Robbins-Gioia Analyzes Business Processes

"Seventy-five percent of our work involves IT, especially [implementing] ERP and upgrading networks," said Patricia Davis-Muffett, vice president of marketing at Robbins-Gioia, based here. "A lot of [customers] had been asking us to help them integrate the business case into the project management [strategy]."

The result of those queries is Robbins-Gioia's new Business Case Analysis service. The company has packaged together best practices and recommended business processes into an offering "with a very quick ramp-up" that customers can use to make their business or government agency more efficient, Davis-Muffett said.

Charlie Armstrong, executive director of the Customs and Border Protection Modernization Office in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said the former U.S. Customs Service began revamping its own internal processes 10 years ago.

It's arguable that the office was in need of more updating than some other groups in the federal government. Armstrong pointed out that some of its processes dated back to 1789, when the customs agency was first begun.

Robbins-Gioia is helping the customs office stay on top of that challenging project, one made even more so by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and merging of the 20 or so other departments and agencies now housed there.

Armstrong turned to Robbins-Gioia in part "to assist us in doing a lot of the planning, the overall program management, some of the contract management components and what we call human capital planning," he said.

In addition, IBM Global Services, Computer Sciences Corp. and other partners are helping the Customs and Border Protection Modernization Office restructure its IT needs and align more closely with its security mission, Armstrong said.