ME&A Uses GovWin IQ to Gain Agility as They Help Government Agencies Towards Social Progress

An interview with Loren Shulze, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at ME&A

ME&A is an international development firm has been providing the government with solutions to drive forward social progress and economic development across the globe. They turned to Deltek’s solutions to identify business opportunities earlier in the lifecycle, and to strategically expand into new markets.

Thanks for speaking with us Loren. Can you start off by talking a little about your work with ME&A, and some of the services your firm provides to its government clients?

Our government work has us involved in a wide variety of development sectors working with U.S. government agencies and international organizations. Fourteen years ago, we were just five people. Today we're 35 people, which makes us still a small business, and staying that way is the plan ─ to keep competing for set-aside contracts. There are other large businesses doing a lot of heavy lifting, but the small businesses still must do all that supportive work.

Can you give us an example of what a big win, or a big opportunity to do some of that critical supportive work, looks like for you and your team?

The last big one for us was becoming the provider for US Global Health – we provide evaluation, assessment and learning support for health-related projects and activities. If they are to be evaluated, we are the company that's evaluating them.

We have done more than 250 evaluations, for both compliance and performance, all helping them to become more efficient. The agency added more midterm evaluations, in addition to final evaluations, which helps them make changes to their operations midstream.

How do you find those opportunities to do business with the government?

We have been using GovWin IQ from Deltek as our primary source of information for about 10 years. Since I started using GovWin daily, I have always had a good experience. Not only is the data in GovWin helpful to driving our business forward, our customer success manager (CSM) is so responsive – every time we have a question, such as comparing one agency to another, she will always have an answer.

GovWin provides us with a timeline for the opportunities we are pursuing, which allows us to plan using that background information. Through GovWin, we also know when to make contact with the agency, how to schedule things out, and search for good business proposal writers. We're much more agile than ever before.

How far out in advance are you identifying and targeting these opportunities?

We're easily going 18 months (about 1 and a half years) out, and having information about when projects will close, when they will be rebid, that helps a lot. Before using GovWin, we used to wait around, and we'd find out about new opportunities when they were posted, but then everyone else has already teamed up and you are playing catch-up.

We go after a lot of IDIQs (indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contracts) which can put you at the table but doesn’t give you any cards to play. It makes using GovWin IQ even more vital for our business.

What aspect of Deltek’s GovWin IQ service has been the most important to your business operations?

GovWin IQ’s opportunity data and analysis has been so valuable to me. For example, when a new opportunity appears in advance of it hitting the streets gives us an advantage because we will have already done the research and know when the project is going to be closing, and when it is going to be rebid.

We also get reports on what other WOSB (women-owned small business) contracts are out. Years ago, we didn't have that kind of intelligence, but now the depth of data that we get from GovWin on intelligence and reports is so great that we can use it to ask other companies how their projects are being implemented, and if we can help when things are being rebid.

As you mentioned, you and your team have had GovWin IQ implemented for a while now. Did that play a factor in ME&A selecting Deltek Costpoint as your ERP system?

Yes, our experience with GovWin IQ was one of the reasons we recently selected Deltek Costpoint. We can already see how much difference that's making in doing budgets and doing planning for other situations. Our controller can generate reports very easily for the CEO when they need to have new information. It allows us to scale our business and gives us something that can be used for multiple purposes, instead of starting from scratch every time.

The government market is constantly changing. Do you feel like GovWin IQ and Deltek Costpoint have helped set your team up for success, now and into the future?

There has been an increase in the revenue threshold for small businesses to qualify as a small business government contractor, enabling them to go after set-aside contracts. Even though our business has grown, we're pushing 19 million, with the new threshold increase, we have room to go after additional small business contracts from other markets, and we have more resources to find where those contracts are coming from.

The Department of State and USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) are our two primary clients, but now as I mentioned we are expanding into other markets. To support this strategic change, I went to our GovWin CSM and she was able to set up a new filter which gave us more focused information. GovWin’s ability to be support our evolving growth strategy will help make us more competitive on the projects we are pursuing now and into the future.