Appendix C
Sample Capture Plan
A capture plan is one of the documents critical for effective proposal planning, as it contains information the team needs to use to help it decide whether or not to bid on an opportunity. And if you do go ahead with a bid, the capture plan data can help your team craft a strong response.
The capture plan is a structured approach to developing a clear understanding of the customer, their environment, and their needs. It ensures that you have a thorough understanding of the competitive landscape and the solutions the competition is offering, especially as matched against your company’s suite of products and services. The capture plan helps you turn all that understanding into a strategy for winning the contract through a combination of produce, price, and performance offering.
The capture plan is created and maintained (updated and revised) by a member of your proposal team, usually the capture manager, who presents each evolution of the document at a team meeting, sharing the information as a written report and/or as a PowerPoint presentation. These correspond with the bid decision points discussed in Chapters 4, 8, 14, and 15.
On the following pages, you’ll find a sample capture plan that you can adapt as a template for your own company’s use. This document contains no real names or data. WooNoo is a fictitious government entity (the customer) offering a fake opportunity. Consolidated Amalgam is a fictitious company trying to capture (bid on and win) that opportunity. Everything else about the document is realistic, in that the questions or topics posed and the data filled in next to those questions or topics is what you might expect to see in a real capture plan.
In this sample capture plan, the text in bold represents the standard questions to be answered. The data supplied by the presenter (usually the capture manager) is in normal typeface.
The text in italics shows that the presenter knows the answer is not satisfactory, meaning the answers at this time are incomplete. Those items are therefore on the presenter’s action item list, which means the presenter needs to fix the problems. The good news is that sometimes others on the review team either can supply the right answer or can offer to help get the right information in cooperation with the presenter.
Here are a few final tips before you read the actual document:
• Your capture plan is a living document, so it’s up to the presenter to keep the capture plan current by replacing old data with the very latest available.
• The sample plan provided here is only an example. It will not fit your business precisely, so think of this as a template you can tailor to fit your own company’s needs.
• Once you’ve adapted this sample to fit your needs, use that template for all capture plans across the company and across opportunities to ensure a consistent format—and make everyone’s job easier.
Now, let’s look at the sample capture plan ….
Capture Plan
Next Big Procurement
WooNoo, Orlando, FL
For Training throughout CONUS
September November 2013
Consolidated Amalgam
Arlington, VA
 
 
Prepared by John C. Lauderdale III
Proposal Leadership, Inc.
Herndon, VA
703-629-1166
Table of Contents
A. Data Summary Sheet
B. Marketing Questions and Answers
C. Background and History
Bid/No-Bid Results/Template
D. The Technology
E. The Competition
Opportunity evaluation
F. Why We Can Win
Discriminators
G. Objections and Barriers
Win Strategy
H. Proposal Outline
1. Technical Approach
Technical Risk
Schedule for Delivery of Products
2. Management Approach
Schedule Risk
3. Cost Approach
Cost Risk; Should-Cost Estimate
A. Data Summary Sheet
Customer: WooNoo, out of Orlando, FL
Key customer personnel: Contracting Officer: (KO): Lisa Williams /Deputy KO: Derrick Abercrombie
Product or service to be procured: For Lot II, this is technology-based training material
Location of customer and location of work performance: various locations throughout CONUS
Our key technical staff: To Be Supplied (TBS). This is an action item for the next review.
Contract duration and best estimate of target cost: Total contract ceiling is $4.5 B over 9 years; contracts officers’ estimate of currently-identified total needs is approximately $1.2B; Split between Lot I (not of interest to Consolidated Amalgam) and Lot II (we’re bidding as prime) is unknown at this time ….
Source and amount of customer’s funds: Routine operating funds will be used for this contract; no extraordinary or unusual funding requirements that are likely to be interrupted by external events. This money is earmarked in the entire forward planning documents of the Navy. We expect no significant increases or decreases in the funding available.
Critical, or precipitating, event: Expiration of existing contracts; desire of the customer to have a vehicle to attract a limited number of well-qualified suppliers, capable of successfully performing these tasks, under a variety of contract types, each reflecting the degree of risk to the successful bidders.
Relation of this procurement to our own long-range or strategic plans (that is, how important is this procurement to the firm’s future?): As one of several incumbents, Consolidated Amalgam is not only well positioned to win one of the two small business contracts, but winning these, as a prime, is also important to us as an independent company. Failure to win, as a prime, will surely be a severe blow to our growth possibilities in this, an important marketplace for Consolidated Amalgam.
B. Marketing Questions and Answers
Question 1: Who will make the procurement decision (that is, who is the Source Selection Authority, and who is likely to be on the Source Selection Evaluation Board)?
Answer 1: (Not available at this time. This is an Action Item to be closed no later than the release of the final solicitation.)
Question 2: What criteria will be used to pick the winner?
Answer 2: This is a “best value” award, based on Technical (Instructional Systems Development) & (Management), Past Performance, and Price. We suspect that, during the selection process, at least three and perhaps four small businesses will be judged “technically acceptable,” and from there it will be a cost/price shootout to determine the two winners.
