GSA: Financial Systems & Process Automation

Efficient & Effective Solutions

Download our GSA Process Automation Case Study

Challenge

The MIL Corporation (MIL) supports the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Department of Operations and Maintenance Support, which provides financial services support to the US General Services Administration (GSA). A recent task was to automate the nightly GSA credit card Alias Default Transactions Files process. Because the agency’s antiquated manual credit card process was not in compliance with industry best practices, it presented a high-level of risk for errors within the credit card process, as well as data posted to GSA’s accounting system of record, Pegasys. These issues caused the nightly process to frequently abort, leading to incomplete credit card runs. Unfortunately, when an abort occurs, all future credit card processes are suspended until the error(s) that caused the abort are identified and corrected.

After extensive observation and analysis, MIL presented its findings above to USDA’s Operations & Maintenance Support Division (O&M), identifying an extremely high potential for risk to its unit as well as USDA’s Office of Administrative Services, Credit Card Division. MIL was then tasked to perform an analysis for process improvement. Assembling a team consisting of the prime contractor, appropriate agencies, and the US-Bank, MIL was given the go-ahead to spearhead all efforts to build and enact an automation plan for the daily GSA Credit Card Alias and Default Transactions File received nightly from the US-Bank.

Solution

MIL and the process improvement team spent six months analyzing the credit card flow process, culminating in the creation of several mock-ups of new, automated credit card load-file processes for alias and default transactions. These mock-ups held plans for both existing credit card holders and potential new credit card holders while containing all elements required by the bank. The new method ensures that the nightly file submitted by the US-Bank matches the Pegasys system credit card default file, resulting in a successful automated process.

Benefit

MIL and its team implemented key automation practices that allow for successful credit card filing processes. These solutions require default accounting information (as well as default card holder information) to be contained by the US-Bank for each existing and new credit card holder, resulting in an immediate reduction and possible elimination of credit card file aborts. The process improvement also provide USDA with the potential to eliminate the need for its nightly credit card default transaction file process.

Ultimately, this process improvement results in accurate Pegasys financial accounting records by requiring an accounting file-check system from the US-Bank prior to the nightly default transaction file completion. This improvement automatically matches the credit card transactions to the corresponding credit log and eliminates the current requirement for the card holder to perform manual reconciliation for each transaction. As a result, the accuracy of monthly credit card reporting has greatly improved.