Talk to Dan Harris, and this D.C.-area executive’s passion for SAIC is palpable, especially these days.
In September, the leading government services contractor marked a major milestone, celebrating its 3-year anniversary as a newly formed company.
“The ‘new’ SAIC is doing very well,” says Harris, who serves as senior vice president and general manager for SAIC’s service lines. “We’re building upon past successes and our heritage, while continuing to grow with new customers.”
It’s been a little over three years since SAIC took a big gamble on its 40-year history of government service offerings by splitting into two companies: Leidos and the new SAIC. The latter soon spun off into a $4 billion publicly traded unit, which has maintained steady growth ever since.
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Strong Second-Quarter Performance
In early September, SAIC reported a second-quarter contract award activity of $1.3 billion – the strongest second-quarter award performance SAIC has seen since its separation in September 2013.
Throughout, Harris has been involved, both before and after the split. Having started with SAIC in 1999, when the company purchased his previous place of employment, Boeing Information Services, Harris has focused on Defense Department customers and later, the federal civilian marketplace.
Now, more than a year into his new role, Harris is focusing on the services sector. That new position coincides with a whole new direction for SAIC, which, prior to its split in 2013, had wrestled with a siloed approach to business in which various units offered similar services, with overlap and organizational conflicts of interest the unintended consequences.
That’s all changed in the years since the split, Harris notes. A big catalyst for that change, Harris adds, has been SAIC’s adoption of a matrix management approach at the corporate level.
“I’ve been with SAIC for quite some time and this – by far – is the best corporate structure that we’ve ever had to apply resources and solutions to our customers,” Harris said.
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Solutions on Two Fronts
The new approach, Harris adds, offers solutions on two fronts: internally, with a previous hierarchical approach to programs and customer units not easily shared across multiple units; and externally, for government customers who’ve struggled to nail down requirements for managed services in a fixed-price environment, while facing elongated acquisition cycles compounded by protests practically at every turn.
In the midst of such challenges, nimble offerings — fueled by a reimagined business model — are key.
“We are able to deploy resources across any group, or into any program, as needed, and then migrate them off if and when they are no longer needed,” Harris says. “We now have the best in enterprise disciplines — not just the best for a small, isolated customer set.”
“As an example,” Harris adds, “if we are doing great network engineering for NASA, where we run their worldwide network structure, there may be some applicable measures we can use for the Department of State’s global network, which we also manage.”
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New Services Sector Support
Today, SAIC’s five customer-facing organizations are supported by a services sector. That sector houses the technical resources for the deployment of programs and development of solutions enterprisewide.
“That’s quite a variation from how we used to operate, and it has worked out extremely well for us,” Harris says, speaking from SAIC’s McLean, Virginia, headquarters.
Harris’ own role is integral to that new approach.
“Essentially, I oversee the day-to-day interactions and management of our seven service lines — and the deployment of those resources to programs and technology investments — across those service lines,” he says.
Those lines, Harris adds, encompass software and hardware integration, as well as IT managed services, all backed by 12,000 technical personnel.
“We also have training and simulation, cloud data sciences, mission engineering support and then intel system engineering support – resources that are aligned around those disciplines, which are very efficient and meaningful to our customers,” Harris says.
Notable Wins
Over the past year, key contract wins have ensued.
Notable awards include an FAA Controller Training contract — a strategic win, Harris notes, which speaks to SAIC’s legacy of training and simulation for the war fighter. In addition, SAIC nabbed a $549 million contract to support GSA Enterprise Operations; and a $194 million contract to upgrade AAVs on behalf of the U.S. Marine Corps based in Charleston, South Carolina.
Along with a new business model, SAIC plans to navigate future questions, such as a change in administration and evolving customer needs, with a diversified portfolio.
“We have a great mix across Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and DDD commands, and then you combine that with our federal civilian and intelligence footprints — across those seven technical domains and customer sets,” Harris says. “I think we are in pretty good shape for what happens next.”