Keynote: How To Win Federal Contracts

All federal agencies -- and all contracting opportunities with them -- have a defined cast of three characters. Perhaps the most visible is the contracting officer, whose primary job is to know the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) inside out; this person lives and dies by the rules. The end user, typically the IT director or manager, wants to make his team's job easier, while the stakeholder has his face on the project -- the human resources director in the case of a HR implementation, for example -- and wants everything to roll out smoothly with tangible benefits.

"If these people are not in agreement, you will not win," Kent said. "But does the end user care if the contracting officer [breaks the rules] and goes to jail? No way. They just want the job done."

Essentially, it falls to the industry partner introducing an IT solution to accommodate all of these priorities, she said. Here's what to do: Listen to the end users' pain, develop a solution that eliminates that pain while improving overall processes, and ask the contracting officer for the proper protocol for submitting a bid.

This is easier to accomplish, Kent says, if solution providers become "embedded" in agencies, understanding both their IT processes and challenges and the bureaucracy associated with procurement. Get in early and work directly with agencies to develop the chosen specs for the project, she said. The contracting officer is then obligated to take those specs to two other companies for the total three bids required. Ideally, Kent said, the contract goes to the company that's acted as a trusted adviser from the start.

"Validate what users are dealing with, [figure out] how they're going to live with it or move to the next level," Kent said. "It's a conspiracy; a game. But [when solution providers] know it, they can play it."