Accenture's federal arm wins major Army ERP contract

Accenture's U.S. federal subsidiary has won the Army’s Enterprise Business Systems-Convergence contract, a large and lucrative effort to consolidate enterprise resource planning systems across the service branch.

The Army structured the contract as an Other Transaction Authority procurement as part of this push to centralize multiple business systems into a single platform built on SAP software.

The Army PEO Enterprise, which is running the procurement, did not disclose a value for the contract beyond this initial effort valued at $69.4 million. But given its size and scope, other sources estimate the value will likely exceed $1 billion over its eight-year run.

The Army launched the OTA in August 2023 when it picked Accenture, IBM and Groundswell for phase one of the project.

The companies were tasked to build prototypes of a new Army ERP system. As the OTA moved through subsequent phases, IBM dropped out with Accenture Federal Services and Groundswell remaining.

AFS will start with a munition management system and look to deliver it during federal fiscal year 2025, the Army said. The company will also begin work on a finance framework foundation, which will be the infrastructure to enable the various systems to migrate to the new platform.

"To improve user experience and increase efficiency, the Army is modernizing the system using cloud-based software to consolidate data into one easy-to-use platform," an Army spokesperson said.

The EBS-C effort is focused on consolidating five logistics and financial business systems – Logistics Modernization Program, General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS), GFEBS-Sensitive Activities (GFEBS-SA), Global Combat Support System-Army and Army Enterprise Systems Integration Program – into a single platform, she said.

The Army went with an OTA over a traditional approach because it wanted an iterative approach instead of releasing a long-list of requirements, Army officials told us in September 2023.

“We’ve taken this very complex endeavor and broken it down into manageable, measurable intervals,” said Lee James III, acting project manager for EBS-C, at the time of that article.

The loss is a disappointment for Groundswell, a company launched in 2022 by market veterans George Batsakis and Jerad Speigel.

SAP, Appian and Workday are three software platforms that Groundswell has specialized in.

Groundswell''s team for EBS-C included Leidos, Microsoft and NTT Data.

“We are proud of our performance during the OTA and believe we gave the Army plenty of reasons to award us the next phase of the EBS-C effort,” Batsakis told WT. He declined to comment beyond that statement.

Officials at Accenture Federal Services have not responded to a request for comment on the win.