SMARTER STRATEGIES

Army Goes Big Guns with Apaches, Black Hawks and � the Cloud?

Dennis McCafferty | Date: 04-16-10 | Comments

The Armed Forces is now deploying video games, simulators and cloud-based computing to boost recruiting efforts. And it�s working.

Remember the Army recruiter who set up shop behind some dreary desk at your high school? Getting the attention of potential candidates for enlistment was a rather ho-hum, labor-intensive affair back then. These days, however, the "cool" factor in recruiting has been dialed up considerably thanks to video games, full-scale simulators and, yes, even cloud-computing apps.

Take the Army Experience Center at Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia, a city where efforts have traditionally fallen short of goals. The center is a 14,500-square-foot playground of sorts, filled with video games and three full-scale simulators�including those for an AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopter, an armed Humvee and a Black Hawk helicopter. For potential recruits who want to take the experience deeper, the center has 22 Army staffers who can discuss how the simulated experiences translate to real-life situations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other global hot spots.

So where does the cloud solution enter the equation? In the form of a customized Salesforce product from Vienna, Va.-based Acumen Solutions. That�s because the Army needs to do more than offer video/simulation bells-and-whistles with this effort. It needs to improve efforts when it comes to tracking marketing and recruiting strategies with the use of Web 2.0 technologies and customer-relationship management (CRM) tools.

The solution allows recruiters to analyze the center�s activity to see which simulators and video games are most popular with individual recruits�helping them focus on specific military roles that may be the best fit for a candidate. It can take information gathered from post-visit recruiter/candidate communications via sites such as Facebook to help gauge interests, demographics and overall propensity to serve in the Armed Services. While other agencies have spent five or more years launching such an operation, Acumen Solutions and the Army were able to get the Philadelphia center open within a year.

And the cloud solution has delivered cost-savings results for the Army, as recruiter manpower in Philadelphia has decreased by 50 percent. �It replaces five smaller recruitment stations in the Philadelphia area�at about the same annual operating cost,� says Maj. Larry Dillard, the U.S. Army program manager over the center.

Acumen Solutions is making a similar impact with other government agencies via cloud-based systems. It�s using Salesforce.com to track financial operations for a branch of the U.S. Department of State that monitors global nuclear-arms activity, and has developed a cloud computing platform for the Department of Health and Human Services to manage key programs such as an electronic health records initiative.

�We are seeing government agencies adopt SAAS [software-as-a-service] solutions for mission-critical applications similar to their Fortune 500 peers,� states Marty Young, managing director of the Public Sector Practice at Acumen. �Cloud computing enables agencies to deploy enterprise solutions in weeks instead of years, and at a cost that is often 20 percent of the fully loaded cost of an on-premises software implementation. It�s now becoming a standard approach that the majority of agencies are exploring.