MODIFICATION
70 -- Request for Information - Activity Based Costing (ABC) program.
- Notice Date
- 5/4/2006
- Notice Type
- Modification
- Contracting Office
- M00264 2010 Henderson Rd Quantico, VA
- ZIP Code
- 00000
- Solicitation Number
- M00264
- Response Due
- 5/19/2006
- Archive Date
- 6/18/2006
- Description
- The purpose of this amendment is to provide the following: 1. Question: I was wondering if the potential requirement for "End to End Analysis of the Activity Based Consulting (ABC) Program" is new? If not, could you please provide me with the incumbents name, contract #, contract type, date of award, period of performance and monetary value? Answer: The requirement for ABC is not new, however it is under review for re-engineering. The current incumbent was not contracted to do an analysis of our current program, but rather to sustain our current capability. The incumbent is Executive Information Systems (EIS). Contract# M00264-05-F-0344. Type: Firm Fixed Price. Date of award: 30 Sep 2005. Period of performance and monetary value: 1 Oct 05 ? 30 Sep 07, $920,238.00. 2. Question: Is there a technical point of contact for this procurement? Answer: This is not a procurement but a request for information only. This information will not be provided at this time. 3. Question: Can you please elaborate on what systems and required functionality you view as part of an "end to end" system? Answer: The Marine Corps implemented Activity-Based Costing/Management (ABCM) across the Corps in the late 1990s, and in 2003 the decision was made to incorporate an enterprise-wide implementation of Activity Based Resource Management (ABRM) critical enablers and supporting functions that cross all USMC intermediate commands, USMC bases, depots, logistics bases, air stations, and facilities. The Activity Based Information System (ABIS) is a set of manual and automated processes to build, collect, aggregate, store, and classify cost (financial) and operational (task and activity) data to produce ABC models and information as part of the Marine Corps ABCM Program. The ABIS program supports ABC models and ABRM by providing the Marine Corps with a total cost and performance management capability that, at minimum, provides full cost information using standard processes, standard outputs, and performance measures. Systems include Enterprise Shared Data Environment (ESDE), Extensible Business Intelligence Tool (xBIT), USMC built and maintained interface to data warehouse. Legacy systems include; MCTFS/ODSE ? military manpower, SABRS/SMARTS ? USMC financial resources, AXIS-one ? MCCS financials, Peoplesoft ? MCCS human resources. Functionality of an ?end to end? system would include extraction of specific data from legacy systems, through ABC software, and finally the production of an online data/information cube. 4. Question: What are the current planning activities, deployment schedules and data collection capabilities of the existing USMC legacy system? Answer: Planning activities include capturing standard USMC Headquarters program management products and services, unit costs, and performance measures. There is currently no deployment schedules or data collection capability. Our previous implementation plan was developed for enterprise-wide use of ABC/M data via scheduled phase plans: Discovery, Conversion, and Normalization. Each implementation phase was expected to be about 22 weeks in duration. Discovery (now complete) introduced base personnel to ABC/M theory and techniques, and provided an initial ABC capability at each installation (i.e. simple modeling and initial performance data). During Conversion the models matured, standard processes and performance measures were implemented across the bases, and ABC/M began to influence the Program Objective Memorandum (POM) cycle and business planning. During normalization, MCBEO took lessons learned from individual bases, automating the interfaces from the source systems, and further standardizing the data to enable benchmarking and comparative performance management and analysis. Our final desire is to have the capability to accurately, efficiently, and responsively collect, publish and analyze total product and service costs and performance data. 5. Question: What are the existing USMC legacy ABC system(s) and the legacy systems with which an ABC system must be interoperable? Answer: See item/question 3. 