JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas -- A team from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, is up for the top prize in a Shark Tank-style competition after presenting their idea to a panel of financial management subject matter experts at the inaugural Financial Management Innovation Rodeo.
Staff Sgt. Donald Jegede, 355th Comptroller Squadron financial analysis supervisor, and Senior Airman Willie Mitchell, 355th Comptroller Squadron financial operations technician, pitched their “Lightning FM” proposal as one of four finalist teams out of 24 entries from across the Department of the Air Force at the event, hosted by Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center (AFIMSC).
The Honorable Dave Weinberg, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller, will announce the winner on May 27 at a Defense Financial Management Institute event in Orlando.
Hosted by AFIMSC in collaboration with SAF/FM, the goal of the rodeo was to improve FM programs and processes by fielding solutions to problems that can save time, money and resources by making CPTS operations more efficient or improving the customer service experience.
Chief Master Sgt. Leah Anderson, Secretary of the Air Force Financial Management Executive for Enlisted Matters and financial management career field manager, served as one of the judges, stating she was impressed with all four teams’ forward thinking, thorough approach to the problem set and ability to convey their proposals in a convincing manner.
“It was absolutely amazing,” said Anderson, “I am constantly in awe of what our Airmen and Guardians, including our civilians and officers, do daily to attack some of the overarching issues we see across our career field enterprise.”
LightningFM is a CAC-enabled FM workflow platform designed to standardize the full lifecycle of purchase requests. Built with Power Apps, SharePoint, and Power Automate, it replaces a process that is often spread across PDF forms, email chains, shared drive folders, and separate Excel trackers with one centralized platform.
The solution supports GPC purchase, Form 9, and deployment gear requests, as well as other operations and maintenance-funded purchases, giving customers a consistent way to submit requests and FM personnel a reliable source of documentation for improved auditability.
“Approval wait time is the biggest thing we're solving,” Jegede said.
It reduces time between getting things routed and approved. The second issue we're solving is decreasing workload by relieving the time and stress of back-and-forth emails by standardizing a specific online process for the organization.”
For his part, Mitchell saw the potential for Lightning FM to be a universal tool that could also help other career fields in their routing and approval processes. While the process is not completely refined, early results are promising, he said.
“Sgt. Jegede originally developed Lightning FM to solve problems he was immediately facing,” Mitchell said. “I saw how this could be applied enterprise-wide. It’s a universal process we’re codifying and making digital. I started using it to see how well it reduces human input errors and increases accuracy and auditability. So far, so good!”
If the D-M team convinced the judges their idea was the best of the bunch, they will be hoisting a silver boot winner’s trophy at the end of May and will get help from experts to fully develop and field Lightning FM.