STS identified and solved a real-world issue, providing expert consulting and delivering quality implementations that significantly improved the customer’s experience and drove measurable positive outcomes. See the STS 2025 ServiceNow Partner Award Winner Submission below.
Describe the challenges or problems your customer faced.
Historically, Army work order management relied on a 15+ year-old SAP system not designed or optimized for maintenance management. The distribution of work to technicians used a 100% paper-based process for over 1M work orders annually worldwide.
Prior to digital transformation, Army maintenance processes had two fundamental, glaring points of potential failure.
First, did Soldier’s work requests make it into the process? Were the right individuals, groups, or organizations aware of the issue? Were issues accurately documented? In other words, did both Army leaders and maintenance personnel know what was wrong and how critical it was to the well-being of the Soldier and the potential impact to mission?
Second, were Public Works directorates working on the right problems at the right time? Did they have the correct parts available the first-time technicians arrived to solve the problem? Were parts and labor required to complete a repair accurately captured?
How did you help the customer overcome the challenge, drive adoption, and mitigate risk?
Prior to the Army Maintenance Application, commonly known as ArMA, the Army had two clear challenges: manual ingest of work requests and paper-based execution of work. ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) and Field Service Management (FSM) were the ideal cornerstones of this mission-critical Army solution.
The challenges the Army faced were both institutional and technological. While SOFtact Solutions’ (STS) implementation of ArMA would eventually focus on leveraging the power of ServiceNow to solve dysfunctional technical processes, the institutional challenges proved to be the greatest hurdle to overcome. A large portion of the Public Works workforce across the Department of Defense is a blue-collar workforce with minimal exposure to digital platforms.
The deployment of ArMA included both operational process changes (automated, digital workflows) and technology (e.g. iPhones) resulting in significant change resistance from some key process stakeholders. STS overcame this resistance with a maintenance technician-centric solution and comprehensive organizational change management. Having retired Army leaders as part of the ArMA implementation team, STS was able to successfully deliver the ArMA solution, achieving deployment at an unprecedented speed—just 68 working days from contract to implementation.
ArMA has revolutionized global Army maintenance operations by providing an easy-to-use customer service experience for Soldiers, Families, civilians, and contractors seeking maintenance help. Using ServiceNow capabilities, ArMA ensures a completely paperless work order management process, utilizing photos and videos from both customers and field service technicians to accurately document the conditions before and after repairs.
How did you create value for the customer?
In the case of the Army Maintenance Application, the return on investment (ROI) on the Customer Service Management (CSM) side of the problem set is not primarily a financial metric, at least not one that is easily quantifiable. However, ArMA has significantly raised expectations regarding customer service among those living and working on Army installations, giving huge returns in customer satisfaction.
The ROI on the Field Service Management (FSM) side of the problem set is more easily quantified in financial terms. In the first full year at the first two FSM-enabled Army installations, there was a 13.5% increase in completed maintenance repairs compared to the previous 12 months without FSM. Using ServiceNow Value Realization calculations, the efficiency gains through increased performance by using FSM at these two installations alone, conservatively, equates to $2.9M in value for the government and those living and working on these Army installations.
In addition to ServiceNow Value Realization calculations at just one of those Army installations, the following manpower and cost savings have been documented:
- Customer-submitted pictures: Technicians reduced the average number of trips per repair site from 2.5 to 1.5, saving approximately 8,250 man-hours annually.
- Elimination of manual data entry: Automating the entry of technician time and materials saves approximately 9 hours per day, or over 2,300 hours annually.
- Automated scheduling and assignment: Drag-and-drop work scheduling and assignment saves 4 hours per day for shop supervisors, totaling approximately 1,040 hours annually.
- Cost-efficient technology replacement: Replacing 150 technician radios costing $5,500 each with $350 iPhones results in a lifecycle replacement savings of $775,000.
DVIDS ArMA news– DVIDS – Search – Army Maintenance ArMA (dvidshub.net)
Army.mil ArMA articles- ArMA Army Maintenance – www.army.mil Search Results (usa.gov)
SOFtact Solutions 2025 ServiceNow Transformation Partner of the Year Video Summary on the Army Maintenance Application
STS HISTORY
