1.0 Executive Summary Intent Background Value Add for Stakeholders Core Findings Next Steps 4

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1 1.0 Executive Summary Intent Background Value Add for Stakeholders Core Findings Next Steps Introduction, Professional Services Category Scope Industry Survey Findings Large Business Survey, December 2016 to February Services provided to the government Comments on the FY17 Professional Services Strategic Plan Challenges on doing business with government What drives communication successes and failures Mid-Tier Business Survey, February 27, Services provided to the government Comments on the FY17 Professional Services Strategic Plan Challenges on doing business with government 9 Lack of Opportunities 9 Navigating from a small to a large company 10 Risk management 11 Mid-tier recommendations for addressing challenges What drives communication successes and failures 12 Communication and forecasting Small Business Survey, January to March, Services provided to the government Comments on the FY17 Professional Services Strategic Plan Challenges on doing business with government 13 The cost calculation behind bid/no-bid decisions 13 Resources allocated to business development What drives communication successes and failures 15 Best practices exhibited by government 15 Small business communication channels and the importance of industry days 16 Industry Days 17 Solicitation lead time and pre-release Quick Observations 19 1

2 4.0 Recommended Actions Mission space determination More and better communication 19 Encouraging participation in consistent practices across its Interagency Team. 20 The FY18 Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) Spotlight 20 Potential Tool Development 20 Interviewing strategically important suppliers 20 Compare agency opportunity forecast availability and detail Conclusion Appendix Methodology Taxonomy of Professional Services Agencies Industry Engagement Best Practices Executive Summary 1.1 Intent The overarching goal of the Professional Services Category (PSC) Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) program is to develop long term, collaborative partnerships with key suppliers. More collaborative relationships with key suppliers will result in better requirements development on key professional services federal agencies use to accomplish their mission. The intent is to move interaction between federal agencies and suppliers and supply managers beyond contract mechanics. SRM goals are to: Increase category efficiency Improve supply base performance Drive innovation within the category Background Over the last four months, the PSC SRM specialist interviewed selection of large, mid-tier and small businesses, as well as agencies, to gain an understanding of the current status of industry-government collaboration in this industrial space. Those discussions informed this white paper Value Add for Stakeholders The stakeholders for the industry perspective white paper outreach are as follows. 2

3 Stakeholder PSC Interagency Team Members Federal Executive Agency Program Management Employees SRM Specialists Contacted Industry Partners White Paper Value Interagency team members will benefit from the confirmation of their best practices through the eyes of industry. The second phase subcategory segmentation will deliver new means to communicate with strategically important suppliers. The themes and issues in this white paper are consistent in industry-government forums like Reverse Industry Days. Once the topics and areas of contention are established, stakeholders can work to move towards active solutions. This paper provides value to the specialist, because it shows which questions are grist for conversation and which ones are dead ends. It shows that sorting companies and approaching them based purely upon spend is not useful. Industry partners have increased awareness of category management impacts. They have provided first wave information about what is a challenge for doing business with government and will be consulted for future input. They will learn more about the levers available to them to communicate with government. 1.2 Core Findings The outreach was structured around a set of questions. Suppliers were asked to comment on federal procurement data profiles the current strategic plan challenges doing business with government and what drives communication successes and failures. Size Business Perspective Government Perspective Large Large businesses want to know how the Acquisition Gateway is going to grow and influence the acquisition workforce? Where else will the impacts of category Federal data is not detailed enough, government personnel must identify the right people within large businesses to work with on improving procurement. 3

