Here in ITS, we’re reevaluating our approach to strategic sourcing by focusing on category management, which will help transform government IT acquisition and improve the value we provide to our customers. We can’t succeed without your feedback on the best ways to improve our performance. We are counting on you—our customers and industry partners—to identify where we can serve you better.
We’re conducting two surveys that focus on ITS, our performance, and what you expect when you work with us. (These surveys are separate from our recent supplier perception survey and our Customer Loyalty Survey):
Suppliers: The Voice of the Supplier Tool will assess supplier satisfaction in key areas with questions tailored according to category management best practices.
Federal ITS Customers: The Business Alignment Tool will allow ITS customers to assess our acquisition management function as it relates to category management.
The surveys will take no more than 20 minutes, but will give us the insights we need to help tailor our approach to best meet your needs.
Thank you for helping shape our future.
What Category Management Means for You
You may be asking, what is category management and why should it matter to me?
Category management is a data-driven approach to manage groups of related products and services. In principle, it drives greater value by generating sourcing strategies unique to each grouping of products or services (e.g., the software market has different drivers and savings levers than the telecommunications market does).
Ultimately, we expect category management to help us better carry out our mission—and enable our customers to do the same—by shifting our focus away from managing ITS contracts and towards developing market expertise that will put us in the best position to guide our customers to best-fit solutions. Our goal is to become the go-to trusted advisor for our customers’ IT needs.
We know that establishing this position within the federal acquisition community will mean providing customers with value-added services that make designing solutions and using contract vehicles easier while still delivering better value. Category management is a tool we believe will help us meet this challenge by focusing our efforts on understanding customer demand and market dynamics.
Through better management of customer and supplier relationships, we hope to bring greater value to the acquisition process by more easily aligning customer demand with market solutions. Understanding our customers’ need and the Federal IT environment is just one piece of the puzzle. Working with our industry partners to understand emerging technologies and innovative solutions in addition to their cost drivers will be just as important.
To learn how GSA can further help your agency with your IT procurements, contact our National IT Customer Services Center by phone at (855) ITaid4U or by e-mail at ITCSC@gsa.gov.
Please follow us on Twitter @GSA_ITS to join the conversation.