Following on from yesterday’s post about how to find a federal bid I wanted to let you know about a free tool that provides fantastic intelligence. Within a few clicks, FedSpending.org is able to tell you:
- what kind of annual spending levels the federal government has for the commodity or service you provide
- which federal agencies are buyers
- who the companies are (i.e. your competitors) that those agencies are buying from
- where in the country the work is performed
This information is actually public but difficult to access, aggregate and analyze. FedSpending.org does the hard work for you by sourcing contract data from the Federal Procurement Data System.
As an example, I ran a search on contracts for pest control services and found that in 2007 the Federal Government spent $11.7 million on them. I learned that this amount was split between 209 vendors (the contractor with the largest piece of the pie represented just over $1m) with the Army the largest buyer spending $3.7m. In terms of geography where the contracts were performed, California, South Carolina and New York were the top 3 ranking states. You are able to drill into each layer right down to the individual contracts where you are able to see who the Vendor is, when the contract was awarded and when it terminates. I’ve put a couple of screen shots at the end of this post.
FedSpending.org was launched in October 2006 by OMB Watch, a non-profit group that promotes open government, accountability and citizen participation. There are companies paying thousands of dollars each year for intelligence like this and FedSpending.org provides it all for free. I highly recommend you checking it out.
Are You A Certified Government Vendor?
PublicSpend is a community of the most credible local businesses in the United States. If you work for government or have a current government certification - federal, state or local - then you should be registered as a PublicSpend Vendor. Buyers are increasingly using PublicSpend as their first port of call to find qualified vendors. Make sure you can be found!
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