4 Mid-Tier Small management be felt in the near term? The way government tracks spend and compartmentalizes its needs doesn t adequately describe the way large businesses provide professional services to government. Mid-tier challenges of doing business with government include: Lack of opportunities Bid requirements and evaluation of criteria Navigating the transition from a small to a large company Risk management (During bid evaluation Government should beware offers that are significantly lower than the competition) Communication and forecasting Government uses a number of channels for communication and it s not always clear where opportunities are made available. Business development groups, even for the largest small businesses don t often exceed eight people and they draw upon people throughout the organization. They must be careful about the opportunities for which they compete. Advance communication on requirements via industry days and the like is critical. It is imperative that government capture and share findings on how different kinds of services (and goods) are grouped and provided to meet specific agency missions. Providing means to address baskets of goods and services on existing IDIQ contract vehicles may increase spend under management. Policy concerns are not within the purview of an SRM program. The points that mid-tier businesses wanted to emphasize are opacity from government in the preand post-award environment. As for evaluation criteria and risk management during a procurement, it may be productive to increase awareness among the federal acquisition workforce by using platforms like the Acquisition Gateway and Reverse Industry Days to disseminate similar best practices that encourage small and mid-tier business participation. The means to making the category strategic plan relevant to small businesses would be to include forecasts of fiscal year opportunities and how priorities may affect business. Consistency across federal forecasts currently found linked from Acquisition.gov will make a difference. Best practices evinced by agencies need to be more widely distributed. 1.3 Next Steps Businesses, unless they are the largest of the large, are operating with a resource constraint on the number of federal procurements for which they can bid. The amount and quality of communication about government requirements, in both pre- and post-award environment, drives bids from industry. 4

5 Industry days, draft performance work statements, and the amount of time given to respond to a RFP/RFQ directly correlate to whether a qualified business places a bid. Large businesses may have the resources to respond to more proposals, but they also keep an eye out for contracting shops that exhibit best practices and those that do not. Government can encourage better and more frequent competition from industry by being consistent in its best practices and by following communication best practices. Government-industry relation best practices are simple in concept, but not easy to execute. They require dedicated resources and participation from operations as well as management. Examples can be found in the white paper appendix. The next steps for the PSC SRM program is to collect those best practices and norms across its eight subcategories. The category will look to see how consistently those best practices are applied across the category by its interagency team. It will use one of its levers for change, the Acquisition Gateway, to make those best practices more prevalent and available to the acquisition workforce. Lines of communication with industry will be kept open to provide its perspective on collected best practices. Another round of interviews will be conducted to get more at cost-drivers in requirements as well as the procurement process. The idea is that a cycle of feedback from industry into government and vice versa will highlight work that has the most return in terms of generating competition and stronger requirements. 5

6 2.0 Introduction, Professional Services Category Scope The market for professional services is vast. A lack of transparency in the market from both government and industry leads to redundancies and overlap. Below are FY16 numbers. $66.9B government-wide spend for the category 30,400 distinct contracts 26,289 distinct contractors 756 contractors represent 80% of total FY16 spend, with 7,121 distinct contracts In the first quarter of FY17, the PSC interviewed three large businesses. In the second quarter of FY17, the PSC interviewed 11 small businesses and attended a mid-tier business listening session. 3.0 Industry Survey Findings 3.1 Large Business Survey, December 2016 to February 2017 The Professional Services Category met with three large businesses Services provided to the government Large business representatives answered, What services do you provide to the government? with, It s complicated. The most incisive answer received was that the supplier provides all of the services that serve a particular market. The market in this case, stands for agencies, agency components and their missions. Missions don t align neatly to category, and that s why it is complicated. The complex answer to a simple question means that a SRM program can deliver clarity on large businesses presence and role within the category. 6

7 3.1.2 Comments on the FY17 Professional Services Strategic Plan Large businesses recommended content for the professional services category strategic plan. They want to see the following reflected in the plan: How category management is going to place a check on new duplicative government IDIQ contracts. Where government is looking for innovative solutions from industry. How the Acquisition Gateway platform, specifically the tools on it are going to evolve over time. If the strategic plan can reflect or discuss the impacts of strategic initiatives like the Transactional Data Rule (TDR) Challenges on doing business with government The challenges pointed to by large businesses are consistent with challenges that one would hear acknowledged by government itself, that there needs to be an improvement in how requirements are defined, written and shared. The interviewees pointed out that the acquisition workforce, when in haste, minimally update old solicitations. These documents end up containing unnecessary clauses or out of date terms and conditions. Requirements should focus on the desired outcome of the services being provided instead of being overly prescriptive and allow for innovation, which is rarely explicitly called out in solicitations. Contracting offices that consistently put out poor RFP/RFQs dissuade competition from large businesses What drives communication successes and failures Communications received a few more pointed comments. The first is that industry associations should continue to be used as a channel of communication for large businesses. The other is a recommendation to adopt practices like how OASIS promoted its contract with delegation of procurement authority 7

