June 4, 2024
We recorded this interview at Caboose Brewing, in lovely downtown Vienna, Virginia. It was time to get away from Zoom and have a relaxed interview.
Sometimes, we must look at literature to get an understanding of the current situation for federal GWAC contractors. Let us look back to Charles Dickens with, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
Here is the scenario: your company spends a ton of time and money to get a spot on a GWAC contract, never to win any work. All your hopes and dreams of increasing business have been crushed.
Today, we sit down with Brian Seagrave from Deep Water Point & Associates to take a detached view of this GWAC process and provide some suggestions.
We begin with some shocking numbers. We all know that federal organizations working under GWAC send out notifications regularly. In a perfect world, a resolute employee shows up for work at 9 AM, sees a notification, and then begins the filtering process.
In the real world, companies are overwhelmed by notifications and end up working to dead ends.
"You know, you hire a business developer, a new guy in your organization and it takes you two years to figure out that they they’re not quite what you need. But that’s two years of lost time before you realize you’re not winning. This guy is not bringing you into the places you need to be. Technology is a big part of offsetting that waste"
For example, one organization gave 27,450 announcements annually. Simple math indicates, that with 250 workdays, this is 100+ notifications a day. Mere humans cannot keep up. Inevitably, their companies may pursue bad fits or even miss excellent opportunities.
During the interview, Brian suggested a solution from Deep Water Point & Associates that can assist in this complex filtering work. His company has managed to combine a strong knowledge of keywords and human understanding of culture to assist in the selection of which announcements to pursue.
He details how they developed GWAC NorthStar. This is a “as-a-service” offering and a company can be set up with a free 30-day trial.
GWAC NorthStar is a good example of how Artificial Intelligence can be combined with human “know-how” to speed up the proposal process.
If you enjoyed this episode, then you may want to listen to
Ep. 232 Unlocking SBIR: A Powerful Tool for Boosting Federal Tech Efficiency
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