Booz Allen Hamilton has evolved from its humble beginnings 107 years ago when it was started by Edwin G. Booz as a service offering impartial advice to then-nascent organizations such as Goodyear, Canadian Pacific Railway, and the like. Now, with a 2020 $113 million
The plan to become a top-tier government contractor started a decade ago with a strategy that Booz Allen entitled the Vision 2020 approach. Now, the company holds $5.6 billion in prime contracts.
“One of the things that I’m most proud of is our focus on becoming a premier digital integrator for the federal government,” said Karen Dahut, Executive Vice President of the company. “We are bringing world-class tools and digital strategies to our clients in a way that enables them to create the transformation they need for their mission.”
A key factor to their success, she relayed, is the implementation in 2012 of a strategic innovation group, focused on discovering and broadening innovations across the tech market. The company uses a strategy that relies on the commercial sector to test its products with a large portion of its technology with foundations in civilian access before being implemented in intelligence and defense sectors.
Booz Allen also excels thanks to its calculated approach with acquisitions. Though the company holds the capital to make a large number of M&As possible, Dahut asserts that the company is very intentional about who it absorbs into its bubble. But, that doesn’t mean Booz Allen is stingy when it matters.
The company recently acquired Liberty IT Solutions for $725 million, marking its first acquisition since 2017 when it absorbed commercial cybersecurity company, Morphick. Liberty IT already had its foot in federal business-dealings, working closely with the Veterans Affairs Department. This acquisition offered obvious benefits to Booz Allen, a company with increasing stakes in cybersecurity leadership, especially after a controversial hacking incident in 2011.
The company has plans to release a newly outlined strategy of operations sometime this fall, but Dahut stated, “As we pass through the next decade, technology will not be just an enabler to our clients’ missions but it will be the definition of the mission itself.”
