Automating Past Performance Data Base Management

These days, winning Federal Government proposals often comes down to past performance. I worked on an Air Force bid recently where price didn't even get evaluated unless the bidders were equal in their past performance evaluation scores. Since the Government is putting more emphasis than ever on past performance, it is in the contractor's best interest to prove a strong case by providing as much relevant past performance information in the final proposal document as possible. Contractors that have a proven record of performing well tend to have a better chance of winning than those that do not, or those that are not able to show any proof.

It is not unusual for Government contractors to keep past performance information in disparate sources, often in multiple Excel files and/or physical paper folders on someone's desk. It's the sort of thing that should lend itself to a re-use repository or database, but that turns out to be harder than you would think, and selecting the most relevant past performance information is usually done by the person with the most institutional memory.

Synchris recently enhanced Privia to include new features specifically designed to support tracking past performance information. With Privia, you can centrally store past performance information for your company and all teaming partners in one repository.

What's nice about the past performance feature is that, in addition to being able to capture the information, which any database could do, you can use Privia's workflow features to keep your past performance information up to date. This eliminates one of the biggest problems that companies face: keeping information current because points of contact and other key details change frequently on projects.

Most companies deal with this through annual updates. It then becomes a huge undertaking and requires many, many hours of effort. With Privia, these updates become simple. You route all the files out for updates and when complete, the centralized database is "automatigically" updated.

In addition to annual updates, every time you use a project description you must check to make sure that the information you have is up-to-date. With Synchris you can add workflow tasks to route the project description to the appropriate people to get it updated. Automatic routing makes this process easier and faster to accomplish.

Privia also helps with the other big problem: locating the most relevant projects to use to pursuit your opportunity. Privia provides a keyword search tool, but it also goes way beyond simple search. It allows you to pull the past performance information stored in your repository into your Opportunities, enabling managers to quickly identify which potential teaming partners have done work in the task areas specified in the statement of work. This allows you to identify potential teaming partners in a much more efficient way. The outcome of putting these components together is the automatic generation of a capabilities matrix, which you can then store back into the opportunity workspace in Privia.

Privia even solves a tricky problem with building a past performance database. How do you handle ID/IQ contracts and task orders? A task order contract has multiple projects associated with a master contract. Privia creates a parent-child relationship between contract vehicles and task order requests. This preserves the relationship so that you can reference the task order project or the master contract, depending on the RFP instructions.

If you are struggling with managing your Past Performance data or if you need a less effort-intensive approach, you need a tool like Privia that understands the idiosyncrasies of Government contracts. By using the automated workflow system, you can streamline the process of finding, updating, approving, editing, and using past performance. And anything you do to improve this process can help you improve your score in this critical area and pay for itself by improving you win rate.