under a single, integrated architecture.

Essentially, DeCA wants to eliminate current manual processes and exchange them for an effective system that ensures 100-percent accuracy of sales and financial data. It should enable the exchange of data, selectively or on a schedule, with DeCA’s Enterprise Data Warehouse.

DeCA will focus on an incrementally deployed COTS solution.

A draft request for proposals was released Feb. 5. The deadline for response is Feb. 18.