C. Background and History
1. The players
Individuals: Robert Beurlot, WooNoo Program Manager; Steve Larton, Deputy WooNoo Program Manager; Lisa Williams, KO
Institutions: No outside institutions are relevant to this competition.
Customer: Some elements outside of WooNoo will be supplying evaluators for this competition. Their organizations are only partially known at this time. We will endeavor to identify those organizations and factor their own interests into our discussions in our proposal.
Competition: The important personnel from all competing teams are well known to us. And we are known to them.
2. Customer’s motivation: No special considerations. This is the re-competition of existing work but with a slightly different mix of small and large businesses to win some of these ID/IQ contracts.
Cost savings? No more than usual.
Risk reduction? No. Customer views this as a low-risk program.
Other? Not known, but probably none.
3. Our motivation and interests
Pre-RFP contact and RFP influence: Consolidated Amalgam, and XMX of our business partners (subcontractors) took advantage of the customer’s invitation for a 1-hour meeting, in Orlando, during August. Consolidated Amalgam has influenced the solicitation in the following way(s):
Follow-on, spin-off considerations: This is a continuation of our mainline business. Winning this would position us to compete for the new work from this command coming up in about two years.
D. The Technology
1. Describe the technology to be applied to the customer’s problems:
This is a low-technology application. Most of the work is the creation of PowerPoint presentations.
There is, however, some research work required regarding high-technology equipment. The equipment manufacturers usually provide some modest amount of documentation with their equipment when delivered. However, it quickly becomes obsolete, and documentation downloadable from their websites tends to be inadequate to outright wrong. Therefore, an important part of this task is to improve that documentation to be fully usable. In addition, when the individual pieces of equipment become part of a total system, the interfaces are complex and not documented at all.
2. Relate this technology to competing technologies and why we’ve decided this particular technology is the best one:
We expect the instructional approach and the technical solution to be largely the same by all offerors, whether for the free and open competition or the small business competition. The differentiators among offerors should be in the XMX niche market for handling the interface problem as discussed above. As a subcontractor to us incumbent and on the basis of similar work that XMX has done for the command not only in CONUS, but OCONUS, XMX represents a significant and sustainable competitive advantage for our team.
E. The Competition
Describe all competitors, probably including the two SHADOW competitors, 0 and 00. (This is for Lot II only and small-business competition only):
0. Do nothing, or defer a procurement decision for the indefinite future. Not realistic as the procurement is required by law and regulation.
00. Perform the tasks in-house (or under other contract vehicles). Again, not realistic. The customer has very little, if any, capability to do this job.
1. Us (Team Consolidated Amalgam): Consolidated Amalgam is prime; subcontractors are XMX, Cisco, and YERS (a certified 8(a) company with a sterling reputation with this customer.
2. Team CCRS (subcontractors unknown)
3. Team Northern Bamff (subcontractors only from other divisions of Bamff)
4. Team ArkansasOttes (subcontractors unknown)
5. Possibly another team, but we have not been able to get definitive information on it.
(General Note: If there are more than about three or four, try to be realistic about your chances of winning. You should either be able to reduce the list to three or four or consider getting out of the competition.)
Eliminating the Competition
1. Can some competitors be neutralized by offering them a subcontractor status? Only Team ArkansasOttes is a good candidate for that move. Preliminary discussions have taken place, but there is a problem between our two teams, as there is too much overlap to make a sensible team.
2. What does a list of competitors tell us about what the customer wants? These are the usual players, and we can discern nothing special about this list.
F. Why We Can Win
(Why Us?)
1. Describe the advantages that we possess over the competition; these will become the discriminators or themes in the proposal. Are we singularly well qualified or just “me-too”? We are at least as well qualified as our primary competition, Team CCRS. We believe this may well be a price shootout among equally compliant and attractive technical solutions.
2. Discuss what you believe to be necessary (price: waiver of rights; deviation from corporate policy; strongest subcontractor or associate relationships) to win this work. Any price concessions will have to come in the last two weeks of the competition. But in light of the answer to 1 above, we need to be ready to sharpen our pencils during those last two weeks.
3. What subcontractors or suppliers have been chosen to support this effort? Why were they chosen? Are they committed to us? Exclusively? Signed a nondisclosure agreement? Signed an agreement not to compete? Both of our subcontractors have been with us for the last 18 months. All NDAs and other agreements have been in place for over a year.
4. Have we influenced the RFP, thereby achieving Competitive Convergence (between our views and theirs)? Is the RFP likely to reflect our input? Are some firms now discouraged from competing or placed at a distinct disadvantage because of our skillful interfaces with the customer? We’ve done the best we can. We know the competition has also been in to see this customer, as have we and both our team members.
G. Objections and Barriers
List all of the objections a skeptical, critical, informed management team might make to proceeding with this business development. Overcome or discount these objections, using verifiable facts and/or judgments.
There are no significant existing objections. Those objections raised at the last review have all been addressed and are no longer operative.
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