As Iron Bow’s vice president of sales for the Army, Defense Information Systems Agency and Intelligence division, Henry Tragle helps meet the military’s technology needs, which is no small task these days.
Defense organizations are exploring how to most effectively apply artificial intelligence to improve mission outcomes, implementing zero trust architectures and moving to hybrid cloud infrastructures.
At the same time, agencies are struggling to effectively get the upgrades they need because “a significant amount of technical debt has built up,” Tragle said. Iron Bow is working to address all of these issues, but with a particular focus on the last one.
As solicitations have become more consolidated and centralized, “we’ve restructured our go-to-market model to respond to demand signals and better serve our customers’ requirements,” he said. To that end, Iron Bow has evolved from its traditional value-added reseller position and “is now called an NGSP, or next-generation solutions provider.”
The shift will “allow us to partner with large service providers and systems integrators and fill their gaps with our advanced systems engineering capabilities,” he said.
Iron Bow has defined four key capability pillars: IT modernization, digital transformation, cybersecurity and workplace modernization. To support this, the company is simultaneously rolling out new hardware subscription and enterprise agreement models to “provide new acquisition options for customers” and help resolve technical debt, Tragle said.
To help agencies move from capital expenditures to operational expenditures, Iron Bow is offering what it calls next-generation lifecycle management: hardware subscriptions.
“For customers who operate on annual budgets, we can offer IT on a subscription basis,” he says. “This makes their budgets more predictable from year to year. We provide all the hardware integration, all the training, eliminating the need for multiple contract actions. And our customers always have the latest and greatest hardware and technology architecture.”
Tragle used the analogy of golf course maintenance to drive home the point.
“On a golf course, maintenance crews don’t want to have all the latest mowers, trimmers and edgers; they just want the blades to be sharp and ready to go. With a subscription model, customers pay a fee every month and always have access to the latest and greatest equipment,” he said.
This is what next-generation lifecycle management offers military IT: “They can retain employees, improve efficiency, not be bogged down in what they need to buy and what they need to replace, and not have to take responsibility when equipment goes off the Approved Product List (APL). They’re essentially outsourcing all that responsibility with a single subscription bill,” he said.
While the model offers clear benefits to the military, Tragl said there is still work to be done to encourage adoption: Getting the military to manage their technology spending differently will just take time.
“Everybody agrees that this is the most efficient way to move forward,” he said. “There’s definitely a demand for this.”
Even as he seeks to help redirect the military’s IT acquisitions, Tragle has been lobbying internally to ensure smooth adoption of Iron Bow’s restructuring efforts. “Change is always difficult, especially if you’ve been in the same role for a long time. When things are already running smoothly, it can be hard to change to a new model,” he said.
As Iron Bow redefined its operating model, strong leadership was key to its success. “We had to communicate well within the organization so that everyone knew what our goals were. Our goal isn’t 10 percent or 15 percent growth. It’s 30 percent growth. And to get there, we needed to make some dramatic changes,” he said.
Structural adjustments have also been made, particularly on the sales side: “We developed a customized sales methodology that we call CSX (Consultive Sales Experience), which consists of six distinct phases,” he says. This rigorous process ensures that the reimagined business model can be deployed effectively to support customers’ mission needs.
Tragle began his career as a contractor supporting the Office of the Secretary of Defense and said he is pleased to still be a part of the ongoing effort to help strengthen the military.
“I’ve always been involved in sports, starting with football, wrestling and track and field and later becoming very competitive in Ironman and competing in the World Championships in Hawaii,” he said.As with any sporting event, success in the GovCon field is a team effort.
“What I enjoy right now is building the best sales team in the industry. I love seeing my team succeed,” he said.
