by Bridget Benton & Sandra Griswold (AMK-010)

Employees in the Enterprise Services Center (ESC) host quarterly Strategic Financial Enterprise (SFE) meetings each year with their customers in Financial Management and Procurement. The SFE meetings are a time for ESC senior leadership to deliver vital information to their customers’ Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and other stakeholders. The ESC senior leadership team, along with Michelle Coppedge (Director of the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center, AMC-001), Kevin O’Connor, (Deputy Director of the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center, AMC-002), and Jennifer Funk (Deputy Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Transportation, OST-B-1), provided key information and aid in promoting open communications among all ESC stakeholders.

For years, these meetings have been held in Washington, D.C., at the Department of Transportation (DOT) building. Due to the global health crisis, the last two meetings that were held in April and August of 2020 were successfully conducted (virtually) using the Microsoft Teams communication platform. Not only were the meetings successful with great appreciation from the customers, but there was also record attendance. Due to historically limited seating in most conference rooms in the DOT building, the invite list of the meeting was restricted to around fifty people. However, now with virtual capabilities, the team was able to open up and expand the invite list. During the last two SFE meetings, there were more than 80 people in attendance for each meeting.

During the week of the SFE meeting, time was set aside for a number of customer engagement meetings (CEMs). ESC senior management and the Customer Account Representatives (CARs) met with the CFOs and their financial managers to discuss a number of topics with each customer one-on-one. This flexibility gave members of the team time to focus on items that pertain just to their customers’ needs and requirements. Due to travel time from one location to another in D.C., it was common to only get to see a few customers. However, now that meetings are virtual, there is time to see several more customers during that timeframe. Even though the customers prefer to see the ESC team in-person, they are happy that ESC continues to hold these meetings during such unexpected circumstances.