Raytheon’s Bill Colangelo: Road shows, tuition reimbursment among winning strategies
Bill Colangelo serves as director of contracts for Raytheon Information Solutions (RIS). Here’s his take on the current contracts environment:
ExecutiveBiz: Quick turnaround time for proposals is becoming more frequent. How is your team responding?
Bill Colangelo: An early start is essential, of course. One of our planning approaches include putting in place something we call “road shows.” These allow us to initiate dialogue with Raytheon program and proposal teams about individual contract arrangements in advance of a specific request. Later, when requests do come out, we have a streamlined process — what we call “quick reaction capability” — that allows us to get a more timely internal approval submission to our customers.
ExecutiveBiz: How are you responding to the push toward fixed-price contracts?
Bill Colangelo: Certainly requirements need to be defined upfront with more specificity. But I think the answer goes beyond that. It also means engaging in a behavioral or cultural change; we try to ensure the customer has a good understanding of how the approach to the contract will be slightly altered from what they might be comfortable with. We have a lot of discussions with our customers, especially if they are new to fixed price contracting, about how we will manage our contracts, especially in light of any change activity.
ExecutiveBiz: How are you meeting the challenge of recruiting and retaining talent?
Bill Colangelo: Most of our recruiting comes via networks that either myself or my staff have established over time. Beyond that, Raytheon invests a significant amount in tuition reimbursement programs. Right there is an excellent networking opportunity. If I’ve got people pursuing a masters or even a certificate program in government procurement, both of which are pretty common in this area, they’ve got a whole pool of additional network and recruiting available to them. These people are already engaged and interested in this field. We encourage our employees to pull from that opportunity
ExecutiveBiz: Let’s turn to the stimulus bill, which was passed in February. How are you helping your customers sort out implementation details?
Bill Colangelo: We engage our customers as early as we can. Once we hear them say there might be a stimulus-funded activity, we talk to them early on about how those transactions would unfold. So by the time they’re ready to act on that contract, we’ve already talked through the things that are important for both ourselves and the government customer. Those issues include things like, how are we going to clearly identify the work scope and the funds associated with stimulus? Those funds need to be separate for reporting purposes. Also, we’ve got to work with our sub-contractors because those requirements have to flow down to our first tier sub-contractors. Once the actual funds and the transaction get down to the contracting people, at that point we’ve hopefully already reached a meeting of the minds on how to approach the concepts.
ExecutiveBiz: Amid budgetary constraints and the insourcing discussion, any changes afoot to your service offerings?
Bill Colangelo: Our main offerings remain fairly consistent; we will continue to engage in cybersecurity, for example, as it fits with our capabilities and background. We’re looking to expand offerings into adjacent markets. That could include further expansion within federal, primarily civil, agencies, as well as select international markets.
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Posted by Staff Writer
on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009. Filed under General.
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