It’s a lot easier when your software does the flexing…
With the release of R3’s Program Management for GovCon solution earlier this month we now have the Trio of business critical, off-the-shelf (OTS) solutions for Government Contractors all running on SharePoint 2013. Each of these 3 solutions is purpose-built to address the respective needs of IDIQ Task Order Management, WinCenter for Capture and Proposal Management, and Program Management. Being off-the-shelf software solutions you are able to get going quickly and cost effectively.
However, a large part of our value proposition is what is not in the OTS solution. It is the flexibility of our solutions that empower you to have it your way. Unlike traditional monolithic software, our solutions are designed to Flex. Just about everything can be changed. You can add new features or turn them off, you can extend the solution and mix and match features, and, you can integrate it with other solutions and external systems. In effect, you get the business value of customized software at the cost of OTS software. This “Flex factor” is built into the software with specific features designed to make it easy to make changes in a consistent and supportable way.
Examples of R3 Flex-Ability At Work
Below are some examples of how the Flex-Ability of R3 solutions is a factor in the success of our customers:
We recently posted the article Changing WinCenter to Accommodate Your Process. This article tells the story of a customer who bought WinCenter for Capture and Proposal management because it provided the framework to drive business development using a consistent process. The challenge was that they had come up with a completely new process that was very different from the industry standard GovCon BD approach. Effectively, during the implementation they changed about 50% of the solution to meet their needs – all through configuration. This is a high % but was perfectly doable. And, by leveraging WinCenter they estimate that the cost of the solution was less than 25% of the cost and a third of the time of what it would have cost them had they gone with proprietary software or custom development.
Another customer was simply looking for a system that they can use to manage the end-to-end life cycle of a multi-award IDIQ. It is a large IDIQ. They need to able to manage the process of winning the Task Orders working with Partners, and then, manage the delivery of the Task Orders working with Partners and interacting with Customers. This is not a unique scenario. But, you’d find that there is no off-the-shelf solution for this. However, R3 does have a solution. As described in this article, R3’s Solution for End-to-End IDIQ Program Management, we met this scenario by delivering a single system that is a “blend” of our Program Management and our IDIQ Management Solution. The feature sets of these two solutions are basically snapped together to provide the purpose-built system.
A small business just won their first IDIQ as a Prime contractor. We were contacted about our IDIQ solution. The business champion was new to the company and had come from a larger firm that had a custom system built over years. However, this customer had no systems to speak of. Their pain was that they were using spreadsheets for tracking opportunities. What he wanted was the ability to start with just Opportunity Tracking. Then, over time he would enable features of the IDIQ system as the organization matured and the needs grew. In an hour online session we took our IDIQ solution and turned off 80% of the features and added a couple specific to opportunity tracking. With this approach, this business will be able to incrementally move forward.
Every implementation that we do, our customer ends up coming up with features that are not out of the box in the solution. Sometimes, we have the features, but, we have not put them in the products because it is easy enough to just add them in in real time. You can read about examples of Enhancements in the articles Different approaches to calculating and using Pwin and Spreading Opportunity Revenue over Period of Performance. To accomplish this task, we do not do any code development, there is no new compiled code that has to be installed on servers, we just snap in the new feature and configure it to the needs of the customer.
The Business Value of Flex-Ability
Think about each of the scenarios above and what would happen if you were working with a proprietary software product or had to build it from scratch. In general, the answer is that it would be cost-prohibitive or risk-prohibitive – so you wouldn’t do it. That is the normal state of affairs in the binary world where your only options are to buy proprietary software or build custom solutions from scratch. The real cost is the lost business value because of lack of innovation.
With R3 solutions you are in a different situation. You know that you can continuously innovate. In fact, since the cost of change is so low, you are actually able to try different approaches. With R3 your software is no longer a limiting factor to the continued progress of your business.