Army Financial leaders meet, modernize for 'Battlefield 2040'
Eighty-five senior Army finance Soldiers and civilians from more than 30 organizations gathered to modernize and operationalize finance and comptroller capabilities for the future fight during a U.S. Army finance symposium hosted by the U.S. Army Financial Management Command at the Maj. Gen. Emmett J. Bean Federal Center in Indianapolis Sept. 1-2.
“Money touches everything,” said Maj. Gen. Rebecca B. McElwain, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management and Comptroller Director of Army Budget. “There isn’t a conversation in the Pentagon that takes place where we’re not talking about it in some way, shape or form.”
From paying Soldiers and vendors to putting purchasing power into the fight, symposium participants examined how the Army can better position finance and comptroller capabilities, authorities and expertise at echelon to enable commanders, sustain distributed formations and maintain freedom of action during large-scale combat operations.
The discussions brought together strategic, operational and institutional perspectives on artificial intelligence, enterprise resource planning systems, force design, military pay, training, talent management, disbursing, commercial vendor pay, audit and a finance-specific common operating picture.
For Marc E. Andersen, ASA (FM&C), preparing Soldier and civilian financial managers to support the future fight requires examining the people, processes and technology behind those capabilities and eliminating practices that consume resources or slow decisions.
“People make the difference,” Andersen said. “We want to invest in our people.”
That investment increasingly includes preparing financial managers to use AI and other modern tools to reduce repetitive work and focus their expertise on operational planning, analysis and decision-making.
When asked by Col. Michelle M. Williams, USAFMCOM commander, how AI could change the role of Army financial managers and where the Army should invest in its technical workforce, Andersen said AI provides an opportunity to automate repeatable processes and reduce cycle times, freeing financial managers to concentrate on higher-value activities where human expertise remains critical.
“We still need people, we still need judgment, and we still need to validate what’s correct,” he said. “AI gives us to chance to free people up to do other, higher value activities.”
Williams summarized that opportunity as “keeping humans in the loop” while ensuring the workforce is prepared to provide greater predictive analysis to Army leaders.
However, the colonel said that operationalizing financial management and empowering battlefield commanders with ready and reliable financial data requires more than technology.
To this end, symposium participants also examined where financial capabilities and authorities should reside across Army formations and how commanders can gain visibility of those resources across increasingly dispersed and contested battlefields.
Donald Houston, USAFMCOM Strategic Integration Group director and symposium planner, pointed to USAFMCOM’s Finance Common Operating Picture as one capability designed to provide exactly that visibility.
“From there, a commander can tell you where all the banks are, where the cash is, and how much cash is in theater,” explained Houston. “That enables the sustainment warfighting functions to understand where they have resources and assets, because before the COP, it was completely invisible to them.”
That financial visibility can become operationally significant when a commander must determine not only where combat power is located, but whether the purchasing power and financial capabilities needed to sustain that combat power are positioned at the point of need.
For McElwain, that raises an even more fundamental question about the future battlefield.
“What does currency look like in the future?” she asked.
Whether that purchasing power comes in the form of physical currency or another instrument, McElwain said Army finance and comptroller professionals will remain responsible for getting it into the fight so commanders can obtain what they need at the right place and time.
Doing so requires enterprise modernization to produce effects all the way down to finance Soldiers supporting operational formations.
“Modernizing how we execute fiscal operations creates efficiencies and reduces our transactional workload. This provides critical space to solve tough problems and maximize resources in support of the fight,” McElwain said of the intended effect of those efforts. “You’re not going to be bogged in minutia, and you’re going to be able to do things that the warfighter needs you to do.”
Putting capabilities at echelon also means ensuring Soldiers are technically prepared to employ them before a crisis begins.
Sgt. Maj. Rhonda L. Byrd, OASA (FM&C) senior enlisted advisor, emphasized leveraging expertise across the active Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard to close training gaps and rebuild technical proficiency throughout the total force.
“We’ve been successful war after war, combat after combat, because we leverage the expertise we have within our formations,” Byrd said. “That includes all three [components].”
And, achieving operational impact on the battlefield more often than not starts far and away.
Houston said tools the Army continues to improve dashboards and systems that identify late commercial vendor payments and their resulting interest penalties to help financial managers preserve resources for Army priorities rather than lose purchasing power through preventable costs.
“That’s buying readiness that you’re bleeding away by not processing things in a timely manner,” Houston said.
Audit received similar discussions during the symposium. Rather than viewing auditability solely as a compliance requirement, attendees focused on connecting accurate data and accountability with commanders’ ability to understand their resources and make timely decisions.
“Audit is readiness,” Andersen said, and the Army is already making that connection at the enterprise level.
He said current finance and comptroller efforts seek to increase data quality, eliminate outdated processes and provide leaders with reliable information faster, with the ultimate goal of turning financial data and resources into decision advantage for the warfighter.
For Houston, the symposium also provided another opportunity to demonstrate that Army finance extends far beyond military pay.
“Disbursing, commercial vendor services, resource management, data analytics, audit and battlefield finance all contribute the capabilities commanders need to generate and sustain combat power,” he elaborated. “We are a lot more than what people think we are.”
And, with Battlefield 2040 on the horizon, McElwain challenged the finance and comptroller community to reconsider legacy processes and determine how its people and capabilities must be aligned for a battlefield that will not resemble those of the past.
“The real question is, are you flexible enough to make it happen?” she asked.
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