This is the fourth in a six part series on Booz Allen’s award winning implementation of Enterprise 2.0, termed the Hello system. In June 2009, Booz Allen was honored with the Open Enterprise 2009 Innovation Award so it is a good example to explore in depth. In this fourth post we will look at the financial impact.  In future posts we will look at the lessons learned and plans for enhancements. Walton Smith, Program Manager for Booz Allen’s information sharing efforts and the lead for the Government 2.0 client practice, has agreed to be interviewed for this series and his time is appreciated.

There have been two types of financial impacts. First, there has been increased operational efficiencies and effectiveness in many areas including both sales and delivery. Second, there has been increased client opportunities for work similar to Hello as many clients have the same needs that led Booz Allen to implement an enterprise 2.0 solution.  I will first cover the internal benefits.

Staff retention and utilization have a tremendous impact on Booz Allen’s finances. Improving the firm’s ability to rapidly find and deploy qualified employees to staff government contracts contributes to meeting and exceeding financial targets.  While there are likely a number of contributing factors, the firm has experienced month over month staff utilization improvement since Hello was implemented, even in a down economy.  Much anecdotal evidence supports the connection of this improvement with efficiencies generated by Hello. For example, many Partners find it easier to create project teams with the right experience to both win work and delivery it. This is especially true when meeting last minute demands that require going beyond what personal networks and email queries can provide.

Booz Allen does not have a large army of staffing people like some of the consulting firms I have experienced.  Before Hello it was hard for them to keep up with demand. Spreadsheets would be generated that became out of date as they were completed. Now Hello allows individuals to keep their profiles and availability current. It also makes it easier for those in need of staff to find these profiles. This increased self-service with better real time data allows the staffing people to address more strategic issues than the tactical tracking of current availability.  Linkage to those responsible for available staff allows the right staffing discussions to occur in a timely manner. Walton said that once a Partner has been successful in staffing and winning work through Hello, it often becomes the first step in future efforts. They also become big advocates of the benefits of Hello.

Booz Allen has also had increased staff retention since Hello was implemented.  This goal was one of the business drivers mentioned in the first post in this series. While the down economy may have an impact here as people do not have as many alternatives, there is again anecdotal evidence on the benefits of Hello for increased control over career development which leads to increased motivation and retention. A person is more likely to get staffed on a project that reflects the interests and experience noted in their profile.  They are also more likely to find the right contacts and intellectual capital to allow them to succeed in their areas of interest contributing to their preference to to stay with the firm.

Booz Allen has won several multi-million dollar contracts based on the firm’s experience with Hello and technology infrastructure as many government agencies are faced with the same challenges.  Walton said that the Washington Post recently reported that the US Federal government will need over 500,000 new employees in the next few years to replace its aging work force. These people will need to be on-boarded and the collective intelligence of the existing work force will need to be harvested to pass on to these employees.

Many younger employees expect the rapid access to information that they have experienced on the Web. If the agencies do not provide such tools, they often go outside the firewall to resort to unsecure Web tools. Having your own enterprise 2.0 tool set avoids this issue while bringing in the ability to maintain security and gain analytics on the work processes within the agency.

Walton said that in many cases agencies have 70 – 80 percent of the content just as Booz Allen did, but they need the glue in a system like Hello to bring it together and make it transparent.  He also made a very important point: Booz Allen does not try to sell Hello as a product.  It sells the expertise gained through the successful implementation of Hello. Every organization has different needs.  I have seen other consulting firms fail when they tried to make a particular client engagement or even their own system into a product.  It is nice to see that Booz Allen is not falling into this trap.

In my next post, I will cover some of these lessons learned in implementing Hello. For Twitter comment son this series please use the hashtag #bahe20. Thanks.