Navy Technology Excellence Awards 2023: Decision Lens

Decision Lens is a software provider deployed extensively across the US Army, Navy, and Air Force. It is a Category Winner in the 2023 Naval Technology Excellence Awards in: Innovation – Digital Platforms for the further development of its integrated planning platform designed to improve planning and resource allocation across the PPBE process.

Decision Lens software allows the Department of Defense to deliver the world-class, fiscally responsible integrated planning necessary to ensure the United States Air Force remains the premier global standard. As our near-peer adversaries mount an increasing threat to our well-being, Decision Lens is allowing leaders to reach better, faster decisions on how to prioritize, plan, and fund.

Today, fiscal discipline is more vital than ever to setting priorities and making tough decisions among many competing demands. Once the United States effectively transforms its approach to planning, it will achieve greater productivity and faster innovation per equivalent dollar spent to maintain a global advantage.

Using Decision Lens allows the military to maximize the impact of every dollar with a platform designed to empower data- driven, fiscally informed decision- making. Our roots in decision science uniquely position us to empower customers to overcome today’s critical planning challenges, including:

Excellence Awards

Naval Technology Excellence Awards Report 2023

Download our full Awards Report, which contains all Excellence and Category Winners, Featured Winner Profiles and the Country Winner Breakdown

Reliance on manual processes
Lack of an enterprise data framework
Disconnected planning phases
Limited collaboration

Customers benefit from the unique capabilities of our integrated planning platform, which include:

A proven decision analytic framework
Process automation
Scenario Planning
Spend plan tracking

Each customer transforms their planning in unique, yet critical ways such as:

Focus on higher value activities. Customers using Decision Lens report significant time savings over previous planning processes allowing them to focus on data analysis not data aggregation.
Re-allocation of Funds to Higher Mission Priorities. Most users realize a cost savings within their portfolio and re-allocate to invest in additional strategic imperatives.
Reach Decision Points Faster through Automation. Reduction in manual errors, no need to go back and pull data and no version control issues make getting to a decision point faster.
Enterprise Collaboration. Gathering real-time insight from colleagues and leaders in real-time in the software allows for better, more mission aligned decisions and tighter connection between planning phases.

Cutting-edge software is just one element of the value Decision Lens offers. Over the last year, the company has tackled the difficulties the US Department of Defense (DoD) has in procuring commercial software. Acquisition can be slow due to a combination of security concerns, hosting limitations, contracting, interoperability with government systems and procurement among others.

To overcome this hurdle, the company introduced several innovations during the research period. These included making its software available on the DoD’s ADVANA platform to make it more readily accessible, one of the first SAAS vendors to do so.

In addition, the company also partnered with Second Front Systems to make its software available via the company’s Impact Level 5 Production Environment, a key step in the software being accessible to the US Air Force.

Integrated Planning at the Navy Maintains Readiness while Cutting Expenses

In 2019 the Naval Aviation Enterprise successfully achieved readiness goals for the Super Hornet/Growler fleet to meet the SECDEF’s mission capable (MC) requirement for aircraft platforms and is now focused on cutting expenses while maintaining the established MC goals. These goals will need to be achieved without assuming any additional risk to their mission and achieving MC aircraft in the fleet.

Leveraging Decision Lens, PEO(T) program offices systematically evaluate and prioritize cost-saving initiatives associated with fleet maintenance across the enterprise. Relying on already developed criteria, input from experts across the department, and a consistent data framework the office is now able to prioritize requests while meeting its mission of maintaining readiness despite expense reduction. As a result of the working group’s efforts, they have accomplished the following:

Improved data management and workload for core team and stakeholders
Tracked $220M in savings in FY22, 10% higher than the annual target of $200M
Reallocated $26M in harvestable savings to UFRs

About Decision Lens

We have been transforming public sector planning since 2005, delivering the people, process and technology which empower agencies to effectively meet the needs of today while delivering the cutting-edge capabilities of tomorrow. Customers across the Department of Defense, intelligence community, federal civilian agencies and state and local government achieve a sustained operational advantage through superior long-term planning, continuous medium-term prioritization, and short-term funding execution.