With 20 years of experience in federal IT, mostly in DoD, Definitive Logic ups its game to help agencies governmentwide get their business processes “out of t...
“If we can put a stake in the heart of a dying system that’s been around for 30 years and is just sucking the resources from a legacy standpoint, that’s when our developers and our program managers get really excited.”
President and Chief Customer Experience Officer, Definitive Logic
Despite acquiring Digital Mobilizations Inc. and pushing it to just the other side of medium-sized and into full-and-open competitions in the federal technology space, Definitive Logic isn’t about hitting a target size or revenue figure.
Its business model aims to “grow the business by doing the right thing, producing outcomes for our customers,” said Michael Monson, president and chief customer experience officer at Definitive Logic.
It’s one of the things that attracted Monson to the company. In part, because he has a passion for improving return on investment for government agencies. He spent 24 years in uniform as a comptroller with the Air Force — retiring in 2015 as director of Air Force budget programs and integration in the Pentagon.
“If we can put a stake in the heart of a dying system that’s been around for 30 years and is just sucking the resources from a legacy standpoint, that’s when our developers and our program managers get really excited,” Monson said on the American Society of Military Comptrollers’ The Business of Defense podcast on Federal News Network.
Although Definitive Logic began two decades ago focused on financial management systems in the Defense planning, programming and budgeting execution (PPBE) space, it has always aimed to be a disruptor, Monson said. “We’re really about harnessing technology to transform organizations and save them time, money and manpower.”
It has evolved progressively and today focuses on digital transformation projects across the federal government as well as in state and local and commercial markets. “We started to look at, ‘Where else can we solve the big hairy problems that are out there?’ ” Monson said.
Today, Definitive Logic focuses on five areas: financial management, human capital asset management, real property management, logistics and supply chain. The emphasis is on finding ways to implement low-code applications, commercial-off-the-shelf applications and cloud applications to drive financial and program changes, he said.
To really tackle those “big hairy problems” that Monson mentioned, the company realized it needed to grow some so it could hold its own against the big players in the federal space. It’s why Definitive Logic took on venture capital funding in 2020 and began working with Blue Delta Capital Partners, he said.
The Blue Delta support and expertise allowed the company to make its acquisition of DMI, which “really put us on the on the fast track to do some really cool stuff across the federal government,” Monson said.
“We don’t want to bid on things unless we think we can really make a difference.”
President and Chief Customer Experience Officer, Definitive Logic
The way Definitive Logic sees it, if the applications it develops, fields and sustains don’t drive outcomes and ROI — saving agencies time, money and manpower — then “we failed,” Monson said.
For that reason, the company is selective in the work that it bids on and tries to think through the business case from the perspective of the agency seeking proposals. It calculates the cost of the government hiring the company relative to the ultimate outcome, he said. “What is the outcome in the future? Are we retiring legacy systems that have been around for 49 years?”
Ultimately, the goal is to save the government money by moving federal business processes out of the 1990s, Monson said.
“Sometimes we walk away. We don’t even bid on things that that we don’t think make sense to the customer,” he said, adding, “We don’t want to bid on things unless we think we can really make a difference.”
To listen to the full discussion between Definitive Logic’s Michael Monson and Rich Brady, CEO at the American Society of Military Comptrollers, click the podcast play button below:
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