Delivering Commercial, Outcome-Based Solutions Will Speed Mission Success
SAIC brings together innovations from the commercial market with government procurement and compliance savvy to deliver outstanding outcomes
06-02-2023
Heath Starr
IT MODERNIZATION
Key Takeaways:
- The COVID-19 pandemic forced government agencies to re-evaluate traditional procurement requirements for more speed and flexibility in technology acquisitions.
- The government's evolution of how it procures goods and services gives companies like SAIC new opportunities and approaches to engage customers on commercial offerings.
- Having an experienced technology integrator is critical to adopting commercial technologies securely and seamlessly for mission success.
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In mid-May, President Joe Biden officially ended COVID-19 as a national health emergency, a little more than three years after the coronavirus indelibly changed the world. While we are glad to officially wave goodbye to the pandemic, it did abruptly and fundamentally reshape how SAIC’s government customers adopt technology and acquire solutions and services moving forward.
COVID-19 proved to be a significant disruptor, forcing government agencies into rapid moves to technologies that allowed their workforces to telework and continue accomplishing their missions in the face of shutdowns and then lockdowns. What would have taken years to occur happened in a matter of weeks, as agencies had to re-evaluate procurement requirements and entrusted commercial managed service providers to deliver remote-work outcomes to maintain continuity of operations.
Incorporating lessons learned in being agile to mission-impacting events, agencies want to continue bringing that commercial-sector speed and flexibility to acquisition. In the post-COVID-19 world, many programs are integrating commercial technologies and outcome-based solutions and services to shorten the time-to-field of new mission-critical capabilities.
The government’s evolution of how it procures goods and services gives companies like SAIC new opportunities and approaches to engage with our customers on commercial offerings.
More than ever, it’s clear that we need to take a creative, forward-looking approach to getting the right solutions that meet our customers’ needs, so that they can quickly adapt to the challenges of the moment. This approach has many elements, including a more dispersed workforce, increased access to emerging technologies and procurements that are less prescriptive. It is also based on fixed-unit pricing and allows more flexibility for companies to develop and provide solutions.
Working together with our customers, we can help them achieve the outcomes they need to serve critical missions. SAIC is well-positioned to do this through what we call our Commercial Marketplace offerings. They are outcome-based tools, solutions and bundled services for a wide range of needs, including:
- Cloud migration, modernization and management
- DevSecOps
- Zero trust cybersecurity
- Enterprise IT continuous monitoring
- User experience and support
- Business process and IT automation
- Data management
- AI development
- Digital engineering
- Outcome-based advisory
Government customers gain numerous benefits from these offerings because they are consistent with acquisition of commercial items as codified at 10 U.S.C. § 2377 and 41 U.S.C. § 3307, are preconfigured and ready for integration and use, and reduce investment in developing capabilities that are already available. These offerings leverage innovative technologies from our commercial partners and reduce vendor lock and technical-currency burdens. The maintenance costs and delivery risks of these solutions are transferred to us.
Our commercial practice within SAIC oversees the offerings catalog, and I’m honored to lead this growing platform for outcome-based procurement with our customers. The platform is built from our experience working with civilian agency, Department of Defense and intelligence community customers, providing products and “anything/everything as-a-service” (XaaS) offerings to bring the best solutions to government faster and with better results.
To be clear, we have always served commercial customers, but as the government evolves its understanding of how to efficiently buy and implement technology and services, we are responding by increasing the volume of our fixed-unit and fixed-price offerings of commercial-grade products and services that have been tailored to the unique missions and requirements of our government customers.
The integration we bring is critical to this effort. I have seen firsthand what happens when an agency attempts to contract with a purely commercial company. The shock of federal compliance, documentation and processes quickly grinds progress to a halt.
By increasing SAIC’s focus on delivery of commercial products and offerings, our customers gain the efficiencies, scalability and on-demand features that are ubiquitous in the commercial market. And they get them from a proven technology and systems integrator that understands how to implement those offerings in line with government compliance requirements.
The post-COVID-19 reality is filled with new and unique pressures on government workforces and priorities. With a creative, flexible and outcome-based approach to procurement, we can leverage the scope, scale and expertise of our more than 24,000 employees, along with the capabilities of our vast network of commercial partners, to deliver fast, reliable, predictable and, most important, successful results to our customers.
For more information on SAICs commercial products and services offerings, or to have a discussion about how we have assisted our other federal customers in making the change to outcome-based acquisitions, please contact me at heath.a.starr@saic.com.
Posted by: Heath Starr
Senior VP, Product, Innovation and Strategic Partnerships
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