8 (DPA). From large businesses perspective, it gave Contracting Officers (COs) knowledge of when to use the vehicle. It is not always clear to industry how government comes up with estimates and what overhead costs are included. One factor which seems especially difficult is pricing risk into a RFP/RFQ. 3.2 Mid-Tier Business Survey, February 27, 2017 The collection of mid-tier perspectives relied on a facilitated group session. The questions that drove the discussion were the same used for the one-on-one company interviews. Being mid-tier is more of a condition than a designation. Technically, a mid-tier company is in the same class as a large business earning hundreds of millions a year in revenues, but may only have just broken the threshold of sales for a small business, which can hover around $25M or less. A company that emerges out of socio-economic protections enters a time of turmoil. They are too big to have business driven to them but not nearly big enough to compete with global corporations that dominate the unrestricted market. It is not an exaggeration to think of mid-tier suppliers as being in a shakeout phase. In the listening session, themes emerged regarding the varied nature of their challenges: Lack of opportunities Navigating from a small to a large company Risk management Communication and forecasting Services provided to the government There was no meaningful discussion about services provided to the government, beyond an acknowledgement that all industry partners were active in the professional services space. 8

9 3.2.2 Comments on the FY17 Professional Services Strategic Plan There was no meaningful discussion about the FY17 Professional Services Strategic Plan Challenges on doing business with government Lack of Opportunities Mid-tier companies characterize the lack of opportunities from the federal market as an existential problem. There are too few RFP/RFQs put out for bid that are accessible to other than small business suppliers and those that are made available face other restrictions. According to the mid-tier suppliers, an increasing amount of work put out by federal agencies is not in Multiple Award Schedules, Seaport-E or the open market, but through smaller closed off IDIQs, BPAs, GWACs or MACs. It effectively puts opportunities out of reach, and the amount of business routed through these smaller vehicles is growing. The figures below represent the extent to which suppliers in the professional services category space are able to access opportunities through federal IDIQ vehicles. The lower the number of suppliers on a vehicle, the more likely it may function as a constraint on opportunities. Total suppliers in the professional services category: ~27,000 Total suppliers on GSA s professional services schedule ~3,800 Total suppliers on Navy s Seaport-E: 3,971 Total suppliers on OASIS: ~209 Total suppliers on Alliant: ~125 Total suppliers on HCaTS: 87 These numbers are inclusive of large and small business The point systems used to on-board other than small suppliers to IDIQs favors very large companies. Additionally, the requirement of specific systems and certifications is overbearing, not always appropriate for the work being asked for and makes it harder for mid-tier firms to receive work, in a sense shutting them out. The opportunities available to mid-tier companies is further threatened by a rise in what qualifies as a small business under a NAICS code. If the threshold rises for what constitutes small business then that makes it easier to relegate business to that socioeconomic concern and thereby unavailable to mid-tier companies. Some mid-tier groups have looked to establish set-asides for the group, but there s disagreement as to the efficacy of such an approach. 9

10 Often mid-tier companies are instructed that they can seek opportunities as a subcontractor to a prime. As subcontractors, the requirement is to provide an extra body. There is no strategic merit to those types of jobs and that makes them hard to claim the work performed on past performance reports. Even those suboptimal options are limited, because as a mid-tier subcontractor and not a small business its participation does not contribute to small business contracting goals held by agencies. Navigating from a small to a large company A company that does business with government seeks opportunities aligned with NAICS codes, and the small business thresholds for those codes represent a transition for government s industry partners. Once that threshold, either in annual gross revenue or total employees is crossed, then a business no longer may compete for opportunities marketed toward small businesses. Instead they have to compete with large businesses many times their size. Mid-tier companies not only have to compete for a shrinking pool of opportunities, but with a creeping expansion of jobs assigned to small business. A federal dollar spent with a contractor of any size results in a job, not just when it s spent with a small business, Therefore, government should focus on supplier diversity rather than socioeconomic considerations. It could do this by making more competition full and open. The size of the opportunity will drive the makeup of competing bidders, rather than regulatory animus towards socio-economic considerations. One common situation cited will see a small business set-aside approaching $100M on a recompete, not a rarity, forcing the incumbent mid-tier to submit for the bid as a subcontractor. Meaning at most they re getting only 49% of what they used to get 100%. Small businesses see what mid-tier companies must deal with and intentionally stunt growth, taking fewer contracts because it allows them to keep the small business designation. However, 10

