From First Bid to Closeout: One Connected Operating Model for Aerospace & Defense 

Cognitus, an IBM Company, Cora Systems, SAP, and Twenty5 have joined forces to introduce the A&D End-to-End Value Framework – unifying program delivery execution, ERP, and compliance. 

Governments around the world are demanding more from their defense industrial base. In the U.S., the mandate is on-time, on-budget delivery. In Europe, it's rearmament, rebuilding capacity at speed and scale. Either way, the message to contractors is the same: move faster, prove control, and do it now. 

Somewhere in your organization, that pressure looks like this: a program manager staring at three dashboards that don't agree with each other. A finance director reconciling a bid built in Excel against actual costs locked in a system the estimating team can't access. A senior executive asking a question nobody can answer with confidence: "Did we actually make money on that program?" 

This isn't a technology failure; it's an architectural one. As governments push for higher output on tighter timelines, the cost of that fragmentation compounds faster than ever. 

The Business Problem: Five Cracks That Put A&D Programs in the Red  

Across the industry, aerospace and defense organizations are grappling with the same structural challenges, regardless of size or geography: 

• Bids and proposals built on spreadsheets are disconnected from actual production costs which creates margin erosion from the very first deal, or worse, exposure to defective pricing charges. 

• Programs with no real-time controls, where cost overruns and schedule slippage surface too late to correct. 

• Growing government compliance requirements — DCAA FedRAMP, FAR, DFARS, IPMDAR contract lifecycle — bolted on as an afterthought rather than built into the process. 

• Siloed systems with no unified view of earned value, resource utilization, or committed costs. 

• An inability to rapidly estimate complex bids or demonstrate compliance readiness — making it harder to win and manage both prime and sub-prime contracts. 

The result? Major programs running hundreds of millions — sometimes billions — in the red. Not because of bad intent, but because nobody had a complete, real-time picture of what was actually happening. 

Why This. Why Now. 

Defense budgets are rising. Geopolitical instability and rising sovereignty mandates are driving program complexity higher. And a new generation of government procurement requirements is demanding faster delivery, tighter compliance, and real-time program visibility that legacy architectures simply cannot provide. 

At the same time, the enterprise technology landscape has reached an inflection point. Cloud- ERP systems with AI-ready data foundations, and purpose-built specialist applications can now be integrated in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. The window to modernize — and to get AI-ready before competitors do — is open right now. 

That convergence is precisely why Cognitus, Cora Systems, SAP and Twenty5 have partnered on the A&D End to End Value Framework: a first-of-its-kind, unified approach built specifically for the Engineer-to-Order complexity of aerospace and defense.  

The A&D End to End Value Framework: One Closed Loop, Faster Time to Value 

The framework spans the entire program lifecycle — from first bid to contract closeout — across five connected stages: Proposal Management, Contract Award and Set Up, Program Management, Project Fulfillment, and Deliver and Invoicing. The end-to-end process is powered by the joint capabilities of SAP and its partners, with SAP’s autonomous suite providing the digital foundation.  

The approach is designed to reduce manual re-entry, reconciliation efforts, and version control nightmares. One source of truth across estimating, program execution, ERP, and compliance — providing what the industry calls wing-to-wing traceability. 

PARTNER PERSPECTIVES 

“In aerospace and defense, transformation only works when it’s built on a trusted foundation. SAP provides Cloud ERP that executes across financials, operations, manufacturing, and supply chains — allowing every part of the enterprise to move together with confidence.”  

—  Sayan Bose, Head of Industry, SAP 

“Cora Systems brings real-time program health, earned value management, and schedule control directly into the SAP environment. For organizations managing complex, multi-phase programs, that live visibility means catching problems early, not after it is too late.”  

— Adrian Morrissey, CRO, Cora Systems 

“Twenty5 transforms the proposal process from spreadsheet-driven guesswork to a structured, data-connected pricing and estimating engine, aligned with ERP cost structures, BOM hierarchies, and historical actuals. Accurate pricing from the very first bid is how you protect margin for the life of the program.”  

— Nate Joseph, CRO, Twenty5 

“Government compliance in aerospace and defense is non-negotiable, and it cannot be bolted on after the fact. Cognitus brings the DCAA readiness, FAR and DFARS controls, and FedRAMP-ready contract lifecycle management capabilities built into SAP’s framework, supporting an AI-driven, clean core architecture that is ready for innovation.”  

— Nitin Khanna, Partner A&D, Cognitus, an IBM Company 

Three Value Pillars. Accelerated Impact 

The four companies are collaborating to deliver more than operational efficiency. Together we can deliver: 

• Faster Time-to-value  Standard, out-of-the-box integration and built-in best practices reduce TCO and IT complexity, delivering measurable outcomes faster than any single-vendor approach. 

• Comprehensive Data Foundation. One unified, clean data structure that connects data from estimating, program execution, risk, usage and compliance in real time. 

• Accelerating AI adoption. Establishing a high-quality, industry-specific data foundation needed to power AI agents, intelligent automation, and predictive program management going forward.  

That is what separates this approach from every other enterprise solution in the market. 

About the A&D End to End Value Framework  

The A&D End to End Value Framework is a joint initiative by SAP, Cora Systems, Cognitus, and Twenty5 — three specialist leaders united around a shared SAP digital core to deliver end-to-end program management, estimating, regulatory compliance, and execution capability purpose-built for aerospace and defense.