In Business Development, Past Is No Longer Prologue (02-25-2004)

During the 28 years that our firm has been in business helping customers capture major Federal opportunities, the government contracting community has been subjected to a veritable roller coaster of change. Some change was inspired by changing procurement fashion (e.g., PBSC, GWACs, etc.), some has been fiscally motivated (EVMS, CAIV, and remember Zero-based budgeting?), some is politically motivated (e.g., SB/SDB targets and quotas) and some relates to executive control and consolidation (e.g., EA, outsourcing, SLAs, etc.). While change, for some, can be painful to adjust to, others view change as an opportunity to steal a march on the competition.

For instance, let's consider a situation where it is time to recompete a key multi-year incumbency that pre-dates both significant procurement and technology changes. Unless those charged with capturing such a recompete are exceptional students of the shifting sands of acquisition lore as well as technology, success against the canny insurgent will be, at best, tenuous. Inevitably, the tendency of the capture team will be to walk into the competition backwards by bidding the same old processes and approaches that the customer has learned are neither good, nor fast, nor cheap compared to "best practices."

Another situation where a capture team may be challenged is when a firm decides to bid outside of its comfort zone of past performance. While all businesses should strive to expand and grow, this situation presents significant challenges, especially when devising solutions to best a leading competitor with a long legacy of successful performance.

Few enterprises, large or small, have evolved to the point of having an institutional activity that independently reports to senior management and functions as a dedicated "success multiplier." Such an organization should be experienced across the essential elements of a wide variety of contemporary acquisitions and the changing rules of the game.

To those firms that lack such an objective internal capability, or wish to augment an internal capability, CAI/SISCo provides opportunity-exclusive services that can bring to bear extraordinary experience and expertise to enhance the probability of success.