Government Source Selection Overview

Introduction

The application your organization uses to monitor, track, and execute the tasks and actions associated with evaluating vendors is a key factor in managing the source selection process effectively in the acquisition management lifecycle. The process can be time-consuming and lengthy, providing stakeholders with little visibility into the process steps and current state.

What if you could quickly and efficiently create and manage your source selection process in a simple-to-use application without having to overhaul your entire process?

The right solution can drive better outcomes, save time, and reduce costs. The Appian Government Source Selection (GSS) solution combines the best qualities of Appian's acquisition and source selection solutions into one application that allows you to streamline your acquisition life cycle management process. The flexible and configurable architecture makes it easy to configure your organization's unique source selection process. With GSS, your contracting professionals and evaluation teams can manage, update, and execute on source selection tasks. It provides a comprehensive view of the evaluation process, which improves visibility and allows you to track your evaluation deliverables. And the best news of all, the solution can be ready to deploy right out of the box or configured to match your specific needs and ready to deploy within weeks.

Evaluation example

Let's take a look at an example scenario:

Acme Agency, an advertising firm, has several vendor evaluations to complete for an upcoming contract. A contracting professional is responsible for setting up the evaluation and ensuring all necessary data and documents are entered correctly to begin the evaluation.

With Source Selection, the contracting professional can manage this entire evaluation process all in one application. To customize the evaluation, an evaluation approach is selected to guide the contracting professional through the evaluation cycle and determine what tasks and steps are needed for that particular evaluation. It also will ensure that tasks and steps are sent to the correct group. For example, the legal team may get a task to review certain documents, while the factor chair team member may get a task to create specific documents based on a template.

Once the approach has been selected, the contracting professional can then enter basic evaluation details, evaluation phases, timeline, and basic vendor details to retrieve the rest of the vendor data from SAM.gov. They can upload vendor documents, establish their evaluation factors, create evaluation teams, and assign teams to specific factors.

Once the evaluation period has started, the contracting professional needs to make sure the necessary documents and activities are being completed on time. They will be able to see the status and progress of the evaluation all in a single view.

What does Appian Government Source Selection provide?

Guided evaluation set up process

A wizard guides you and your end users through the process of setting up an evaluation. This ensures a high level of accuracy to the data being provided.

Simplify your evaluation form process

When you click on start evaluation in the set up process, GSS uses a standard evaluation form to send to all assigned evaluators. The form provides evaluators with the necessary factor and vendor documents they need as well as the factor's rating scale. This allows your contracting personnel to focus on evaluation setup while the solution automatically handles the evaluation form.

SAM.gov integration

To ensure your vendor data for your evaluation is kept up-to-date, GSS allows you to integrate with SAM.gov and bring the vendor data you need directly into your application.

Customizable evaluation approach

GSS allows you to add an evaluation approach during the initial evaluation setup or at any point in the evaluation.

Generative AI capabilities

Streamline your consensus process by leveraging AI to generate a single, synthesized response from a group of responses. The original group of responses are maintained for reference and you can further edit and refine the combined response for clarity.

You can also use AI to synthesize evaluation and rating data into a suggested final comment response. Users can then edit the generated response rather than having to write up a consensus response from scratch.

Consensus E-Signature

Request e-signatures from all evaluators involved in a consensus rather than downloading the report and having each participant sign manually. Consensus report signatures can be marked as required when creating the evaluation. Email notifications are sent to evaluators to sign off on the consensus report and results.

Manage consensus process

Consolidate evaluation responses and make a final decision on the factor or vendor rating through a guided consensus process, which provides a summary of results.

Weighted evaluation factors

Adjustable weighted values for each factor and subfactor in an evaluation record provides more control over their relative importance from one evaluation to another. This makes it easier to communicate and demonstrate the reasoning behind a decision.

Complete control over evaluation tasks

Create, configure, and complete evaluation tasks for each evaluation, all in one easy-to-use application. Additionally, when you create your evaluation, you can quickly add, edit, rearrange, and reassign your tasks as needed.

Full transparency with single Evaluation views

Break down process barriers and clarify the status of your evaluations through Evaluation summaries and approach visibility.

Integration with Contract Writing

Government Source Selection is integrated with Contract Writing (CW) to enable you to create an Evaluation from a released Solicitation in the CW solution. After an Evaluation is created in the CW, the Evaluation details appear in the CW’s Solicitation Summary page, and the related Solicitation is visible in the GSS’s Evaluation Summary page, establishing a clear connection between the two solutions. Additionally, audit logs display which fields are pre-populated from the Solicitation and which were updated by the Contracting Officer.

The integration between GSS and CW is set up automatically if both the solutions use the same environment.

Intelligent document creation and management

Create, upload, manage, and collaborate on your documents and templates directly in the application with the built-in Office 365 integration.

Secure and fast deployment

De-risk your deployment with the security, scalability, and reliability your customers demand through the entire deployment, configuration, and implementation lifecycle. Rapidly respond with a flexible configuration that adapts to your evaluation processes.

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