The federal contracting world is always going to be competitive. Sometimes it’s who you know, and sometimes it’s what you know. If you’re a business developer engaged in finding the right opportunities, B2G marketing to government buyers, and/or proposal writing, it’s important to know as much information about a contract as possible. If it’s a re-compete contract, this may include previous solicitation and incumbent information, the size and scope of the task orders, and the performance history. If it’s a new opportunity, that’s equally important to know, and you’ll likely need information related to the RFI, supporting documents and Industry Days.
Several procurement and market intelligence platforms have cropped up over the years which not only pull data from the various public sites relating to contract opportunities, but also have staff that culminate a variety of information relating to those opportunities. They often tie recompete contracts with their previous solicitations, pull the vital data out of supporting documents, reach out to contracting officers for information that hasn’t been provided, process FOIA requests and provide other related services.
Today I will be reviewing one of the more popular and value-oriented market intelligence platforms: EZGovOpps Market Intelligence. EZGovOpps allow for a free five-day trial via their site, www.ezgovopps.com, so you don’t have to deal with a pushy salesperson just to have a look. Upon signing up, you’ll receive a validation email to make a password, as well as an instructional email on how to set up your profile. The instructional emails come each day thereafter, focusing on the various sections in the platform.
Like many of these types of platforms, setting up the profile is necessary so you get proper matches of solicitations and pre-forecast RFPs you’d be interested in. In this section, you add the keywords you’d like to see in opportunity titles and descriptions, the agencies you are concentrating on, NAICS and/or PSC codes your firm performs, preferred geographical locations, and if your firm has any set-asides (e.g. 8(a), service-disabled veteran owned company, etc.). At the bottom of the profile screen, there is also the ability to state which of these categories must match, and which are just nice-to-haves.
Once you populate this information, EZGovOpps does the heavy lifting and finds solicitations and pre-forecast RFPs that match your criteria, placing them in an area called the “Dashboard”. The Dashboard allows you to sort, filter and isolate through your matches via additional criteria if desired or search for additional keywords, etc. to further refine as desired. You can also save them to a repository called the “File Cabinet”.
The File Cabinet is probably my favorite feature within EZGovOpps. This is where you store anything of interest, whether it be a new opportunity, pre-forecast RFP, competitor, contracting officer, etc. Once you place the item in your File Cabinet, the platform will alert you if there is an update, change of status, award, etc. You’ll also typically receive an analyst update notification within a business day with the more expensive plans, as EZGovOpps has analysts who research the opportunities and dig up information on previous solicitations, incumbents, scope and other pertinent intel. Depending on how organized you like to be, you can set up various folders and subfolders each with their own notes and associated opportunities/companies/KOs, or you can organize by each member of your business development team. The File Cabinet can be shared with your team, or each person on your team can have their own separate version.
The File Cabinet is closely intertwined with the Pipeline feature. Any items you've added in your File Cabinet can also be added to your pipeline by assigning low and high values. This is visualized in a donut-shaped chart that can be printed or saved to PDF with all the associated pipeline items. In the Platinum subscription, you can also calculate your PWin and assign those values as well.
You can also populate your File Cabinet using the search tools. Compared to Deltek Govwin, the EZGovOpps search seems a little clunky at first, however once you understand the intent, it makes sense and becomes more intuitive. There are seven search tabs, including: solicitations, contracts, sub-contracts, companies, contacts, award announcements, and GWACs/schedules/IDIQs.
The solicitation search tab has all current open contracts and a variety of ways to search them. In each solicitation you will find details such as the original and latest notice type, K.O. contact information (and link to their purchase history), an analyst update (if available), agency info, history of mods, verified interest, supporting docs and other valuable information.
The contracts search tab has the historical data on awarded contracts which will potentially recompete. When viewing a contract, in addition to the standard information, there are some other handy additions such as the composite contract overview. This tracks the total actions and task orders and calculates the total award dollars to date, as compared to the estimated base and all options. There is an additional window which gives the dollars and dates for the last task order, and underneath charts based on annual spending and awarded dollars by awardee. If you are looking at a multiple-award contract or program, the award dollars per awardee are also included.
The subcontracts search tab finds subcontracts which were awarded by the prime contractors. This includes various info including the subcontract amount, information on the company, and the prime that subcontracted the opportunity, and the associated task order from the award. You can use this tab to search for a prime contract’s end date to find subcontracts that could be re-competed.
The companies search tab allows users to search for businesses to learn more about their value, size, award history, NAICS they specialize in, their set-asides, and other information. There are several charts on each company profile that show which set-asides they are leveraging most, awarded dollars by year, which NAICS they are awarded most on, and other history related-visuals. If you happen to be a certified 8(a), you can search for expiring/expired 8(a) companies and identify the 8(a) contracts they'll need to team with an 8(a) company to keep... so that can be pretty valuable.
The contacts search tab is useful for those marketing to government buyers. There is a robust search to find contracting officers (and contract specialists/program managers), their contact information, contract history, which NAICS they typically release contracts for, and more.
The GWACS/schedules/high-profile IDIQs search does exactly what you would expect it to do. Enter your favorite vehicle acronym/schedule/etc. and quickly find the rundown on that program/etc., the total value, associated dates, prime contract holders (and the task orders they hold with associated values), EZGovOpps analyst updates, and a variety of other info.
I've mentioned “analyst update” a couple of times, but I want to reinforce the importance of this. These are generally a few paragraphs from someone who performed the research on the solicitation/contract overview page. This typically includes if the contract is new or a re-compete, the details if it is a recompete, such as incumbent, link to the previous solicitation, updates from the contracting officer, pricing information, and info from events like Industry Days. Most larger contracts are maintained regularly with updates, but if you are monitoring lower value contracts, you may need to reach out to EZGovOpps to ask for an update.
Depending on whether your firm concentrates on just Federal, or state and local opportunities as well, the platform has a SLED (state, local and educational) search. This area oddly requires its own password and trial sign-up, but once you are in it works well, having its own profile to set up for SLED opportunity email alerts, and a search function with various criteria. I did not note any analyst updates on the SLED opportunities, so this seems to be a more scaled back offering than the federal side.
There’s a variety of other features tucked away within EZGovOpps including Agency Profiles, Collaboration Center, and Labor Pricing, but in the interest of keeping this article short, I will leave those for another time.
Overall, this is a full-featured platform and the price is quite reasonable compared to options like Deltek Govwin, Bloomberg and Onvia. If you’re a federal contractor and don’t already have a market intelligence offering, or you’re looking to switch from one of the more costly offerings, I’d strongly recommend taking a look at EZGovOpps Market Intelligence.
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