To understand a competitor’s potential to win a contract, a business must identify and assess its competitors’ capabilities, including people, tools, processes, and past performance.
A business’ assessment of a competitor’s capabilities must be intellectually honest. How do we realize such analysis? Consider the following guidelines when assessing the threats posed by a competitor:
Categorize and analyze
Common capabilities businesses will invest in are simply people, processes, and tools (PPT). We define them as follows:
- People – Hiring and development. This means strategic hires, promotions within, personnel development, etc.
- Process – This refers to any business process or approach used to deliver services or develop a tangible deliverable for a client. This may also include internal organizational elements such as a center of excellence.
- Tools – This broad category encompasses any tangible aspect of how a business operates, including technologies, facilities, laboratories, etc. This manifests as a tangible item.
These investments are evidence of a business attempting to, or succeeding in, creating a competitive advantage. Below are examples of where an analyst may find evidence of such investments:
- People – Press releases announcing strategic hires, trade-press coverage of events, LinkedIn updates, etc.
- Process – Business website, case studies describing an approach to a customer’s problem
- Tools – Patents, business website, tweets announcing a product release, press releases about an acquisition where a business gains new capabilities, etc.
Businesses will talk about their investments in new capabilities and highlight the successes of their existing capabilities. They will showcase what they can do.
Assess current capabilities
When looking into a competitor, be mindful of researching their current investments. Corroborate that the capabilities mentioned in older press releases or acquired through past acquisitions are still in use and relevant.
Relying on outdated information to determine what a competitor can do can lead you to underestimate, overestimate, or misread a competitor’s capabilities or portfolio.
Don’t get absorbed into a competitor’s hype
Throughout your research, exercise your best judgment by differentiating between hype and mature capabilities. Be careful not to fall for what your competitor’s marketing team wants you to think. A capability is mature and worth paying attention to if it conforms to one or more of the following points:
- The competitor provides quantifiable evidence of how often this tool or process is used.
- The capability is not just a boilerplate process or tool that most competitors have. It incorporates new technologies or is a new approach to solving a problem.
- The capability is described in the context of a specific case study.
Use this assessment to enable determination of your competitive advantage
Identifying a competitor’s capabilities provides capture teams with critical insight into the competitor’s win strategy, including their technical and management arguments. To counter these arguments, capture teams must conduct an intellectually honest evaluation of their own capabilities and fortify them where necessary. They can buy capabilities through an acquisition, invest in them, or gain them by teaming with a business that is well-versed in a capability.
Taking these steps will better enable the conversion of competitor research into actionable intelligence. Such a transformation is critical to informing strategies that can win captures.
Frequently Asked Questions About Assessing Competitor Capabilities in Government Contracting
What is a competitor capability assessment in government contracting?
A competitor capability assessment examines the resources and experience a company could use to pursue or perform a federal contract. It helps a capture team determine how a competitor may position its solution, where it has an advantage, and where its capabilities may be weaker than its marketing suggests.
What capabilities should you evaluate when analyzing a GovCon competitor?
Competitor capabilities can generally be organized into four categories:
- People: Executives, program managers, technical experts, and other personnel.
- Processes: Delivery methods, management approaches, and organizational frameworks.
- Tools: Proprietary technologies, platforms, facilities, laboratories, and other tangible resources.
- Past performance: Relevant contracts, customers, results, and performance experience.
Together, these categories are sometimes described as PPTP: people, processes, tools, and past performance.
Why is intellectual honesty important in competitive analysis?
Intellectual honesty requires analysts to evaluate evidence objectively, even when the findings challenge internal assumptions. A capture team that underestimates a competitor may fail to address a serious threat, while one that overestimates the competitor may unnecessarily weaken its confidence, strategy, or pursuit decision.
How can you distinguish a mature capability from marketing hype?
A mature capability is usually supported by evidence of repeated use, measurable results, customer applications, relevant contract performance, sustained investment, or continued recruitment of personnel. A general claim without examples, metrics, or evidence of implementation should be treated as a lower-confidence indicator.
What sources can reveal a competitor’s capabilities?
Useful sources include company websites, press releases, contract announcements, case studies, job postings, employee profiles, patents, technical publications, conference presentations, acquisition announcements, social media, and government award databases. Analysts should corroborate important findings across multiple sources whenever possible.
How can you determine whether a competitor’s capability is current?
Look for recent evidence that the competitor continues to invest in, use, hire for, or win work involving the capability. Current job postings, contract awards, case studies, leadership assignments, certifications, product updates, and customer examples are stronger indicators than an isolated announcement published several years ago.
How can acquisitions change a government contractor’s capabilities?
An acquisition can give a contractor new personnel, intellectual property, facilities, customer relationships, contract vehicles, and past performance. Analysts should verify whether the acquired capabilities were retained, integrated into the parent company, reorganized, divested, or discontinued before treating them as current competitive strengths.
Does a competitor capability need to be proprietary to create an advantage?
No. A process or tool need not be proprietary to create value, but it should offer a meaningful advantage in performance, speed, cost, quality, scalability, security, or risk reduction. A standard industry practice presented under a branded name may not provide genuine differentiation unless the competitor can demonstrate distinctive results.
How should case studies be used in a competitor capability assessment?
Case studies can connect a claimed capability to an actual customer, contract, mission, or measurable outcome. Analysts should examine whether the example is recent, comparable to the target opportunity, relevant to the evaluation criteria, and sufficiently detailed to demonstrate that the capability was successfully used.
How does past performance support a competitor’s claimed capabilities?
Past performance shows whether a competitor has applied its people, processes, and tools in a relevant operating environment. Particularly strong evidence includes work for the same customer, similar technical scope, comparable contract size and complexity, and documented performance outcomes.
How can competitor capability research reveal a likely win strategy?
Patterns in hiring, acquisitions, partnerships, tools, facilities, and recent contract performance can indicate which strengths a competitor may emphasize. Capture teams can compare those capabilities with the solicitation’s requirements and evaluation factors to anticipate likely technical, management, staffing, and past-performance arguments.
What should a capture team do after identifying a competitor’s advantages?
The team should compare the competitor’s capabilities against its own and determine which differences could affect the customer’s evaluation. Depending on the findings, the company may need to strengthen its solution, recruit additional personnel, invest in a capability, acquire a business, add a teaming partner, adjust its messaging, or reconsider the pursuit.
About the Author
Brian Lindholm is the Founder and Managing Principal of FedSavvy Strategies, a firm he has led since 2012, helping federal contractors navigate complex competitive landscapes. A former U.S. Naval Officer, Brian integrates a disciplined perspective with deep expertise in federal contracting. He is widely recognized as a master of Competitive Intelligence (CI), having designed and led more than 500 Black Hat Reviews while successfully building robust corporate intelligence functions.
© FedSavvy Strategies and FedSavvy Strategies blog, 2012-2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to FedSavvy Strategies and FedSavvy Strategies blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
