Win a Multiple Award Contract Berth But Don't Lose the Task Order Competitions (08-04-15)

Lured by large aggregate value contract ceilings and relatively low barriers to market entry, bidders line up to bid for task order hunting licenses under multiple award ID/IQ vehicles. Most bidders that receive such awards pounce on early task order requests (TORs), develop and price their responses, and eagerly await an award. For most contract holders the task order awards never come. Why?

Acquiring a berth under a multiple award contract is in many ways easier than winning its competitive task orders. Usually 20%, or less, of the awardees end up winning 80%, or more, of the competed task orders. The reason is simple: the winners are executing to a task order acquisition strategic plan that usually sacrifices short-term profitability for long-term growth and scale. The goal of such a well-managed exploitation strategy is to win early and often, execute well, build scale, and, over time, effectively deny less strategic competitors entry to the market. After all, when it comes to capturing government business at any level, hope is definitely not a winning strategy.

Before deciding to pursue a multiple award ID/IQ contract bidders need to develop their post-award exploitation strategy for acquiring contract task orders. The strategy must consider the way in which task order proposals are evaluated. One approach could be based on a "best value" task order capture strategy. For one team such a strategy may revolve around targeting specific expected task order opportunities that are within the bidder's sweet spot with respect to experience, past performance, or even personnel. Another firm's strategic approach could be to respond to most all task order requests underpinned by aggressive recruiting and pricing to win as many "LPTA-ish" task orders as possible while relying on increasing scale to pare costs and improve margins over time. CAI/SISCo has a study offering [HOT LINK TO oppCap-ReviewTeams.html] that can help you fashion a strategy that maximizes your task order capture success and overall margin potential.

Firms that are already multiple award ID/IQ task order contract holders and are not experiencing the hoped for level of success can also benefit from a CAI/SISCo study. The significant difference between developing an "in-process" task order vehicle exploitation strategy and the pro-active strategy development approach described above is that "in process" case will benefit from whatever is available in terms of a history of awarded task orders.

To request a proposal to help your firm acquire or exploit a multiple award IDIQ contract please contact me, Tony Constable, at (301) 807 8171 or at tconstable@caisisco.com.

Contacts for our other services include:

• Jennifer Weinberg for PTW Professional Development Training - her phone number is (301) 840 5959 and her email is jweinberg@caisisco.com; or
• Rich Brown for a proposal to do a PTW study on a specific opportunity - his phone number is (301) 704 1289 and his email is rbrown@caisisco.com.

My PTW Book - Hope Is Not A Winning Strategy... ... But Price To Win Is - is always available from Amazon as are copies of the other books in our Roadmap To BD Success Series. If there are any other issues related to pricing strategies or bid price development that you would like to discuss please call me, Tony Constable, on (301) 807 8171.

Good luck, and happy hunting!