Column: Have You Checked Out the Revamped GSA Schedules Program?

      Historically, the General Services Administration’s Multiple-Award Schedule contracts have provided a solid platform for vendors selling to federal agencies, whether you focus on products or services.

      The GSA reported Schedules sales of $36.3 billion in fiscal 2020, of which small businesses received $13.5 billion, or 37%. Purchases include a wide variety of commonly-used services, such as for security guards and IT support, and products such as motor vehicle parts, medical supplies, office supplies, office furniture, tools and clothing.

Features of the Schedules

      If your products or services are covered by the program, you can negotiate one contract with GSA that is available for use by any federal agency (and in certain circumstances by state and local agencies including police departments and disaster response). Furthermore, this contract will have a five-year term, plus three 5-year options.

      Another advantage is GSA Advantage, an online platform where your items are accessible by all federal buyers, whether they have ever heard of you or not. And GSA is also enabling Schedule contract holders for products (unfortunately, not services) to the Defense Logistics Agency’s FedMall platform, a similar ecommerce platform accessible specifically by military agencies.

      You can add new products or services at almost any time (with a little bureaucratic hassle), change prices, delete items and provide special pricing or limited-time sale pricing. The negotiated GSA contract pricing acts as a ceiling, unless you implement a commercial market price increase, but you can provide specific special pricing reductions against agency Blanket Purchase Agreements or to meet competition.

      Net takeaway – you still retain a lot of flexibility in response to market conditions.

What’s new with the Schedules?

      Formerly there were 80-plus different schedules (and more recently 24 schedules). They now have been consolidated into one schedule.

      Why is this exciting? Previously you had to negotiate separate contracts, each with different terms and conditions and expiration dates, for listings that were on different schedules. I once consulted with a well-known Fortune 500 company whose products appeared on 50 different schedules, and therefore had to deal with multiple GSA buying offices, contracting officers, contract specialists, and so forth. We had to build a database and purchase order monitoring system to keep track by Special Item Number (SIN) within Schedule of the company’s sales and those of competitors.

      Given the volume of government sales, one still needs to create a database and monitoring system but the negotiations are with a single contracting office, contracting officer and consistent time frame across all GSA-based sales. And awardees can upload their contract listings and prices through a consistent connection to GSA Advantage.

      FedSched, a GSA contract support consulting firm, notes that the program now consists of one GSA Schedule broken down into 12 categories, 83 subcategories, and approximately 300 SINs.

      FedSched offered several additional observations in a recent document on its website: “The SINs under the new consolidated MAS Schedule, mapped to one or more NAICS Codes, each have a number and a ‘plain language’ title. Whenever possible, (it appears) GSA looked to map each SIN to a single NAICS Code, however there are still SINs that map to multiple NAICS Codes, as well as NAICS Codes that map to multiple SINs...For example, NAICS Code 541611, Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services, applies to multiple SINs.”

“Hey, I’m just a small business – will this work for me?”

      According to Bob Steger, national sales manager for Advance GSA Consulting, there likely are 19,000-20,000 businesses holding GSA Schedule Contracts with over 7 million products/services listed on the GSA Schedule System. “Approximately three-quarters of all companies on the schedule system are small,” he noted in a recent email.

      Steger reports that the GSA Schedule System accounts for approximately 15% of federal discretionary spending. Small businesses average around $1 million per year in federal sales. Large business concerns can have over $100 million per year in contract sales.

      My experience in the GSA marketplace cautions that a Schedule contract is only a license to find buyers, after which you still have to work hard to sell your wares. You have to find the agencies that need your product or service, and determine if that agency relies on GSA contracts for its procurement of common products and services. But GSA is now providing more marketing resources capabilities with GSA Advantage, FedMall and its (soon-to-return) in-person sales conferences that bring agency buyers together with awardee business development executives, as well as outreach to agency buyers to utilize the Schedules program. It is to GSA’s advantage to promote schedule purchases because a significant portion of GSA’s funding comes from sales commissions, known as Industrial Funding Fees.

Additional advantages

      GSA Schedule contracts are considered to be “Best-in-Class”, and deemed “competitively awarded” by most agencies. DOD has not fully signed into this interpretation in the past but with the connection to Defense Logistic Agency’s FedMall, awardees will have some advantages. Further market research efforts by agency buyers are reduced by buying from schedule contract holders.

Tom Johnson is the publisher of Set-Aside Alert. He can be reached at tjohnson@setasidealert.com.

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Column: Have You Checked Out the Revamped GSA Schedules Program?

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