Overview
- Aerospace and defense contractors face an uncertain future with a possible reduction of government surge spending.
- Fewer contracts and heightened competition necessitate technology solutions to reduce costs and maximize resiliency against future uncertainty.
- Mobilizing Costpoint barcoding and data collection is an effective solution to gain agility, profitability and competitiveness while also protecting essential workers.
What Does the Future Hold for Defense Contractors?
Aerospace and defense contractors face new uncertainty over government spending. A year of unprecedented DoD contract spending coupled with the coming election might insinuate a coming downturn. To survive such a downturn, contractors must find ways to embed agility and resiliency into their operations to remain competitive. Today’s COVID-19 pandemic conditions exacerbate these challenges.
Reduced Department of Defense (DoD) spend means contractors must work more efficiently than ever—while lowering costs and operating with fewer skilled workers. Technology may be the key.
Mobile barcode software for Deltek Costpoint, SAP and other ERPs provides a cost-effective way to help achieve this balance with quick ROI. The much-awaited arrival of Costpoint 8 brings further anticipation for optimization.
However, time is running short to offsetting economic challenges with technology. Here are five reasons why Costpoint and ERP users need mobile technology now:
1. It Gives You the Agility to Pivot
Mobile barcoding software automates inventory data collection. Every inventory movement updates Costpoint and other ERPs in real time, ensuring accurate, up-to-date stock levels. This accelerates your operational ability to re-balance work allocation automatically. Or nimbly halt production of one item to start another without hours or days of time.
Without this automation, your team must spend hours re-assigning work and checking stock levels due to inaccuracy. If you use paper tickets, you may never know what you have. How can you pivot between producing more or prioritizing high-value projects?
2. It Preserves Profitability
As the government spends declines, fewer opportunities will be available with potentially lower profit to be had in each. Inflation only adds to the problem. If you cannot track your billing with any degree of accuracy, can you be profitable at all?
Mobile barcoding software can reduce operating costs by automating inventory data collection. This eliminates paperwork, manual data entry and other cumbersome processes while also augmenting worker productivity.
Additionally, a path of traceability is automatically generated as your workers scan barcodes. Each inventory record updates in real-time, from wherever work is performed, with 99% or higher accuracy.
Because your inventory records are always accurate and up to date, you can achieve end-to-end traceability and 100% billing accuracy. This is key to setting you apart from the competition. In a contracted market, technology to enhance competitiveness is critical to preserve current and future profitability.
Case Study:
VSE is a DoD contractor for supply chain management (SCM) and MRO. They were using manual data collection to track inventory. At the end of each day, workers would transcribe the handwritten data by hand-keying it into Costpoint, creating numerous errors. It was also slow and inefficient, leading to higher overhead costs in labor and overtime.
With mobile barcoding, VSE achieved lot-level traceability and perfect billing accuracy to secure its future as a preferred contractor. Continue reading »
3. It Elevates Your Competitiveness
Mobile barcoding reduces the time it takes your line-level staff to complete each task. Since each worker can do more with higher productivity at high accuracy, your operation can maximize output while minimizing errors. Winning big contracts could hinge on such technology in a tight race.
Case Study:
An IT managed services company using Costpoint for government applications saw a 450% improvement in productivity and efficiency in shipping and receiving when they implemented mobile barcoding. A leading aerospace cable manufacturer realized 40% faster issuing material to the floor.
By showcasing your ability to accomplish significantly more in less time with fewer workers, these companies put themselves ahead of competitors still using manual processes.
4. It Builds Resiliency in the Face of Uncertainty
Mobile barcoding helps you find resiliency even in times of market fluctuations and uncertainty. The increased visibility you gain from mobile barcoding lets you more accurately measure and improve KPIs.
It also provides exacting traceability and data granularity to reduce extra costs due to inaccurate data. This includes rushed shipping costs due to lost or misplaced inventory, reliance on overstock, or paying overtime to overcome inefficient workflows.
Costpoint 8 is designed to bring even greater efficiency, optimization and time savings for government contractors. Combined with mobile barcoding, you’ll be equipped to mitigate future market fluctuations and face whatever the future may hold.
“The mobility aspect of the project has allowed the team to abide by the guidelines and keep the employees safe while keeping production steady. This is an additional benefit that we had not planned for.”
– Charles Ho, Director of IT, Meggitt Defense Systems
5. It Protects Your Workers and Your Operations
Even if you can win new contracts, you will still have to wrestle with the impacts of COVID-19, including potential shutdowns from contamination.
That’s why mobile barcoding is emerging as the new PPE to protect essential workers. It reduces hand-to-hand paper transfers and touching of shared surfaces like keyboards. Mobile hardware is also easy to disinfect in between shifts. By mobilizing your workforce and supporting long-range barcode scanning, it naturally supports social distancing. Your management can even message your workforce via the mobile device, reducing the need for in-person meetings, including for work reallocation.
All of this works together to protect your operations. With fewer workers out sick, you can minimize downtime, shutdowns and interruptions in revenue streams to safeguard operations and embed resiliency.
Charles Ho, Director of IT at Meggitt Defense Systems, for example, immediately saw the benefits of mobile barcoding in the face of COVID-19: “The mobility aspect of the project,” he explains, has “allowed the team to abide by the guidelines and keep the employees safe while keeping production steady. This is an additional benefit that we had not planned for.”
Conclusion
Aerospace and defense contractors must critically analyze current operational methods to determine the best way forward. Costpoint users may need technology to offset an uncertain future. Finding ways to optimize efficiency while protecting workers and cutting costs is no small feat, especially in the face of less opportunity.
Mobile barcoding and data collection solutions for Deltek Costpoint support contractors both in times of growth and in periods of market instability. By enhancing business agility and competitiveness with cost-effective technology solutions, you can assure a future of continuing profitability and bolstered resiliency in a successful future.