11 this in the end works against companies. A business entirely subsisting on small business set-asides has zero value to a large business acquirer. Risk management The mid-tiers described risk as a situation incurred by government when it does not perform a price realism analysis during a procurement s evaluation period. They noted that government often makes awards based upon the service prices. Companies game the system with a deliberate underbid on firm fixed price contracts. The underbidding supplier has a built-in assumption that it will use change order modifications for more money once the contract is awarded. Mid-tier recommendations for addressing challenges The collected mid-tier companies focused their recommendations for overcoming barriers to doing business with government procurement on opportunities for risk reduction through better evaluation and size standards. The mid-tiers recommended government consider past performance as the risk of improperly delivered services. The recommendation was to use commercial sources (like Dun & Bradstreet) for a better past performance picture, or interpreted more broadly use commercial sources for a better past performance picture. Additionally, mid-tiers are asking government to include language in RFP/RFQs that makes price realism analysis part of bid review to avoid bids reliant on change orders. One evaluation criteria, as a sticking point among the mid-tier companies, was primarily based upon common practices like asking for multiple certifications, emphasis on past performance and the dissonance in awarding contracts sized at a multiple of a small business annual revenues. 11

12 In essence, the mid-tiers are asking for the opportunity to prove that they can do the work that s being requested by the government rather than being ruled out on technicalities of certifications, accounting system compliance and past performance. The ask is that government does the following: Focus on outcomes, and ask companies to prove they can provide those outcomes Do more price realism analysis to remove underbidding behavior Do more thorough debriefs, which contrary to popular belief reduce the likelihood of protests Government contracts are aligned with a NAICS code. Each NAICS code has an associated cap under which a company is considered a small business. The recommendation related to size standards would be to not set-aside any contract with an annual revenue higher value than the NAICS small business threshold. The other recommendation is to increase the teeth associated with subcontracting opportunities for small business, meaning more subcontracting opportunities and balancing that with fewer prime opportunities for small business What drives communication successes and failures Communication and forecasting The government, outside of the period where a solicitation is open for competition, needs to communicate more and better, specifically when it comes to forecasting. Certain agencies do provide forecasts, but it is not a universal practice. 3.3 Small Business Survey, January to March, 2017 The PSC interviewed 11 small business over a two month period between January 2017 and March Due to the nature of small business classifications, many of the companies that were considered small businesses were small under NAICS codes that capped participation by number of employees and not by revenue. There is substantial crossover between the opinions expressed by large small businesses and those of mid-tier companies. 12

13 3.3.1 Services provided to the government The suppliers interviewed were aligned with the following professional services subcategories: Management advisory services Research and development Technical & engineering services Financial services Comments on the FY17 Professional Services Strategic Plan The companies interviewed were dismissive of the value of the current PSC strategic plan to their business. The comments can be summarized as, That s nice. Thank you for sharing. However, the same businesses, that didn t find much of interest in the plan, were near uniform in their desire to hear about the strategic intent of government as it pertains to forthcoming solicitations. The PSC strategic plan does not contain forecast information or synthesize procurement strategy of its interagency team members. Though this will be covered more in the recommendations section, the category should consider incorporating strategic direction as it pertains to upcoming key acquisitions and priorities evinced by its interagency team especially if it is information that is not accessible on other government sites Challenges on doing business with government There are four professional services vehicles available government-wide, and all four are administered by GSA. They are: Human Capital and Training Solutions (HCaTS), GSA SmartPay, One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS) and The Professional Services Schedule (PSS). There are a number of non-gsa professional services IDIQs available on the market. Two GSA blanket purchase agreements (BPAs), the Identity Protection Services (IPS) BPA and the Performance Management/Continuous Process Improvement (PM/CPI) BPA are also available government-wide. Interviewees made no mention of HCaTS, SmartPay, and had some positive noncommittal things to say about Schedules. There were much more varied and detailed challenges associated with doing business on OASIS. 13

