Managing Strategic Growth Initiatives

One of the challenges for any organization is being intentional and deliberate about driving and tracking progress toward longer-term strategic goals.  Leadership changes, near-term opportunities, and “shiny objects” tend to distract from the strategic focus.  It becomes difficult to keep an eye on the ball. Sumaria Systems is using R3’s WinCenter for GovCon as the foundation for tracking and managing its strategic growth initiatives and to build process and structure for Business Development. They are using the system to manage Increased pipeline scale and proposal productivity, increased customer diversity, and migration of services and offerings with increased technical content.

About Sumaria Systems, LLC

Sumaria Systems, LLC, is a Full Lifecycle Engineering, Technical Services and Professional Solutions company in support of the Warfighter supporting modernization, high end services, and next generation capabilities in contested domains. With operations across the US, Sumaria supports some of the largest and most sophisticated Ground, Air, and Space Systems, enabling innovative solutions and informing decision makers to advance our nation's defense and security. It provides a full range of services and capabilities focused on rapid software and weapons systems configuration management and integration, end-to-end unmanned and manned vehicle operating capabilities, and end-to-end enterprise networking and weapons systems networking and cybersecurity solutions.

Currently a mid-sized company, transitioning out of its Small Business statuses, Sumaria boasts a mature business development organization with proven leadership, processes, and people. Sumaria is well-positioned for growth and has established a set of strategic objectives to drive that growth. It is presently using R3’s WinCenter for GovCon to support its strategy, measure progress to plan and to forecast sales and revenue contributions from the pipeline.

“We use R3’s WinCenter for GovCon to implement our strategic model,” said Keith Cromack, Vice President of Business Development at Sumaria. “We’ve set some specific strategic goals around growth, the clients we choose to support, our capabilities and offerings, and the way we create value.  Our pipeline in WinCenter is the representation of that strategy.”

Cromack said WinCenter has a high level of visibility within the organization and that he uses it to brief Sumaria’s Board of Directors on progress toward strategic goals.  With support from R3, Cromack created a customized set of reports and dashboards he uses with his BD team, management, and the Board, including revenue forecasting.

“Our Board has set the strategic direction for the company, so they want to see progress toward the achievement of those goals,” said Cromack. “We use it every day as a CRM, every week for Pipeline Reviews and Gate Reviews, and monthly to brief management and the Board. Everything we need to see is there, including all the data and documents associated with acquisitions, our customers, and our partners.”

When investigating tools to support the tracking and management of its strategy, WinCenter appealed to Sumaria for several reasons.  Cromack said the company needed a tool that could map to and help implement a new BD structure and organization, and provide the ability to evolve as the company grows and becomes even more sophisticated.

“We have processes, leadership, and people that have been very successful, and we needed a tool that could map to that,” said Cromack. “And we are anticipating continued success and growth so we need something that can grow with us and continue to support our efforts. WinCenter does both. It’s flexible and adds value to the structure and organization we already have in place, and gives us room to grow.  Many of the other systems are overkill and less flexible.  They are just too demanding, too rigid.”

Sumaria’s pipeline is currently supporting more than 150 opportunities valued at more than $4 billion.

In addition, Sumaria is currently deploying their Contract Vehicle Program Management Office (CVPMO) to help manage task orders from IDIQ contracts. The system will help Sumaria collect, triage, and disseminate opportunities of interest to the Sumaria Partner Network.  Currently, task order management is a manual, labor-intensive activity, so Cromack is anticipating greater efficiency and throughput from the deployment.

“We are building the value of the business,” said Cromack. “And, WinCenter plays a key role in helping us do that."