With over 300,000 personnel serving in the U.S. Department of the Air Force (DAF), its Manpower, Personnel, and Services Air Staff (A1) needed a better user experience (UX) to manage personnel matters at scale.
To achieve that goal, A1 committed to a vast undertaking: migrating legacy systems to centralized platforms with modernized, consistent UX.
These legacy systems were comprised of mission-critical applications in place since the 1970s, that, over time, were moved to the cloud. Data was siloed, making for a poor end-user experience.
Air Force personnel said the systems they needed weren’t user-friendly—particularly on mobile—and search functions were poor. Adding to the frustration, end-users often had to call a hotline to check the status of certain processes.
To address these shortcomings, A1 envisioned a hire-to-retire portal that would make it simple for someone seeking information or checking the status of their applications. App use cases ranged from fitness tests to performance evaluations. To build features like these, A1 needed to move its older systems into a future state architecture with data sources, a data layer, and intuitive user interfaces.
Initially, the organization attempted to build its hire-to-retire platform using Salesforce and systems integrators, but that required writing custom code. This effort involved a significant amount of time and money but didn’t meet requirements. That’s when DAF turned to Skuid.
A1 tasked the Digital Transformation Activity (DTA) team with designing and developing Salesforce apps using the Skuid platform. DTA was able to build apps that connected to any data source, while meeting user requirements without compromise. The team took its initial app, myFitness, from wireframe to delivery in two days, exceeding original requirements with improved scheduling capabilities, without needing to write custom code.
Using Skuid, DAF is now equipped with tools to develop human-centered, design-focused applications. Rapid prototyping also allows the organization to quickly execute its platform migration goals while eliminating costly service desk calls and cases. With a toolset that helps it focus on front-end development and configure dynamic actions from a variety of data sources, the A1 team has realized rapid time-to-value cost savings.
The user experience for personnel is also much improved. With a team of DAF-employed UX experts working on design, a portal landing page with apps that share the same look and feel results in a more intuitive experience for airmen and guardians.
Between active duty and retired military, the portal supports over 575,000 users and gets 300-400,000 unique logins a month.