14 The cost calculation behind bid/no-bid decisions Increased competition from qualified suppliers is a characteristic of healthy government procurement. So it is imperative that government understands what drives supplier bid/no-bid decisions. Resources allocated to business development A small business supplier straddling a mid-tier designation will exhibit some or all of following business development characteristics: The # of employees dedicated to business development: the majority of answers had between two and six full time employees. One outlier of 12 FTE Responsibility for responding to an RFP/RFQ extends beyond the business development department when it comes to responding to a solicitation. In the field SMEs and executives provide expertise and perform gate reviews Below is a set of factors companies use to determine proposal response cost. Note that not all bullets apply to all suppliers, but a sampling of them There s set budget Bid response cost is estimated at a 0.5 to 1% value of the total solicitation value Bid response cost is contained within the salaries and associated administrative overhead costs of dedicated full time employees Bid response cost is estimated at a per page level, approximately $1-2K per page Technical solicitations require four pages of response to one page of the PWS Example: Government puts out a 100 page solicitation, necessitating a 400 page response. That response costs the bidder $400,000. The number of proposals responded to by the business development department varies depending on the service it provides Technical & Engineering Services companies were at the lower end of the spectrum with 6 to 12 bids submitted per year. Those bids are for jobs between $ M Management Advisory Services companies were responding at a higher clip, between per year. Those bids are for jobs between $1-10M, but can go as high as $30M 14

15 The tendency to respond to every proposal is a characteristic of a true small business, not of small businesses that are approaching the mid-tier What drives communication successes and failures Best practices exhibited by government Suppliers were forthcoming about agency best practices. While one might expect there to be some inborn bias to favor the practices of an agency that awards them work, more than one supplier mentioned that the agency funneling them the majority of their business had room for improvement. The linked document summarizes best practices from Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and Federal Systems Integration and Management Center (FEDSIM). Each of these agencies was specifically name-checked by suppliers, media and other federal agencies for their notable SRM practices. Other best practices referenced by suppliers were as follows. The comments range from excellence in issuing requirements to keeping open lines of communication. GSA Interact, was mentioned as being better than industry associations in terms of distributing GSA related information. National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) and National Security Administration (NSA) have good approaches to contractor teaming arrangements and subcontractor opportunities NASA writes a good scope of work FAA has good communication between its contract and program offices DoD plans ahead for identity protection services, engaging suppliers beforehand and releasing draft PWS. 15

16 SPAWAR hosts government-industry working groups on specific topics with a more strategic intent and not necessarily tied to specific requirements Seaport-E online portal and announcements details keep suppliers in the loop The majority of government best practices recognized by the suppliers center around communication. Suppliers like more communication pre-award via approximate budgets, draft PWSs and industry days before a RFP/RFQ hits the market or post-award via detailed debriefings or discussions. Small business communication channels and the importance of industry days Communication Channels Grouping Channel Benefit referenced by Company Direct Contact from federal agencies Industry Day Air Force EPASS Industry Day They put out a timeline for when they expect the solicitation to be available Industry Day DHS Reverse Industry Days, DHS monthly forums Discussed in depth in the Agency Best Practices section Industry Day FEDSIM s regular meetings Models efficient government communication Industry Day OASIS semi-annual PMRs Regularity and consistency. Schedules does not have an equivalent set of regular meetings Industry Day SPAWAR working groups Structured around strategic intent and not necessarily tied to specific requirements Government Site Acquisition Planning Forecast System (APFS) Upcoming procurements Government Site ebuy (two mentions) A source for requests for information (RFIs) Government Site FedBizOpps (three mentions) Government Site Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) Gives suppliers information to bid on recompetes Government Site GSA Interact GSA Interact is more valuable than a typical professional services organization Government Site Seaport-E The portal posts announcements and sends s keep suppliers in the loop. Separately, it 16

