This briefing covers active market intelligence, regulatory guidelines, and tactical capture recommendations for federal and defense contractors pursuing opportunities in this procurement classification.
The Trump administration has most of Washington on the edge of their seats waiting to see what comes next, and federal contracting is no different.
“Everyone knows the federal market is driven by budgets, and budgets are driven by the presidential budget request,” Kevin Brancato, director of government contracts research at Bloomberg Government, said in an April 27 webinar. “What I would advise federal contractors to look at is agency priorities and see where they align with the president’s priorities … and you’ll likely see those agencies is where the money will be spent.”
But he said that all the budget really changes is which agencies spend the money, not so much how they spend it. That’s why he said he expects to see these eight trends continue into 2018:
Category management
The consolidation of contract vehicles has been happening since 2015, and its use has steadily increased, especially for items like desktops and laptops. In the future, Brancato said he wouldn’t be surprised to see it applied to things like cybersecurity services.
Shared Services
Along similar lines, Brancato said he expects to see more examples of agencies pulling together to collectively purchase support functions like financial management, human resources and IT.
Compliance Standards
Compliance standards like the DATA Act aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, Brancato said. But he noted that most smaller companies can’t afford to meet these compliance standards.
“There’s a tremendous difference in the cost of compliance across different types of companies,” he said. “So while we see compliance standards not going away, we think there’s a potential broader impact that has been seen and will continue to be seen.”
First-Time Vendors
Brancato said the federal government has for some time been spending more money on first-time vendors, but has been dividing that money among fewer companies. Almost three-quarters of these first-time vendors have been small businesses.
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