6. Question: Do you maintain separate ABC models for each functional area (if so, how many?) or are the functional areas incorporated into a single base/station enterprise model? Answer: We do not maintain ABC models by functional area but rather by single USMC base and station. Data from the cost models are then consolidated into a USMC-wide Cognos data cube. 7. Question: What are the reengineering objectives of the ABCM program? Answer: The objective is to streamline the current ABC process that is currently very cumbersome, complex, timely, expensive and potentially inefficient to collect and maintain cost and performance data across the USMC enterprise. Another objective is to include additional operational systems data into the ABC/M process and automate the refreshing of data to the extent possible and to capture additional USMC components beyond the base and station level of the organization. This allows the Marine Corps to fulfill the elements of the following financial management legislative and regulatory requirements. The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 requires agencies to submit to OMB a strategic plan for program activities that include performance goals and objectives, and the ABIS program can provide performance and cost information for Marine Corps activities. The Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996 requires that agency financial systems comply with Federal Financial Management Requirements, Federal Accounting Standards, and align with the US Standard General Ledger at the transaction level. The Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards Number 4, ?Managerial Cost Accounting Concepts and Standards for the Federal Government? is one of the accounting standards for which ABIS (and the ABC models) fulfills the requirements of: ?(1) accumulating and reporting costs of activities on a regular basis for management information purposes; (2) establishing responsibility segments to match costs with outputs; (3) determining full costs of government goods and services; (4) recognizing the costs of goods and services provided among federal entities; and (5) using appropriate costing methodologies to accumulate and assign costs to outputs.? 8. Question: What is the envisioned target completion date for transitioning to the new streamlined ABC system? Answer: Realistically, the completion date will be on-going for some time as this is seen as an evolutionary process, however, initial operating capability (IOC) would be 12 months after deployment. 9. Question: Do you have a preference to where ABC models are updated and maintained ? by personnel at base/station level or by personnel located at one of your intermediate commands? Answer: Our preference is to remove the ?grunt? work from the base and stations Business Performance Offices (BPOs) while keeping the information useful to the base/station commanders, Headquarters program managers and automating the process to the extent possible. This does not necessarily mean individual base/station models, but where feasible and for accuracy and efficiency purposes, perhaps a ?regional? concept may be more practical. Another option might be to populate and maintain an enterprise-wide model at the Headquarters that is populated with rolled up base/station data. 10. Question: The title of the RFI implies that the government desires information ?to conduct a survey and end-to-end analysis of the Activity Based Costing (ABC) program.? The description of the RFI does not explicitly request a survey or end-to-end analysis to be conducted. Please clarify, does the government desire a contractor to conduct a survey and end-to-end analysis of the ABC program or is the government already conducting their own survey and analysis Answer: The government does not desire a contractor to conduct a survey or end-to-end process review and/or analysis. The survey is the Government?s desire to acquire information regarding how the USMC may better build, maintain, support and provide total cost and performance data/information for better decision making. The end-to-end analysis is what we are looking for from potential contractors regarding how they would implement, deploy and otherwise execute ABRM in an organization of our size and culture. 11. Question: How is the Marine Corps Business Enterprise Office (MCBEO) defining a Community of Practice Answer: Our Community of Practice (COP) is the Business Performance Offices located at each of the 16 bases/stations, 3 intermediate commands and two regional commands who are responsible for continuous process improvement and program implementation. 12. Question: Does the Community of Practice (CoP) currently exist within the MCBEO Answer: Yes. 13. Question: What software is the MCBEO currently using to support their ABC effort? Answer: SAS Oros Analytics v5.5. 14. Question: What are the current MCBEO planning activities and deployment schedules that the COTS software should support? Answer: See item/question 4 and 8. 15. Question: Clarify the current scope of the MCBEO ABC implementation process that the government desires to streamline. What are the start and end points of the process? Answer: See item/question 7. The current start point is the population and construction of local ABC models, the end point is with the publication of the enterprise-wide cost data/information contained in an online data cube.
- Web Link
-
http://www.neco.navy.mil
(http://www.neco.navy.mil)
- Record
- SN01041432-W 20060506/060504221712 (fbodaily.com)
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