Bayen Group was contracted to provide a custom SharePoint application tailored to the client’s specific, government-based needs. We designed, built, and sustain an Undefinitized Contract Actions (UCA) Approval System to allow their Supply Chain division a comprehensive tool to request purchases within Undefinitized Contracts, or contracts without finalized terms or scope. This is critical to ensure growth and innovation in one of the country’s largest defense contractors.

Northrop Grumman is a global aerospace, defense, and security company. The majority of their business is with the U.S. government, principally the Department of Defense and intelligence community. In addition, they deliver solutions to global and commercial customers. 

• 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion 

In 2021, Bayen Group developed the first iteration of the UCA Approvals System for Northrop Grumman. This platform provided the Supply Chain division with the capacity to make purchasing requests within undefinitized contracts quickly and easily while keeping track of all spending actions and trends. A central problem this organization faced was managing multi-tiered approvals that are delivered to different levels of management dependent on the level of budget requested. They also needed more visibility into purchasing decisions and approvals. 

This platform was and is critical to the Supply Chain division due to the size and scope of the products and services they provide to the federal government. To keep projects moving and innovation growing, organizations often make decisions to move forward with tasks outside of the scope of existing contract parameters. There are strict security and equity requirements involved in this process. Therein lies the importance of the UCA Approvals System. 

In order to keep up with compliance requirements and updated technological advancements, Northrop solicited Bayen Group to redesign and enhance the existing platform. This included: 

• User-intuitive interface 
• More accurate data collection 
• Streamlined workflows 
• Search and review functions for UCA metrics 
• Updated security requirements 

The original UCA Approval System we developed for Northrop Grumman was an automated and streamlined way for Buyers within the Supply Chain division to submit multi-tiered approval requests, dependent on level of budget requested, for purchases within undefinitized contracts. This form uses Power Automate to pull known data to auto-fill relevant fields and alert necessary parties when requests are made and completed. Additionally, it leverages Power BI to provide a wide range of metrics for the Supply Chain division to understand purchasing trends and make data-informed decisions.

The upgrades to this form included enhancing the user interface to make the process even simpler and more efficient, ensuring the most accurate data collection, updating workflows to deliver more parties access to relevant information, providing search and review functionality to allow users to find “legacy” or previously completed forms, and improving security requirements.