Understand the Vendor Ecosystem
Who else might be interested in this Solicitation
- This is very similar to finding the current contract using a basket of criteria. but basically we are going to search USAspending to find other companies that are doing similar work
- So look at the current contract and search using:
- The NAICS code
- The PSC code
- The Agency
- The Sub-agency name
- I recommend using the last three fiscal years
- The set-aside
- Place of performance (if location matters for this contract)
- Contract type: Contracts and Purchase Orders
- Once you have those filters set search and download the data (we recommend downloading award level data rather than transaction level data)
- Then organize the data to see who is active in this space (see video below for how to do this)
What to do with the market data
- Find partners: From your research on the solicitation process you should understand:
- How many past performance are needed
- What other requirements there are to be a prime on the solicitation
- Review the companies and see if any of them look like promising teammates (either for you to sub to, or for them to sub to you)
- Assess the competitive landscape: If this is a consolidated market with a couple “big fish” in the pond then you may want to think hard about pursuing this solicitation, while if there are a lot of smaller vendors with no clear winner your chances typically will be better
Doing all this with FedScout
- FedScout identifies that vendor ecosystem around each solicitation so that you can rapidly find partners and get a sense for the competition