Don’t Waste Time or Money on iRAPT Training Materials
A couple of months ago we wrote a blog post on WAWF being renamed to iRAPT. You can read the post here, but the gist is that, essentially, not much will change for DoD vendors looking to keep compliant by submitting advance shipping information, including RFID and UID data, as well as Invoices electronically. This is particularly true if those vendors are using Odyssey’s software solution. The reason we’re revisiting this topic is that, without proper understanding, DoD vendors could potentially pay for information and training that isn’t really necessary.
Before we begin, we’ll refer you to another blog post detailing the acronyms we’ll be using like iRAPT (Invoice receipt acceptance and property transfer), WAWF (wide area workflow), RFID (radio frequency 
identification), UID (unique identification), etc. Check it out here if you’re not familiar with any of these.
What really sparked this post is an email we recently received offering a training manual on the WAWF changeover. At first glance, this detailed manual (almost 200 pages and “written in layman’s terms”) seems like a great training tool for any DoD supplier. At $495 per manual, the buy in is pretty steep, but it’s worth it to ensure proper vendor compliance, right? Maybe, but there are a few issues we see with this.
First, having employees comb through a 200-page manual on a subject as tedious as this isn’t incredibly practical. An iRAPT training manual this large will not only take time to get through, but if these DoD instructions are to be followed they must also be studied and memorized. This is simply not an efficient process. Secondly, while $495 per manual may not be substantial for larger suppliers, it is a cost that isn’t really necessary. As we stated before in our blog, if your company is utilizing a software solution from the DoD approved software list then nothing has really changed.
We look at it this way: why spend time and money figuring out how the watch works when Odyssey will just tell you what time it is? In other words, our software is specifically built to be user-proof, only necessitating a few clicks to send all imperative DoD RFID and DoD UID data as well as the electronic invoicing component. As we stated in our previous blog, the most important thing to remember is that the change from iRAPT to WAWF doesn’t alter the critical nature of the application or Odyssey’s position in the process. Our DoD software is specifically built around submitting this information electronically by marshaling these unique identifiers, providing their management and incorporation within MIL-STD 129 R and MIL-STD 130N interior and exterior label compliance.
It all breaks down to this: If you’re using Odyssey’s DoD approved rfid software solution, keep doing what you’re doing. If your not using Odyssey’s software platform that’s ok too, but don’t go buy an expensive manual and hold classes for your employees so they can better understand the system. Please consider saving your
time and money and don’t send employees to third party training junkets to get certified on how to use a free government website.
The problems and challenges related to the DoD process are intertwined between departments. Knowing how to use the DoDs free site, is only one piece of the puzzle; and the last piece at that. In order to make the process efficient and effective, companies must recognize and think through the entire set of tasks. Contract management, RFID creation, MIL-129 label creation, UID format and marking are all tasks that need to be addressed prior to even logging into iRAPT. If all of these can be handled in one solution and then pushed directly to the government through a single point and click submission, doesn’t that make the most sense?
