As much as another changing of the guard in Washington, D.C., clouds the outlook for government contractors (GovCons) in 2025, the best way for them to counter macro-level uncertainty is by focusing on things they can control: the intelligence, efficiency and competitive readiness of their own business.
Technology can be a critical enabler on each of those fronts. In fact, government contractors now have access to a range of tech tools that can make an immediate impact within their business, especially in these four critical areas:
- BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT. Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help GovCons fill their pipelines with more of the kinds of work they can profitably win and execute. AI-driven analytics can comb public RFP sources to uncover contracting opportunities a firm might otherwise miss. AI can also help score and prioritize opportunities based on pre-established parameters like win probability, estimated project profitability, and alignment with a company’s business development priorities.
During the proposal-creation stage, AI-powered tools can drastically reduce the time and resources required to respond to complex and highly technical requests for proposals (RFPs). With the ability to efficiently parse, gather, digest and format huge volumes of information from disparate sources, AI tools enable GovCons to create a high-quality “pink team” draft for a federal RFP in a matter of hours, reducing average RFP time-to-draft by 70% and shrinking proposal generation costs in half. What’s more, using these tools can boost a company’s proposal capacity by 15-20% without increasing headcount or compromising the win rate.
PROJECTS. In the project management office, capabilities driven by machine learning and AI can improve efficiency by automating project codes and task creation, for example. A firm can examine past project data to bring more fidelity into their project budgets and develop more reliable estimates for on-time delivery at the expected cost. AI can also deliver real-time information to project managers so they can quickly course-correct when necessary, leading to better project outcomes, stronger client relationships and more repeat business. With natural language processing, project managers can access key project information from emails, contracts, and reports in seconds to support timelier, better-informed decision-making. They also can see cost trends and potential overruns and address them before they become problematic.
FINANCE & ACCOUNTING. Intelligent, automated accounts receivable (AR) and accounts payable (AP) capabilities can relieve Finance and Accounting teams of manual, error-prone work. They also can ensure that data migrates within and across systems accurately, alert the right people when data is missing or inaccurate, and find and place missing data where it belongs — all to expedite invoicing on the AR side so companies get paid more efficiently, securely, and accurately. AP processes can be similarly automated to ensure vendors are paid on time.
- Sponsor -- COMPLIANCE. AI models can be trained to interpret regulatory language and flag compliance risks like mismatched data or unallowable costs. AI can also create — and confirm compliance with — policies and procedures, saving companies time by analyzing and applying rules by contract or project, monitoring time and expense entries, gathering and formatting the data needed to fulfill specific reporting requirements, and detecting and alerting companies to data disparities across systems and reports.
The best thing about capabilities like these? They’re available now and ready to make a real difference across a government contracting firm.
Steve Karp is Chief Innovation Officer for Unanet, a Northern Virginia-based software company that provides enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management solutions for organizations in the government contracting, architecture, engineering, construction and professional services markets.
