Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Introducing the Insider
The Industry Defined
HUBZones: Anyone Can Play
Beyond Reproach: The Incumbent's Bind
Breaking Wave: Human Resources BPO
Cooperative Personnel Services: Differentiating Not a Problem
Adventures in Marketing
Policy & Regs: Can We Satisfy the Appetite for Cleared Personnel?
Right-click to download (112 KB, Acrobat PDF).
Subscribers may read the full issue in the Subscribers Only section of this site. Please use the username/login and passwords that you have been assigned or selected.
To read the full stories, others can subscribe online, by fax, or mail—please press the Subscribe button to learn how.
An expanded and updated version of this news story broken by the Insider on February 1 has been distributed to subscribers in the full February 2005 issue, which subscribers can view in the Subscribers Only section of this Web site.
Insider subscribers received an updated and expanded version of this analysis with their full February 2005 issue. The issue also contains a copy of the Air Force "alert" document.
A Government Case With Legs. It's more important to focus on the Air Force's unusual "alert" regarding SAIC than on the Justice Department's False Claims Act (FCA) case that motivated it. It's the value of reputation, not the $10 million the government demands in the suit, that's the issue here.
The Air Force's alert, with its tone of alarm and pique and global scope, gives a hint of potential government intentions. This matter has already leapt from one contract at one base to the whole Air Force.
There are, plausibly, hundreds of Air Force suppliers and large contracts that could warrant inspection for the same kind of allegations via formal audits or other reviews. It's not hard to imagine these reviews spreading to other contractors and other Defense Department components.
Further, basking in the glow of widespread praise for its energetic pursuit of the companies that gave us the accounting scandals, the (pro-business) Administration may have the appetite to turn over stones all around the government services community. Or, Congress might get the urge to hold hearings or investigate.
Unfortunately, all of the above could unfold regardless of the merits of SAIC's defense of its conduct.
The February Insider also includes two insightful articles on branding as it relates to federally oriented services firms. The first includes the first-ever systematically collected data on the effectiveness of the brands of different companies in this arena. The second focuses in on how to make use of the many "touchpoints" between client and service provider. Together, they take a lot of fluff out of the topic of branding, and tee up issues you can think through further and act upon.
Laboring to overcome skepticism about the value of branding in the government arena, the Insider found some objective data and analysis about it, thanks to a study about to be released by a branding firm called The Delve Group. We haven't found anything comparable. This article provides some top-line results of Delve's survey, including the insight of Richard Crespin, the branding expert behind the effort.
How do you define a brand? A brand is the sum of every experience anyone, including clients, has with your company, and how that experience is absorbed into their consciousness and subconscious. In short, it's the perceived reality about your firm—what it is and what it does.
In what ways should a brand be federal-specific? Federal officials are mostly "referential" buyers. When you have a federal track record, maintaining those references in top shape is critical. Prospective clients will attach more credibility to them than virtually any other source. "Past performance" is often used as code word for "brand."
What are the most important results of the survey? We found that government officials actually pay attention to brand. We also found that the federal mindset is surprisingly open to the information that can build brand equity, notwithstanding the barriers thrown up by regulations and a bureaucratic environment.
Desirable attributes that buyers actually voice to describe what successful firms are include: integrity, customer focused, flexible, resourceful, and other specific terms.
What these firms do, a different aspect of their brand, buyers described in such terms as: deliver on time and within budget, integrate services well, communicate openly/well, and several other specific traits.
Discussions of branding often splinter into different directions. That's because there's a large definitional abyss, and branding is not something on which many government services contractors spend. At the same time, some executives sense it's worthwhile because it can lead to the ability to differentiate in an increasingly crowded market.
To help demystify this subject, the Insider talked with Eric Almquist, a senior partner at Lippincott Mercer, part of Mercer Management Consulting and an organizational descendant of some of the original thinkers about branding in the 1940s.
Please elaborate on touchpoints. Each touchpoint has the potential to raise customer understanding and positive feelings about a company. On the flip side, it's also critical to know which touchpoints can generate unwanted perceptions and reduce your standing with customers.
For a bank, a positive touchpoint might be a user-friendly ATM machine. But transactions at the machine also can generate strong negative feelings, say, if it doesn't generate a receipt or eats your card.
You're saying branding includes just about everything. How do you get your arms around the relationship? Yes, there's lots of ways that a company can shape customers' views. Successful brand-builders concentrate investment on the customer touchpoints that will do the most to raise profitable demand. You need to analyze which touchpoints have the greatest impact, both positive and negative, on customer behavior and brand loyalty. Then you focus your investments accordingly on the ones that count the most. A "do everything" approach in which every category of interaction is treated tends to squander resources. Superior brand-building is selective and deliberate.
Columnist Alan Chvotkin of the Professional Services Counsel brings to light four federal initiatives in the antiterrorism area concerning greater physical and information security. The theme of all four is a generous sharing of responsibility by the government with its contractors. For example, the government wants companies to do rigorous prescreening of candidates for security clearances, and also to begin to protect contractor buildings the way federal facilities are protected.
The column walks you through these initiatives at the Departments of Homeland Security, Energy and Defense, and at GSA, and tees up the key questions you should be asking to focus your compliance and implementation efforts.
The $170 million software system that the FBI might decide to scrap is receiving understandable attention. The situation is murky to say the least. A February 3 Department of Justice Inspector General report savaged the Bureau's management of the program and went pretty light on SAIC, the system designer and developer.
The Insider attended a February 3 Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing which should have led to clarity, but it didn't. FBI Director Mueller took the figurative hit from one Republican and two Democratic senators (Gregg, Leahy, Mikulski) who were mightily frustrated, even angry. So was Mueller. SAIC did not get a chance to present its position because the senators had to attend to the Gonzales nomination vote and other matters. However, the company issued 9,800 words of prepared testimony.
There's no point in dwelling here on the familiar who-shot-John of a large systems contract that apparently goes south. That's to be expected in most cases, which fall short in one or more of: product, schedule, cost, or unmet client expectations.
The full article concerns some lessons thus far regarding contractor client handling and crisis management.
Sound of One Hand Clapping. In the trade press before the hearing, SAIC recommended that the FBI just go ahead and deploy the initial, abbreviated system delivered in December because it was, after all, "accepted," and agents like it. Funnily enough, that recommendation and rationale, although known, were not referred to even once in 90 minutes of Senate-FBI exchanges. In fact, the FBI CIO referred repeatedly to ongoing testing and evaluation of the December 2004 SAIC deliverable. Lesson: you may have to wait longer than you'd like to claim some semblance of victory.
The full article on this FBI story covers other matters and lessons, such as Director Mueller's claim that SAIC shares "culpability" with the FBI, and the company's strong attack on Aerospace Corporation's independent review qualifications and results.