17 Non-Government GovWin III market intelligence provides information about recent awards that aid unsuccessful bidders in preparing for recompetes Non-Government Industry Associations No specific names mentioned in interviews, but it was indicated that the more focused the association s scope the better. Industry Days Industry days associated with specific requirements precede final release of a request for proposal (RFP) or request for quotations (RFQ). They vary widely in perceived quality. It was mentioned by more than one interviewee that an industry day of people reading off slides without candidly discussing intended budget and expected outcomes has little value add. Attendees can still derive benefit from networking with other suppliers, but that s hardly the point. Suppliers budget for industry days and build that cost into proposal responses and bid/no-bid decisions. A wasted industry day discourages competition from small and mid-tier companies by wasting their business development budget. If a CO intends to stage a rote recitation off of a slide deck, the CO should consider only releasing a draft RFP instead. One interviewee shared its characteristics of an ideal industry day: industry representatives in attendance The presenters address strategic subject matter beyond the draft RFP What may change between the industry day and the issuance of the solicitation A rough estimate of budget Government representatives should answering The NAICS code the solicitation will be competed under should be disclosed The government shares which part of the agency will issue the RFP Industry days that are independent from specific requirements were well received by the companies interviewed. Infrequently staged, these discuss upcoming solicitations and their underpinning strategic drivers. These events can be one way communications from government to industry. Strategic industry days can be flipped in format to allow industry to address government, as they do in DHS Reverse Industry days. This particular engagement activity can be considered a best practice and is discussed in more depth in the best practices appendix. Working groups, joint committees, forums, roundtables these are all terms used for small scale and more frequent industry and government communications. They are valuable in that they provide more 17

18 intimate opportunities for industry partners to ask questions of specific RFPs on the market, about policy and upcoming solicitations. The challenge with smaller exchanges is the appearance of fairness. Solicitation lead time and pre-release The amount of lead time that suppliers expect from RFP/RFQs vary by the type of work sought. A good rule of thumb is larger, more technically complex requirements should come with more time for industry to respond. Note that more than one supplier said that they would not respond to a RFP/RFQ that failed to be preceded by a request for information (RFI), draft performance work statement (PWS) or industry day. Below is a graphic that displays the ideal, average and rush amount of lead time that are expected for suppliers in different PSC subcategories. 1 Management Advisory Services Technical & Engineering Services Research & Development Other (Financial Services) 21 days is ideal, 14 is a stretch, 7 is no-bid; Another company cited 6 months as an ideal 30 days One vendor said that it wants to receive its earliest communication from government one year and six months (same company that 21 days at minimum, 30 days is average; Identity Protection Services typically receives 3-5 days, 24 1 The Proposal Lead Times graphic represents individual responses from small businesses talking about their competitive space, it is not an aggregate of the 11 interviewees and their opinions about ideal, average and rush proposal lead times across management, advisory services, technical & engineering services, research & development and financial services. 18

19 bids on $ M sized solicitations), hours in the past Quick Observations Here are some observations that didn t fit into the other sections of the small business survey. Small businesses, that were interviewed, pursue niches. Those niches are not necessarily related to services performed. Frequently, suppliers pursued geographic niches. That s when a company provides services to a specific agency recipient near an important agency location. This arrangement is most frequently established for DoD bases, but has also been mentioned in relation to a Department of Energy laboratory. As companies grow and approach the threshold of what constitutes a small business they have to expand their areas of expertise to compete for government business. Companies align with a NAICS codes to retain a small business designation and cross subcategories to do business with government. An example would be that there s an agency that uses an Engineering NAICS code for acquisition program office support. Another agency uses a R&D NAICS code to compete for similar services. 4.0 Recommended Actions 4.1 Mission space determination A breakout of industry partners according to alignment with small, mid-tier and large businesses brought to light that as much as small business may fit into subcategory functional groups, larger businesses most assuredly do not fit. They structure professional services and all of its ancillary accoutrements to fit the need of agency customers. The category should devote resources to understanding the baskets of goods and services industry groups together to meet government requirements. Government will assess its mission space by taking a closer look at PSC interagency team member missions by component and the services that support those missions. It is a top down approach. Findings can be shared with suppliers for comment. This process would help determine accuracy and give suppliers an opportunity to structure the Professional Services Category s functional groups. 19

