Let’s assume that you have won at least one multi-award contract (IDIQ or GWAC) as the Prime. Now, you have to win the Task Orders. That is where the value is and the return on the B&P dollars you invested in the first place. It is hard to win them. While you are in a smaller, known group of competitors, they are there because on paper they are equally capable on solutions and price.
So, how do you get a competitive advantage? One way is to gain a sustainable advantage by outperforming your competitors during the process of responding to the Task Orders. If you can bid more (or all), have better responses and leverage your teaming partners to be ahead of the Task Order release (read coverage and capture) you will be ahead.
What does it take to have the advantage?
Winning Task Orders is a different process than winning the RFP vehicle contract. It is about the efficiency of your process and way of working, your ability to respond and how well you leverage your teaming partners.
To give you an advantage, you need a system that can drive your process and automate the work. Without it you will struggle to deliver on individual Task Orders and you will not have the ability to scale your business to greater volumes or meet the spike in Task Orders.
You can get by using an assortment of tools such as Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Email, a database and Microsoft SharePoint. This is a start to getting you organized. However, in most cases you will need to operate in a more structured, formal and automated way in order to at least keep up with your top competitors and definitely to have a competitive edge on them.
How to get there?
One simple way is to invest in a business solution specifically designed and optimized for this purpose. The R3 IDIQ Task Order Management system is one option. It is an off-the-shelf solution built for this purpose, battle tested for years, with best practices built in. It is also a complete system. This means that it includes all of the required capabilities you need to support the full process to win Task Orders.
This complete approach differs from competitors that may only provide a front-end for the “intake” of Task Orders and the initial surveying of partners, or, a vendor providing a document management based system to handle proposal responses. Instead, the R3 solution provides the capabilities for a 360 degree process that is complete for one Task Order and that feeds information and reusable proposal assets back into the system to make you better on each successive Task Order. It also goes further to allow you to optimize the work of each contract vehicle as part of an integrated system.
To learn more, visit R3 IDIQ Task Order Management.