Managing the Full Business Development Pipeline

A common challenge for Federal Government Contractors is having visibility into and access to the complete Business Development pipeline.  Typically, opportunities are tracked in spreadsheets, emails, or other tools like GovWin or Salesforce, and it’s very difficult to get one affordable view of all the opportunities, let alone access to all the opportunity data, information, and documents in one place without buying add-ons and additional software packages.

About The Logistics Company

The Logistics Company (TLC) is a Service-disabled Veteran Owned Federal Government Contractor that provides high-quality base operations and logistics support to government installations. TLC’s support encompasses the full range of maintenance, supply, transportation, training, and information technology.

Problem/Solution

Like many in the GovCon industry, TLC was using various tools to track and manage its pipeline of opportunities.  TLC selected R3’s WinCenter for GovCon for a variety of reasons, but one of the primary reasons was so TLC could see the complete pipeline and all the opportunities and information in one single tool, and R3’s WinCenter offered TLC the capability to customize the solution to meet their processes.

“We currently use WinCenter for the full pipeline lifecycle,” said Kim Sanborn, Vice President of Business Development at TLC. “From Phase 0 all the way through Award, and for recompetes. It’s full opportunity lifecycle management. The dashboards and reports are phenomenal and the visibility they provide is great.”

WinCenter is used primarily by a core team comprised of executives, BD, contracts, and pricing who all have access to and use the system. The ability to set user permissions and the ease of use has made the transition to the system relatively painless.

“We use WinCenter for all our pipeline meetings,” said Sanborn. “We start at the top with the complete pipeline then work our way down into the individual opportunities. It’s so convenient because everything is all together in one place—opportunity information, capture notes, everything.”

Benjamin Fletcher, Vice President of IT said. “We absolutely loved WinCenter in that we could use it out of the box and also customize it without coding.”

“The ability to actually have something to start with, and then quickly and easily customize without code was key for us – that flexibility is critical,” said Fletcher.  “It really is a situation where if you can think it, you can do it, and R3’s support team has been a great partner.  They’re excellent at listening to what we’re trying to do, suggesting solutions, or figuring out options for us to move forward.  They help us get what we need.”

Another key benefit of WinCenter is that it integrates with other tools TLC is using, including GovWin IQ and QlikView.

“The opportunities we identify in GovWin IQ come directly into WinCenter in Phase 0,” said Sanborn. “Phase 0 is the triage, then we follow the Shipley Model. We’ve customized the pieces that come in from GovWin IQ.  It’s all about the flexibility.”

TLC is currently working on streamlining its workflow, creating more custom reporting, and providing even more visibility into the pipeline. It is also developing Opportunity Briefs.