20 4.2 More and better communication The PSC must make good use of larger format communication to encourage competition and higher bid rates. There are simply too many suppliers to actively pursue engagement with all of them. However, the PSC SRM lead will be receptive to outreach. The PSC will address concerns by taking the following steps: Encouraging participation in consistent practices across its Interagency Team FY18 SRM Spotlight (special emphasis in the Acquisition Gateway) Potential digital tool development to provide transparency into procurement lead times Interview strategically important suppliers Compare agency opportunity forecast availability and detail Encouraging participation in consistent practices across its Interagency Team Supplier feedback from conferences, listening sessions and one on one conversations matters even when the suppliers are not in the strategically important segment. Messaging from suppliers was remarkably consistent in terms of what they need from government to encourage better procurement. One of the few areas where there was a notable difference was the amount of lead time necessary for a supplier to turn around and respond to a solicitation. The FY18 Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) Spotlight The PSC SRM will host applicable lessons for the acquisition workforce in the first quarter of FY18, between October 1 and December 31, Content will be available to the general public, but directed towards federal employees. Content will include articles on best practices, templates, examples and a webinar on lessons learned from the first year of the PSC s SRM program. Potential Tool Development One of most frequently mentioned issues from mid-tier and small business government suppliers is the desired amount of lead time given to respond to a solicitation, and whether the solicitation was preceded by an industry day and/or draft RFP. Transparency into government procurement norms across areas of spend would benefit both suppliers, which set expectations for what is released when and for government COs who would understand how timing impacts response. Interviewing strategically important suppliers Government will look for suppliers that hold an outsize impact in the professional services category s subcategories. It will then broker conversations between those suppliers, and the agencies that do business with them, to see if there are particular communications issues that can be addressed. The goal is to reduce contract duplication and increase spend under management. The same activity will take place for mid-tier and small businesses. 20

21 Compare agency opportunity forecast availability and detail Suppliers have mentioned time and time again how important it is that opportunities be forecast. Acquisition.gov has a list of links to those forecasts. It will benefit government to see how certain agencies are providing good examples and to learn what other agencies can do to emulate those best practices. 5.0 Conclusion The category has learned a lot from its initial outreach, and there is still a lot more to be learned. A working SRM program is a long-term commitment from both government and industry to build a collaborative relationship. Suppliers, as evidenced in the survey, are eager to share their experiences and help government ask for what they need in a more efficient manner. Some agencies are already doing good work, and it is a necessary first step to provide greater visibility into those best practices. SRM, done well, requires time and a significant investment from all parties. Government can encourage better and more frequent competition from industry by being consistent in its best practices and by following communication best practices. Government-industry relation best practices are simple in concept, but not easy to execute. They require dedicated resources and participation from operations as well as management. Examples can be found in the white paper appendix. 6.0 Appendix 6.1 Methodology The questions driving the initial outreach centered around current government category management practices and strategies. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Attached to the interview guide is a summary of the Professional Services contracting profile for your company. Is this depiction accurate? Please further discuss the primary types of Professional Services that you provide to the Government. a. In your industry, how can the Government ensure that we re keeping up with technology, innovation, and cost-saving techniques? 2. What would you like to see addressed in the FY17 Professional Services Strategic Plan? (e.g. deeper insights into data analytics, more flexible or innovative approach to management) 21

22 3. What are the challenges and barriers that your company faces when providing Professional Services to the Government effectively and efficiently? a. How would you rate how the Government defines requirements for Professional Services? b. What works well? What could be done better? c. How would you rate the government s strategy and execution in performance based contracting? d. Are there any best-in-class agencies that define requirements well (i.e. write high-quality SOWs and PWS that ensure vendors have the proper information to submit a competitive proposal)? 4. OFPP has established initiatives that focus on communications between the Government and industry (e.g. myth-busting memorandums, industry engagement campaigns). From your perspective, what are the key drivers that continue to exacerbate communications challenges in the professional services space? a. What could the Government do better to facilitate more effective communication? b. Do knowledge gaps exist about which contracts are available? c. Should Category Executives use professional organizations more to disseminate information and gather feedback? 6.2 Taxonomy of Professional Services 22

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24 2 6.3 Agencies Industry Engagement Best Practices 2 For editable slide deck go here 24

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