Case study
Cornerstone, on knowing when not to bid.
A small business development team researches incumbents and customer buying patterns early, so limited proposal resources go where there is a realistic path to success.
The challenge
As a small federal contractor, Cornerstone competes against large defense contractors, established incumbents, and other highly capable small businesses, Cornerstones does this with a very small business development team.
IntelligentWin rapidly became invaluable to identifying contracting opportunities and determining which opportunities justify investing our limited time, personnel, and proposal resources.
Pursuing every opportunity is neither practical nor financially sustainable. For Cornerstone, knowing when not to bid can be just as valuable as identifying the right opportunity to pursue.
The approach
Cornerstone incorporates IntelligentWin into its early capture process to research incumbent contractors, historical contract awards, customer buying patterns, relevant past performance, and competitive positioning.
Understanding customer buying patterns has introduced a particularly valuable dimension to our capture strategy. Looking beyond the immediate solicitation to examine how a customer has historically acquired services, structured contracts, and selected contractors provides insights that were previously overlooked.
The value
IntelligentWin brings critical federal market intelligence together in one platform, reducing the time required to research opportunities and develop an informed competitive assessment.
One of its greatest benefits is the overall accuracy of that data and helping Cornerstone rapidly evaluate opportunities from multiple perspectives. The value is not simply finding more opportunities; it is having good data to work with, identifying the right opportunities and developing a more informed strategy for pursuing them.
The business impact
Cornerstone's capture process is already benefiting from faster research, more disciplined bid/no-bid decisions, stronger competitive awareness, and more effective allocation of limited business development resources.
IntelligentWin has introduced new intelligence into our decision-making process that is directly influencing opportunity selection, teaming strategies, and competitive positioning. By understanding the acquisition history and competitive environment earlier, we can focus proposal resources on opportunities where we have a realistic path to success.
“To say federal contracting has been challenging over the past few years would be a massive understatement. IntelligentWin gives small businesses like Cornerstone a competitive advantage by bringing critical market intelligence, incumbent information, and opportunity insights into the capture process, using just one site. It helps us make better-informed bid/no-bid decisions earlier, identify potential teaming opportunities, and focus our limited resources on pursuits where we have a realistic opportunity to win. Most significantly, the data provided by IntelligentWin has proven to be exceeding accurate, better intelligence means better capture decisions.”
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