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Set Your Sights on FY19 | Corporate Planning

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The end of the year is quickly approaching and you are probably (hopefully) in the throes of budgeting and forecasting for FY19 and beyond. Corporate planning isn’t as easy as it appears.  At BOOST, we help clients with corporate planning and have some strategies that might be helpful to you as the end of the year approaches.

  • Corporate budgeting – Bottoms up planning for business growth and operations, holding your management and executives accountable for costs and profits and setting targets. Corporate budgeting without a view of your bid pipeline can lead to some poorly planned financial decisions that can impact your competitiveness next year.
  • Capture/Business Development Budget – Optimize your forecasts to bid smartly, especially regarding your rate structures.
  • Contracts and upcoming bids – Industry best practice is to take a thorough look at existing contracts and upcoming bids to approach budgeting/forecasting in a wholistic way.

This time of the year is a great time to focus on existing indirect rate structures, and project out future rates using revenue growth projections, types of contracts you may be bidding next year, and resources to allocate. 

Yes, you have provisional billing and indirect rates, you may have forward pricing rates, or other agreed upon rates with Govt acquisition agencies.  However, none of these preclude you from creating/re-structuring/forecasting new rates based on business strategy and forward practices.

You may have won a few IDIQs/GWACs, but are you confident that the rates that you bid under are still optimal to bid upcoming Task Orders?  For example, IDIQ rates are often ceiling rates, that you bid under certain assumptions and criteria.  Task Orders can drop suddenly, or even a year or two later.  In most industries, anything beyond 30 days is considered long term pricing, and as such, carries a price risk.

Have you reviewed all of your contracts and the associated price risk that comes with the time elapsed?  Some things to consider might be:

  • Are you considering your projected pipeline of opportunities? The size and scope of your pipeline and pwin can impact your financial status/situation/growth etc.
  • During the budgeting process, look at forecasted revenue growth and the impact on your indirect rates.
  • Are your upcoming bids likely to be SCA/Union heavy? Consider setting up separate fringe pools.
  • Is your strategy geared towards prime contracts or subcontracting? This could impact how you set up cost pools, especially OH/Fee rates.  If you’re subcontracting, you can have much lower OH rates than prime contractors.
  • How do you want your subcontracts/prime contracts (usually not a choice) to be set up? Cost plus types/FFP/T&M?  Are you prepared for capturing and allocating costs for cost type contracts? Are you prepared for DCAA Pre-award audits?
  • Are your bidding rates set up for bidding strategic bids?
  • What does your BD budget and Capture budget look like? Is it optimal for the type of bids and size of bids you’re planning to go after?
  • Do you need to consider different bid pools based on agencies, contract types?
  • Is your G&A structure set up competitively? Does it make sense to have a separate subcontracting rate?  Does it make sense to have Total cost input G&A vs. Value added?
  • Have you reviewed your existing IDIQ rates with your subs? If there are more TOs ready to drop in the next 12 months, have you reviewed indirect and direct rates at play?  How do you prepare for Task Order bids if you won an IDIQ a few years before the actual TO comes out?  The rates have all likely changed/will change, have you analyzed and prepared for those bids?

We know…there is a lot to consider.  Budgeting is way more complicated in GovCon than budgeting for office supplies and the holiday party.  BOOST gets it and we can help incorporate pricing and rates into your 2019 budget and long-term forecast.  We want to help you grow and a solid budget helps pave the way for successful growth.

Green

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Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-Mark Twain

In today’s environment of competition, LPTA, race to the bottom (insert any other overused term we throw around in the GovCon world), we all talk about “greening the staff” as a way to cut our costs on proposals. But who really does it and more importantly, who does it successfully?

Typically, we say that in the execution of a 5-year contract, we can move the more seasoned employees to other contracts and replace them with more junior employees who will learn from the best, and do their jobs more efficiently and at less cost. In reality, this means we replace seasoned and expensive employees with less expensive employees under the guise of “career advancement.”

Contractors bet that a year into execution, the government will absolutely LOVE their seasoned SME’s, and therefore will cough up more funding in the out years not requiring the transition of staff.

What happens if that isn’t the case? 

Contractors tell their seasoned SME that they have to take a 20%+ hit on their base salary or they yank them to a more profitable contract and backfill to the minimum labor category requirements with little to no transition or cross-training. The result? A bad taste in everyone’s mouths, most importantly the government.

What if we did what we claimed we would do in our management plans?

What if we told our SMEs in contract kick-off that we were going to start grooming their replacements and incentivized them to help train them successfully?

What if we spent the time to recruit the right person for the transition? A person wanting to work with the agency and grow professionally. What if we made our government customer part of the transition plan and they knew all along that there would be new teammates in the out years?

Imagine if we actually provided the career growth for our SMEs, built our workforce with energized, well-trained folks who could help win the re-compete and, topping it off, actually *gasp* saved the government money?

Yes, it means forethought and planning. Yes, it is harder than just asking for more funding. If you want to grow your company and your team successfully and thoughtfully – try greening the staff.

Just do it the right way, the first time.