Companies moving into the mid-tier of GovCon are moving into no-mans land. The Government has tracks and advantages for large companies and small businesses. But, mid-tier organizations are on their own. It is a challenging place to compete and operate. In fact, in a recent study it was found that 61% of GovCon companies that graduated from Small Business, after 5 years, had fallen back to Small Business.
This article is about a company that has a plan to propel themselves out of Small Business into the mid-tier with enough power for sustained full and open competition. The strategy is to use agency-specific IDIQs and a Task Order “factory” designed to give them a competitive advantage to win the business. The plan has come together and they have a great start. You’ll learn how and why they did it.
The Situation
This customer is a GovCon Small Business of about 300 people that is in the growth mode and is planning for their business after graduation. They have a number of existing GWAC and IDIQ contracts. Historically, they weren’t really focused on them. However, they made a decision a couple years back to use IDIQs as their growth engine. They bid on a few very significant and targeted agency-specific IDIQs with a combined ceiling value in excess of $1 Billion. It appeared that they would win them.
The strategy was to win the new IDIQs and then build their Task Order business to propel them out of Small Business and into full and open competition as a mid-tier company with a strong position in targeted agencies. And, to do it in a way that would provide them with a sustainable competitive advantage to win and perhaps dominate the winning of Task Orders on these contracts.
The problem was that they did not have the system in place that would give them the necessary competitive advantage to win the Task Orders and then to be able to scale the business. They had solid processes, systems and skilled personnel for winning RFPs. But, heretofore Task Orders were secondary. They knew that their RFP systems would not be applicable to what was needed to bid and win Task Orders at scale. They realized that they needed a system that would give them operational efficiency and the ability to optimize their ability to win Task Orders for each vehicle.
The Solution
They found R3 a few months before the time came for the new IDIQs to be awarded. They became convinced that the R3 IDIQ Task Order Management System was the right solution for their strategy. One reason was that the R3 solution had all of the capabilities required to support the full lifecycle of winning Task Orders. They are integrated in one system to optimize the results and drive competitive advantage. A second reason is that the R3 solution is very flexible. It would allow them to change, enhance and extend the system on their own and have a distinctively different and unique way of winning. And, very importantly they would also be able to optimize the work for each IDIQ vehicle to maximize their competitive advantage.
An important aspect of their decision was the role of the Director, Proposal Management. Management had come to her with the plan and their intent to scale the Task Order business. Instead of looking backwards, she knew that they needed a completely different approach to succeed in the Task Order business. She became the champion of this initiative and the R3 solution.
The Result
The new system was deployed on-premise on SharePoint 2013 in a brand new environment. This environment was specifically set up to support a large number of teaming partners in a way that limits IT administration, provides a secure way of working, and, enables a high level of interactivity across the lifecycle of Task Orders.
In one week, the system was up and operational. Over the next 5 weeks R3 worked with the customer through its standard iterative “Workout” approach to train them and change the system to meet their desired way of working and to add some “special sauce”. On area of focus were enhancements to the Pre-Release phase of Task Orders to increase the teaming partner engagement to provide deeper coverage and capture effectiveness.
The month that they went live was also the month that the plan came together. They were awarded 2 new agency-specific IDIQs. These IDIQs had a ceiling value of $1.5B and only 15 competitors. This means that if they win a pro-rata share they are looking at $150m. They intend to do better than the competition. And, they are prepared to do so armed with their new R3 system and a focused approach on driving their competitive advantage through operational efficiency and rich teaming partner interaction.
Click here to learn more about the R3 Task Order Management software.
To see Task Order Factory in action, watch the video below.