In their May 2017 story, Defense Contract Audit Agency Loses Focus, National Defense Magazine refers to DCAA’s recent annual reports to Congress, stating that
The measure of mission success [for DCAA] is that their audit activities provide a large return on investment by identifying a large number of adverse audit findings rather than on executing their primary advisory functions.
Organizations that perform estimating and pricing on a regular basis are familiar with the pain of Excel Macros. In this post, we highlight several reasons to illustrate why it’s time to end your reliance on Excel.
Consistency is the name of the game when it comes to profitably responding to U.S. Government requests for bids. Inconsistent bids set your organization up for failure vis-à-vis government contracts, as government bid reviewers and auditors want easy-to-understand bids that are consistent across multiple versions of a project as well as between projects. That’s difficult to achieve without PROPRICER, because each bid requires a complex and varied set of cost inputs – some based on data, many based on formulas and relationships between inputs.
We know you’ve been busy with the holiday hustle and bustle, so we gathered some of our best content from 2017 (a greatest hits, if you will) to help you save time.
Please enjoy some of our best resources below.
Anyone involved in price estimating knows how often dates change, affecting large portions of your estimate and pricing calculations. Each time a date changes, you need to go back into tens, potentially hundreds, of Excel spreadsheets, re-enter data across multiple fields, and re-evaluate your subtotals to ensure they’re still accurate.
At least, that’s how firms without PROPRICER deal with date changes.
Common business solutions, including CRM, ERP, and project management (PM) tools, unify the data and functions necessary to perform the targeted sets of business tasks that are the lifeblood of your company. Users flock to these solutions because they offer a single system that gets the job done quickly and easily.
For government contractors, the quoting process is the driver of future growth. Pricing professionals, however, have historically lacked a single source to get their job done. Luckily, a unified estimating and pricing solution exists.
If your organization regularly submits proposals within the DoD, you know that providing DCAA auditors with compliant and accurate cost data without a major interruption to your normal flow of operations is critical to maintaining a trusting relationship with the government while maintaining overall productivity.
The U.S. Government, particularly the Department of Defense (DoD), has recently surged spending on contracts and significantly increased their value – a trend that shows no sign of stopping. Along with the surge in spending has come the need for rapid award and performance of contracts which, unfortunately, can increase the odds of wasteful and fraudulent activities in government contracting. Of course, the government is aware of this risk and is taking steps to minimize waste and fraud.
When evaluating software vendors it is important to keep the ‘big picture’ in mind. Many software companies and applications may look and sound similar on the outside, but important technical and capability differences exist.
Responding to U.S. government requests for proposals (RFPs) usually involves inputting a complex array of costs into your price tool. If that tool is Excel and someone has made an error, you could face days of tracing labor and resource estimates; as you struggle to track down the cell in question, you’re stalling the business and wasting valuable time you should be using to pursue deals and differentiate your company.
