STAY AHEAD OR GET CAUGHT FROM BEHIND – YOUR FEDERAL MARKET IS CHANGING

In the famous line from “Other People’s Money” Larry the Liquidator (no relation) stated, “…the last company around was the one that made the best (deleted) buggy whip you ever saw.” Cold comfort in a market that no longer needs buggy whips. Your approach to federal business should be changing right now so that you don’t become that company. What’s happening? How about massive e-commerce for all but complex services? Amazon is already across the threshold of the federal market door. It’s only a matter of time before they, or even their own competitors, become a significant disruptor to how product-based companies do business in federal today. How about a world in which there is no Multiple Award Schedules program? DOD acquisition reformers are openly asking that question about DOD use of the Schedules. Add to that the well-documented troubles with TDR and competition from other Indefinite Delivery contracts and the specter of a federal market without a meaningful Schedules presence comes into focus. Even beyond the Schedules, how about a world where there is no contract level pricing? While that might sound enticing at first, imagine the knots you’d tie your company into trying to meet a thousand or more definitions of what constitutes price reasonableness. If LPTA was viewed as a race to the bottom, an endless line of CO’s thinking that they can out-negotiate each other might turbo-charge that.
These are just three areas that could very well impact your federal business. The time to anticipate change is when you’re early enough to manage it well. Do nothing and Danny DeVito may come knocking.