Excentium Inc., a fast growing SDVOSB providing cybersecurity and governance services to the Federal Government, uses R3’s Contract Management software to increase the speed and accuracy of its contract management operations.

Growing SDVOSB Increases Speed and Accuracy of Contract Management

In today’s business environment, speed is more important than ever. Even the speed at which we conduct our core business functions, like managing contracts, can create a competitive advantage. The ability to find things faster, answer questions and respond to data calls faster, identify potential teaming partners faster, and pull reports and stay on top of all your contract deadlines and milestones can all provide a real advantage in the highly competitive world of Federal Government Contracting.

About Excentium Inc.

Excentium Inc. is a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) that has been in operation since 2006.  Located in Reston, Virginia, its primary services and capabilities include cybersecurity compliance and governance, third-party assessment services, knowledge management, solution engineering, and an IT and security LAB.  It is also an accredited FedRAMP Third-Party Assessment Organization (3PAO). It supports both the Federal Government and commercial clients.  Some of its leading Federal clients include DHA, FAA, CNIC, and the VA.

Over the past several years, Excentium has experienced significant growth and found itself quickly outgrowing its existing Contracts infrastructure and processes.  More business led to more contracts, which led to more documents (e.g., subcontracts, contracts mods, NDAs, teaming agreements), which led to the need for a faster and more efficient way to store, organize, track, and report against the contracts and associated documents.

The old methods of keeping things on shared drives and hard drives, in hard copy, and in email just weren’t working any more.  Nor were the manual, time-consuming processes of searching and reporting.  It was just too slow, too disorganized, and required way too much time and effort.  Plus, it introduced a new element of risk into the equation—risk of missing renewal dates, missing other deadlines and milestones, and just doing things too slowly.

The Contract Management Solution

Excentium initially was attracted to R3’s Contract Management Software for Federal Contractors because it provided a “go-to” place for all the contracts and contract-related documents, said Ivana Diaz, Contracts Manager at Excentium.

“The company was growing and we needed to centralize things so we could find things easier, better track status and renewal dates, and just generally speed up our operations,” said Diaz. “We also needed to correlate all the contracts and documents to the specific customers.  We needed a go-to place.”

In addition, Diaz said the company needed a faster, more accurate way of pulling reports and compiling data and information in support of the entire organization. The manual processes were just too slow and required a lot of time, especially for the Contracts team.  Plus, with information spread across multiple locations, it was difficult to ensure you were identifying and capturing everything that was out there.

The first order of business for Excentium was to get all of the applicable contracts and documents into the system, and adding some structure to them.  Having the structured repository in itself provides a big benefit for Excentium.  Just by having everything in the same place, it 1) provides a complete, organized view of all the docs by customer, and 2) simplifies and accelerates the process of locating pertinent contracts and documents. Plus, it drives several downstream benefits, too, including the ability to create robust reports on any element of a contract or associated document, and do full text-based searches of every document.

Creating Digital Contract Briefs

One of the key outputs of the Excentium system is a Digital Contract Brief.  Because all of the information about each contract is contained in the system, Excentium was able to design a customized Digital Contract Brief.  As needed, they can simply request the brief and the system will compile it with the most-recent data and information on the contract.  The briefs can be viewed online, printed, or saved as PDF files. This significantly speeds the process of creating contract briefs, which is typically a manual and time- and labor-intensive effort.  Not to mention that the brief must be manually updated and modified as things change.

Accessing Critical Business Data

Reporting in general is one the capabilities Excentium and Diaz appreciate the most. Relying on a series of out-of-the-box reports, as well as the ability to create custom reports, has increased the speed and accuracy at which Excentium can access critical data.

“Renewals, types of contracts, period of performance, business type—you name it and we can pull reports on it,” said Diaz. “This reporting not only speeds up our ability to respond to requests and identify specific information, but it also greatly improves our accuracy.  We can feel confident that we are getting all the data and information we need.”

Controlled Access

Another key benefit of the system is that others in the organization can have access to the repository and all the reporting, as well.  The security features allow users read-only access so they can potentially find what they’re looking for, without having to engage with the Contracts team.  This saves significant time for everyone. Plus, with the user-level security provided by the system, it gives the Contracts team confidence that they can provide access, but not worry about documents getting changed, lost, or deleted.

“It’s great that we don’t have to do everything ourselves now,” said Diaz. “Our users can do it themselves. We didn’t have that luxury before. We had to do everything.  Even if people still ask me, I can do things much faster given the search and reporting capabilities of the system.”

Tracking Potential and Existing Partners

The ability to track and search for potential and existing partners is another key benefit of the Excentium implementation and one that saves tremendous amounts of time for the organization.

“We love the capability around tracking our partners and potential partners,” said Diaz.  “We’re able to search for and find partners by type of business, like WOSB or SDVOSB. We can also see who we have NDAs with, who we have teaming agreements with, and even those we have subcontract agreements with.  This not only helps us and saves significant time, but is also a great benefit for our BD team, as they’re always looking for partners for various teaming opportunities.”

Next Steps

While the system is already adding tremendous value to Excentium, Diaz only sees it becoming more and more critical to the organization as it continues to grow and expand its business.

“As we continue to grow and add more and more contracts, the need and demand for the system grows, too,” said Diaz.  “We are excited by what the system currently does, but are even more excited about its potential to add even more value.”

To see how R3’s Contract Management Software for Government Contractors can add speed, accuracy, and control to your contract management activities, contact us at sales@r3bsolutions.com.