AIE partners with early adopters at Ohio National Guard

Accessions Information Environment (AIE) leaders shared a preview of mobile-friendly recruiting software with Ohio National Guard recruiters June 26 in Crystal City, Virginia.

“I am very excited about AIE coming online,” said Maj. Michael Antonas, commander of the Ohio National Guard’s Recruiting and Retention Battalion. “It will move recruiting into the 21st century.”

“AIE will give recruiters tools that enable the Army to do novel things to enlist Soldiers,” said Col. Matthew Paul, project manager for Integrated Personnel and Pay System — Army (IPPS-A) at Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems.

AIE will reduce processing time (so recruiters can recruit more).
The Ohio National Guard receives more than 10,000 leadsevery year and aims to efficiently process them in a very short period while the leads are still warm. “Our data shows that every day that goes by after a young individual expresses interest in the military is an opportunity to choose a competing service or component or just change their life plan,” Antonas said. “And we end up losing them.”

“Seventy percent of my recruiters’ time is currently consumed by processing applicants,” Antonas said. “AIE will streamline and expedite a lot of application processes so our recruiters can do the things they are best at — meeting applicants, selling our brand and sharing the benefits of service,” Antonas said. “Leveraging technology, AIE allows us to complete paperwork more accurately and more efficiently in order to get an applicant from first contact to contract.”

AIE is designed to work the same on a web browser as it does on a mobile phone, according to Paul. “AIE will enable recruiters to stay on the road looking for recruits instead of being chained to their desks. Our goal is to maximize a recruiter’s time doing those things and minimize their time doing processing.” 

What’s different about AIE 2.0?
“Everybody's rowing really hard to make AIE a success,” Paul said.

Several lessons learned have been applied to AIE 2.0, according to Paul. 

“We are maximizing Salesforce out-of-the-box capabilities,” he said. “In the past, we applied customizations that added technical bloat preventing us from keeping pace with the speed of commercial software upgrades. We are also implementing Agile software development methodology. Instead of working in a lab for a year or two just building capabilities and then handing it to a Soldier for the first time, we are identifying a minimum viable set of capabilities, putting that into the hands of recruiters and then iterating and deploying new capabilities in small, bite-sized chunks.”

Ohio National Guard feedback will fuel AIE software improvements. 
A team of more than 150 Ohio National Guard recruiters will be trained how to use AIE’s current capability. The team will recommend enhancements and identify opportunities for improvement in AIE’s current capability. The Ohio National Guard’s valuable feedback will be rolled into AIE’s three-week sprints. 

“We are really excited to be partners,” Antonas said. “We understand that there will be bumpy roads and hurdles to overcome. But we commit 1,000% of our effort and ingenuity.”

Continuous user feedback is a critical component of delivering modern software solutions. “We are proud to partner with the Ohio National Guard on this effort and committed to delivering modern software to support the Army’s accessions mission,” Paul said.