Leonardo DRS Saves Big by Standardizing on Costpoint

Supplying the Defense Industry with Critical Technologies

For over five decades, Leonardo DRS has stood as a premier supplier of defense technologies, catering to clients across diverse military domains. The company has forged a legacy of technological excellence, delivering innovative defense products, systems, and solutions to both the U.S. Department of Defense and allied customers. Having grown through acquisition, today, Leonardo DRS has an innovative workforce exceeding 6,000 employees and deploys its platform-agnostic technologies across thousands of military platforms globally.

The company is a leader in delivering cutting-edge defense solutions that not only tackle current threats but pioneers the technologies that will define the future battlefield, from thermal imaging solutions for helicopters, rifles sites, tanks and satellites to shipboard power distribution and propulsion solutions to provide critical technology in designing and building electric drive motor and power distribution for ships, to computer hardware for tablets and laptops in the field. Leonardo DRS continues to provide critical technological elements to numerous platforms.

A Strategic Decision to Turn to Deltek Costpoint

The success of DRS can be attributed to its strategic evolution and key decisions made over the last few decades. Wally Wilinsky, Chief Information Officer, shared that DRS experienced growth and became the company that it is today through acquisitions spanning a 20-year period. However, challenges came into play as the acquired business units operated independently each with its own autonomous IT organization. This situation coincided, said Wally, with a downturn in the defense industry around 2013.

Anticipating the need for change, DRS demonstrated foresight and acknowledged the necessity to reduce costs. In response to this challenge, Wally was entrusted with the task of leading the corporate organization. Wally’s mandate included the consolidation of all lT services and a substantial reduction in costs, reflecting the company’s proactive approach to navigating the changing landscape.

The initial phase of consolidation and cost reduction involved a thorough examination of their existing systems. Wally noted that several business units were utilizing a solution, which proved to be uncooperative in DRS’s cost-reduction efforts. In response, the company assessed alternative solutions already in use, with Deltek Costpoint emerging as a successful solution for all business units. As Wally explained, he proposed a strategic shift, emphasizing that to effectively reduce costs and capitalize on commonality, transitioning all units to Deltek Costpoint would be a beneficial move. This recommendation reflected a proactive approach to streamline operations and enhance efficiency across the organization.

Deltek’s many advantages over the other legacy solution were clear from early on, shared Wally. “We had four or five business units utilizing a different solution, but they were all on separate implementations, and in the project space that means a heavily customized setup. We wouldn’t have that with Costpoint, we’d have a single Costpoint platform and a separate database for each business unit which would be a significant improvement.”

Costpoint’s Benefits Stand Out from the Start

As Costpoint was implemented over time, the benefits just kept adding up, and continue to help Leonardo today. “It’s less expensive for us to maintain from a general cost standpoint,” said Wally. “When we want to look at supply chain data, we're able to share that data across all business units, even though they're in separate databases, look at it as a whole and create dashboards and do that one time rather than doing it eight times.”

He added, “A lot of the controls are common across everything. We manage security across the board commonly for all organizations. We do the reporting commonly across all those organizations and even adopt best practices. If one business unit had done a highly effective report or dashboard, we are able to replicate that across all the other business units and allow them to leverage it very easily. This was an exceedingly difficult operation with our other solution.”

The implementation of Costpoint has also helped DRS maximize its resources within the organization, “we're effectively able to have a smaller staff because they're managing a common platform with greater efficiency and less need for additional resources to troubleshoot.”

A Partnership that Makes a Difference

Wally shared there are a variety of reasons working with Deltek has been a successful partnership, beginning with the fact that there are other products that complement one another and contribute to DRS’s success. “We have used the GovWin IQ product for quite a long time with our business development community; they query it regularly to get insights into what's happening in the federal government space. While we don't do much state work, we do a lot of DoD and federal government work, so having that consolidated information helps quite a bit.” He added, “We’ve been a long-term TIPQA user in one of our business units and ProPricer has been used in various DRS business units for more than a decade, in fact we made it the enterprise pricing tool standard in 2015. It’s been a benefit to have these solutions with one partner that we can rely on and build a solid relationship with over time.”

But the partnership benefits don’t stop there, says Wally; it’s a relationship that runs deep and has continued to prove beneficial over many years. “Deltek has always been a great partner. We have a particularly good relationship with our service team at Costpoint. We have one person to talk to regarding our solutions instead of multiple companies, or a consultant; with Deltek, it works out much better.” He added, “I feel like we effectively have a seat at the table in terms of making our issues known if we have issues or if there's a feature we want to add.”

A Bright Future

Wally expressed confidence in the ongoing partnership with Deltek, emphasizing how well Costpoint supports DRS’s requirements. He acknowledged Costpoint plays a pivotal role in easing the operational burden, particularly due to its project-based nature and inherent checks and balances. “Auditing becomes significantly easier and allows us to focus on our mission. It's one less thing to worry about when running a complex project-based business.” This, in turn, contributes to a more streamlined and efficient operation and enables the organization to concentrate on its core mission of satisfying customers with high-quality products and services.

The ongoing collaboration and supportive partnership will continue with Deltek as DRS looks to its next initiative, moving to the cloud. “For as long as I can remember, Deltek has always been more than happy to help see us be successful, and I expect that will continue as we move forward with additional initiatives.”