Finance transformation underway at Vance

  • Published
  • By 2nd Lt. Tara Nelson
  • 71st Comptroller Squadron
VANCE AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  The Air Force Financial Management transformation currently underway is the greatest single change in the organization's 60-year history. The Air Force Financial Management community is transforming the way its conduct business to better provide expert decision support and analysis to commanders while continuing to provide high quality financial services to all Airmen. 

According to John G. Vonglis, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller, the result of this effort will save the Air Force more than $200 million over the next 10 years, money that will be available for other programs supporting the war-fighter. 

One of the cornerstones of the financial transformation effort is the opening of the Air Force Financial Services Center this fall at Ellsworth AFB, S.D. The AFFSC will centralize and streamline most financial processes now being handled by individual bases.
The AFFSC is set to open its doors for business in October and it will centralize and transform the majority of financial services that are currently provided by 93 separate Financial Service Offices at base level. 

"The AFFSC will be established through two phases ultimately resulting in Airmen having the total force expertise of FM matters available at one location," said Roger Bick, Air Force Financial Management Strategic Planning and Transformation Program Management Office director at the Pentagon. 

Phase I will begin with the opening of the Central Processing Center (CPC) in October. The CPC will focus on consolidating base-level back-shop operations.
"Such operations include, but are not limited to, processing travel and military pay documents," said Mr. Bick. "These transactions are termed "backshop" as they are not generally seen by the customer." 

Phase II operations will being in October 2008 when a "24/7" full-service contact center is established. Knowledgeable staff in the contact center will provide top-quality pay and travel service to customers via telephone, Web, and fax. 

"From this point onwards, Airmen will only need one telephone number to find solutions to their financial issues," said Lt. Col. Howard Osborne, Financial Services Transformation team leader. "Having a single contact center will eliminate the inconveniences that customers experience in having to fix financial issues during regular duty day". 

To prepare each base to transition to the new Financial Service Center, the SAF/FMT Financial Service Transformation Team has launched a "Cut-over" initiative. Cut-over includes both the preparation for migration of the workload and the actual migration of the workload to the Financial Service Center. 

A team of experts on Cut-over comes to Vance Tuesday to brief wing and base leaders on the process, and brief and provide preparation guidance to the Comptroller Squadron personnel on the changes. 

For Maj. Monroe Neal, Jr., 71st Comptroller Squadron commander, the new changes will have an impact on Vance. 

"Within the next three years, we will see a reduction in manning of our customer service section. There will be a shift in how we do business here as some functions will shift to the new Air Force Financial Services Center at Ellsworth," he said. 

"One of the biggest changes is that instead of doing vouchers here, they will instead be sent to the new customer service center. We will no longer compute any vouchers locally; they will be done at Ellsworth," said the major. 

With regard to what customers need to do to prepare for the changes, Major Neal said to arm themselves with patience. 

"It is a different way of doing things and we are doing our best to make it seamless. Like any new system, though, you will have some glitches that you didn't think of and we will have to work through it. I want our customers to have patience as we implement these changes and the new way of doing things comes online." 

(Some information courtesy of the Air Force Financial Management Strategic Planning and Transformation Program Management Office)