The Competition
Who is likely to compete on this contract, how much inside knowledge are they likely to have, what is their competitive position, what is the brand perception by the client, what is their solution, what companies are they teaming with (subcontractors), how is their solution going to be evaluated by the Government, and what is their price?
Like the article on the Client, we split this into two buckets.
Quantitative
Free Sources of Data
Some of these are repeated from the Client article but now with a spin on how they are relevant for competitor intelligence gathering.
| Source | Description | Use for |
| GSA elibrary | GSA contracts are posted here | reviewing competitor price lists |
| GSA Calc | GSA contract labor rates | use this instead of elibrary because you do not have time to extract labor rates from PDFs (not all contract data is available here yet) |
| USA Spending | primary source of Federal Government Spending | slicing your competition’s awards any way you want, and/or for probing an incumbent contract |
| System for Award Management (SAM) | non-vehicle based acquisitions are posted here as are entity registrations | researching attribute data on your competition view the entity module |
| Service Contract Inventory | federally mandated list of service contracts posted annually | researching competitor award data |
| IT Dashboard | see charts, information, and insights on Information Technology (IT) based spending. | see above |
| Interagency Contract Directory | contract vehicle data | see above |
| GSA Portal Dashboard | GSA based contract vehicle spend | see above |
| Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFTA) Subaward Reporting System (FSRS) | the system where all primes must report their spending on subcontractors | you do not use this directly, the data is found in other systems, mainly USA Spending, but it is powerful data source for how your competitor’s incumbent team is assembled, or just to see what other companies your competitors are using overall or in specific agencies down to the funding/contracting office |
Paid Sources of Data
If you want a source to do data/information aggregation for you in a single website, and you want to shell out come cash, then these are options for you. In our experience the most comprehensive is GovWin but our friends over at GovIntellego are an emerging and reasonable option for existing contract data analysis.
| Source | Description | Use for |
| GovWin | If there was a gold standard this would probably be it. They have prospecting and data visualization/mining down to a science. Our only pet peeve is the lack of, and chunkiness in, their data drill down capabilities. | capturing, qualifying, researching, etc |
| Bloomberg Government (Bgov) | Similar to GovWin with their own spin | in our experience this has more capture rather than data analysis |
| GovIntellego | An emerging analytical tool focused on angles of Government spend that a business development, capture manager, or PTW analyst will appreciate. | existing spend analysis only |
| GovTribe | Similar to GovWin with their own spin | same as GovWin |
| govspend | Similar to GovWin with their own spin | same as GovWin |
| govini | They claim to focus on the data science aspect of Government spending | same as GovWin |
| epipeline | We have no experience with this site but it somewhat competed with the others mentioned | same as GovWin |
| Bidnet | We have no experience with this site but it somewhat competed with the others mentioned | same as GovWin |
Qualitative
Not all sources of information will come from numbers. Qualitative sources of competitive intelligence are important and necessary supplements.
| Source | Description | Use for |
| RSS Feeds Linked IN Google Alerts Company Job Postings etc | Ethical Stalking – we live in the social media age so a lot of info may be gained through the web | keeping up with the latest news, seeing who works where, keeping an eye on new information posted to the broader web, seeing which companies might be posting the exact same Labor Category from a solicitation |
| SBA DSBS | Small Business search | locating other potential teaming partners based on socioeconomic status |
| FAPIIS | Integrity violations are posted here | scrutinizing, or avoiding altogether, business arrangements with companies who show up on that list |
Additionally, there are a bunch of other tools we will just simply list.
- Teammates
- SEC filings (for public companies)
- Freedom of Information Act Requests (FOIA)
- Trade shows
- Industry conferences
- Networking events
- Agency industry days
- Print (newspapers, trade journals, magazines)
- Non-restricted Government memos decisions (e.g. the DoD Better Buying Power Initiative of years ago)
The Questions
- Who is doing business with the Funding Office now?
- When do those contracts expire?
- What time of contracts are they (socio economic set asides or full and open)?
- What are the size of those contracts?
- Who are they using for teammates (subcontractors)?
- Who (prime or sub) is doing work in the same or similar NAICS/PSC for a nearby Funding Office?