Market & IT Data Intelligence

Market & Acquisition Research

Overview

The ITVMO plays a pivotal role throughout many stages of the acquisition life cycle. At the front end the ITVMO can assist in providing resources that evaluate new technologies against past purchases and future needs. It enhances the purchasing process through vendor relationships. And in the latter stages the ITVMO can utilize historical data to aid in the vendor selection and purchasing of replacement technologies.

Our market and acquisition research services leverage the government’s many data sources to help agency buyers, federal IT suppliers, and governmentwide acquisition vehicles make informed decisions to drive their federal IT acquisition strategies forward.

Evaluate and Assess

The ITVMO starts where the acquisition life cycle begins, which is with a clear understanding of the business need, use cases, and requirements. Business analysts and business leadership need to communicate with technology analysts and technology leadership to brainstorm viable paths forward. It is also the primary point to look for innovation opportunities to improve process, performance, and productivity. It is with this understanding that the intersection between the business needs and the technical environment comes to consensus on appropriate technologies to create the solution. The solution does not necessarily imply a 100% new approach. It should leverage existing assets, software, services and technologies to maximize the value to the organization.

Procurement

The procurement stage utilizes the requirements and objectives laid out in the assess phase. It identifies the necessary technology assets and the logistics/timeline of required purchases, as well as the funding sources/investment for them.

The appropriate contract vehicles and qualified vendors are evaluated to determine the pool of suppliers that can best fulfill the requirements. Vendor evaluation criteria must meet (but not limited to) the standards of a vendor health assessment which determines:

• Financial stability
• Risk and security assessment
• Supply chain constraints

It considers resource availability, funding, timeline and other constraints to execute the established plan and move the initiative forward to contract and negotiation.

Negotiate

In the negotiation stage it is important to look at the big picture and understand contracts and contract term periods. This is the stage where consolidation can occur and economies of scale can be leveraged for the organization.

Although oftentimes impractical, it is useful for the contract period to align with the funding period. It provides for smoother transactions on the financial side over time.

Data Tools

Product Service Codes Guide

In FY21 a new structure was collaboratively derived to address both the IT Community need to identify the spend and type of technology resource being acquired, and the acquisition community need to identify the method of acquisition. This retained the existing 4 character code limitation without interfering with any other existing PSCs in use. To identify the type of technology resource being acquired, three different PSC types were specified: * Technical and Professional services, which represents contract labor * Capability as a Service to represent cloud-based services acquired on a term or subscription basis * Hardware and Software products acquired on a permanent or perpetual basis

North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)

NAICS was developed under the auspices of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and adopted in 1997 to replace the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. It was developed jointly by the U.S. Economic Classification Policy Committee (ECPC), Statistics Canada, and Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia, to allow for a high level of comparability in business statistics among the North American countries.

Data Analysis Dashboard (D2D)

Government-Wide Category Management Reporting and Analytics maintains a series of dashboards and tools to support stakeholders in the full CM lifecycle. The D2D Portal is the gateway to data-driven decisions. It is a data analytics portal that is used to share business insights, including visualizations, reports and datasets. The D2D Portal enables users to search for, access, and share dashboards, datasets, and other content supporting data-driven decision-making across a broad range of stakeholders.

IT Dashboard

The IT Dashboard provides Federal agencies and the public with the ability to view details of Federal information technology (IT) investments online and to track their progress over time.

The Federal IT Dashboard helps the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) meet their statutory collection and reporting obligations by streamlining data submissions and transforming the Federal IT Data collection into a coherent, modularized ecosystem. This ecosystem is centered around an improved data collection effort that better supports partner agencies and OMB. In addition, the modernization of the Federal IT Dashboard includes the enhancement of visual renderings through an updated user interface. This will act as a premier user-centric site, allowing for integrated metrics, enhanced analytics, and decision support tools.

Procurated Pilot

Overview

As part of our efforts to bring innovation to federal procurement, the IT Government-wide Category, in conjunction with GSA’s Multiple Award Schedule IT (MAS IT) Program and the ITC Innovation Division, recently launched a pilot with Procurated. By allowing members to review their suppliers, Procurated offers a comprehensive solution for managing vendor performance. It enables members to provide feedback on their interactions with suppliers and leverage insights from reviews shared by fellow procurement experts. Procurated currently provides this supplier performance management peer review system to state and local governments.

Below are some frequently asked questions about our pilot:

What will this pilot entail?

Procurated will be gathering reviews via emails and survey calls to federal agencies about orders off of the MAS IT schedule. All orders are eligible to participate in the pilot. We especially encourage feedback on orders at or below the micropurchase threshold of $10,000 and orders below the Contract Performance Assessment Reporting System CPARS requirement threshold (typically $250,000).The goal is to gather order-level feedback from customers regardless of dollar amount, which will give us greater insights into the customer experience when ordering from the MAS IT Schedule.

What will be done with the data collected?

The data gathered throughout the pilot phase is intended solely for informational use. Procurated will keep the data collected independent of their review platform. The feedback gathered will aid the IT Government-wide Category GSA MAS IT in confirming that the correct inquiries are made for order-level feedback. Our goal is to gain insights into the customer experience during these dynamic times, and we are confident that leveraging this cutting-edge platform will assist us in this endeavor. The insights from this data will inform our understanding of the potential structure and function of an order-level feedback system within the federal government.

What do we need from the federal acquisition community?

The greater the volume of feedback we collect, the more thoroughly we can comprehend the customer experience on an order-by-order basis. We strongly encourage your participation when Procurated reaches out for your input. Every piece of information collected will be instrumental in aiding GSA/ITC to deepen our insights into the customer journey.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more, we have a dedicated team available to meet with you. They can be reached by emailing: ITCatLab@gsa.gov.