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SEWP Performance Mandates

Special Report: SEWP

By Jeff Erlichman

Constant evaluations help customers make a best value decision for what they need and gives the contractor a way to prove themselves in the event they have received a poor mark.

From the customer’s point of view, if there’s a contractor out there who is not performing up to snuff, the Contract Holder needs some way of proving themselves. Currently, SEWP has a four tier system – explained in great detail at www.sewp.nasa.gov – to grade the past performance of Contract Holders.

The four tiers are:

Blue = Excellent
Green = Very Good
Yellow = Good
Red = Poor.

Based on a continuous 6 month review, SEWP Contract Holders are rated on:

Customer Satisfaction
Refers to customer satisfaction with Contract Holders performance including but not limited to the quality of products and services, responsiveness, and problem resolution.

Information Distribution
Refers to information provided by Contract Holder to Customers through sales agents, associated companies, website, handouts and etc.

Contract Adherence
This section refers to adherence to contract requirements including but not limited to following quote and ordering procedures, sales training and meeting participation and timeliness on required reports and fee payments.

Delivery Schedule
The delivery schedule rating is based on two parts (1) meeting the user's expected delivery date (default of 30 days) and (2) minimizing requests to update user's expectations.

Program Management
A key factor to the SEWP Program’s success is the Contract Holder’s commitment to ensuring their company properly manages the contract as evidenced through their Program Management team. This factor rates the interaction between the SEWP Program Office and the Contract Holder program management.

Award Winning SEWP

The SEWP focus “to be the premier customer-focused contract vehicle for federal government purchases of IT products” is what the SEWP staff strives to deliver every business day. That’s why they were proud when SEWP was recently named Number One in the “Federal IT King of the Contracts” MeriTalk survey. 93% of respondents said the contract provides strong value.

Beyond the contract ratings, the report provides fresh insight on how agencies can improve their performance ratings.

The two top recommendations are: 1) increase the number of procurement professionals to accelerate delivery (something SEWP is currently doing); and 2) provide transparency on solution providers’ past performance (something currently available on the SEWP website).

The study reveals a paradox between buyers’ wants and behaviors. Just 21% of respondents say they report past-performance information on their experience, but 80% want access to past-performance metrics. DOD leads in this area, reporting past performance twice as often as its civilian agency counterparts.

While the SEWP staff was proud, they also were far from satisfied according to Joanne Woytek, SEWP PM.

“It wasn’t like the research was based on our customer base because we don’t give out names,” Woytek said. “They had to go out and randomly find people. So we are quite proud of that. The only question that came up immediately was why weren’t we 100? Why were we only 93? That wasn’t me. I didn’t ask that.”

But staff members did.

Source: MeriTalk, 2009