Section 2

The Financial Systems Landscape

Three organizing facts that explain almost everything about how the system inventory is structured.

Prepared for: Peter Shang, GS-15 Portfolio ManagerResearch compiled July 2026 — unclassified, open-source sources only

FOR OFFICIAL REFERENCE USE — NOT AN OFFICIAL DoD/DFAS PUBLICATION

Three organizing facts explain almost everything about why the DoD's financial system inventory looks the way it does:

Systems are organized by Military Department / Agency, not by function. Each Service built (or is building) its own general-fund ERP system of record; the Defense Agencies share one (DAI); and dozens of specialized “feeder” systems (travel, payroll, contract writing, supply, personnel) push transactions into the general ledger system rather than being part of it.
Two COTS ERP product lines dominate: SAP (Army's GFEBS, GCSS-Army, LMP; Navy ERP; DLA EBS) and Oracle E-Business Suite (Air Force/USTRANSCOM's DEAMS; the Defense Agencies' DAI). A handful of pre-ERP mainframe/legacy systems (STARS-FL/HCM, SABRS, STANFINS) still process residual open-year data or, in SABRS's case, remain the Marine Corps' system of record pending full DAI cutover.
A central data layer — the Advana platform under CDAO, and the older DAI/DASC and GEX (Global Exchange) interfaces — pulls obligation, disbursement, and accounting data out of each system of record for department-wide reporting, audit support, and now AI/analytics use cases, without functioning as a system of record itself.