Digging deeper into the opportunity behind NextStage, an AI-enabled platform for GovCon Business Development, Capture, and Proposals, we caught up with Dave Oathout, Vice President of Solutions and Growth at RSC2, Inc.—a leading provider of C5ISR, acquisition, program management, IT and cybersecurity, systems engineering, and training for the federal government. Dave shares how NextStage supports the challenge of too much, employee retention, and greater efficiency.
The Role of NextStage
As with most contractors in the space, RSC2 leverages intel from multiple sources including SAM, opportunity publications through ACQUISITION.GOV, along with lists within its existing GSA award schedules, IDIQs, and GWACs. “In the context of NextStage, we run through an opportunity assessment and qualification process, and then we insert those items that we are qualified for that align to our strategic vision, support our core capabilities, or are in markets we want to serve. We then move that into the business development lifecycle in which we really further qualify, capture, and then plan for bid proposal activities.”
Addressing Challenges
One of the challenges for this industry is the myriad of opportunities. When it comes to choosing the opportunities you’re going to pursue, Dave says it’s all about, “…understanding who you are as an organization, where you are going, and ensuring that you are investing your resources towards your strategic outcomes.”
Another challenge is gaining sufficient information about opportunities from the government in advance of an RFP in order to create and develop solutions against future opportunities.
The final challenge is orchestrating and integrating a pipeline within the organization. “A strong culture of business development has a very organic pipeline management process and system. It’s not bureaucratic. It’s more organic, where everybody owns BD, and they’re part of future solutions.”
Dave goes on to say, “When your organization is only using your pipeline as a shopping list, your effectiveness is very low. You’re still going to produce results, you’re still going to submit proposals, but are you submitting proposals that you can win? Are you submitting proposals that highlight your strengths? Are you submitting proposals and bidding towards activities that grow your organization aligned to your vision?”
The Case for NextStage
As with many teams who sampled a litany of tools, spreadsheets, and CRMs over time, the reality is that for a small company there is not a good business case to make a significant capital investment in a CRM that requires a lot of resources to administer. Simpler tools may be more manageable, but they lack context.
“Somewhere in the middle is NextStage. What drove me to NextStage as our CRM is that it has the appropriate amount of rigor, the ability to provide depth, and the ability to manage a pipeline or a waterfall. It’s customizable by the user to meet the business needs and does a great job of allowing me to model our business development lifecycle in the tool versus the tool defining my business development lifecycle.”
Driving Results
As an early adopter, NextStage has allowed Dave’s team to live BD versus report BD. “As we evolve as an organization, as our capabilities become richer, more robust, more complex, more intricate, it opens up space for us to create solutions for our customers that emerge over time. Our CRM has to evolve with us.”
This adaptability is critical in a GovCon environment where opportunity landscapes can shift at any time. Dave highlights how NextStage supports this agility by allowing for tailored pipelines. “Traditionally you have your BD phase, you have your capture phase, and you have your proposal phase. But with NextStage, as we evolve as an organization or for key captures, we can create unique pipelines. We can further decompose and segregate the capture phase into near, mid, long–term. Or we can make it customer-focused.”
This flexibility enables RSC2 to align processes with strategic goals, ensuring effective management of both big–picture strategy and detailed execution. “It allows us to align our intent to our process, to our knowledge management. And for me, as the leader of our business development organization, it enables me to have a God’s eye view of the ongoings.”
By providing this perspective, NextStage enables Dave and his team to foster collaboration and shared accountability. “The key to success in growing your organization is everybody’s part of that solution. It’s the team’s effort that moves us forward; it’s not my effort. But what I need to make sure that I’m able to see is that we’re all moving in the same direction. We’re prioritizing efforts in a manner that supports our growth objectives and that teams and individuals are resourced to meet our customers’ needs and have the bandwidth to provide a quality project across the BD lifecycle.”
Supporting Culture and Retention
Factoring in retention of personnel as a measure of success, as at the top of corporate goals, everything that happens in terms of growth funnels down from that. “When we identify opportunities, we want to know that it is aligned to where our people want to go with their careers. When we are managing workload volume in our BD, capture, and bid and proposal phases, we have to know whether we are burning people out for no reason.”
Better tools and understanding a better way forward – the what, the why, and the alignment with goals – can be a big part of the equation.
“NextStage definitely supports strategic alignment from a leadership perspective. We are more efficient at bidding what matters. We are able to fight above our weight in terms of how many bids we can present year–over–year with a limited number of people on our team, without burning those people out.”
This focus on efficiency has allowed RSC2 to remain competitive and agile. “We are growing and outpacing our competitors with the same size team that we’ve had for three years, because we’re efficiency first, we’re investing in those resources and we’re leveraging the tools we have to be more effective and efficient. And then once we hit a point, we can add to the team, but it’s not our first course of action.” This mindset underscores the importance of thoughtful, sustainable growth in the GovCon industry.
A Look to the Future
NextStage’s evolving capabilities, including AI-driven market research and analysis, offers an efficiency boost and a force multiplier. They are shaping the future of pipeline management by transforming it into a dynamic and forward-focused process.
“NextStage allows us to focus on our opportunities and pipeline, so instead of trying to eat the elephant in one bite, it allows us to work towards a goal in small bites. Pipeline administration has become more of a living continuous activity with bi-weekly reviews versus daily administration reviews.” This shift has resulted in significant time savings – up to 70% less time spent on pipeline administration – while fostering a more agile and efficient approach.
The platform’s flexibility positions it as a key enabler of future growth for government contractors, allowing BD analysts to adapt its features to evolving needs. This bottom-up engagement ensures the tool grows alongside the organization.
“We’re always looking to improve and NextStage is our peer in evolving with our best practices. Their support is really a partnership versus me consuming a piece of software. It’s a powerful thing. We’re a people organization and it extends to our partners. And NextStage is one of our partners.”
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