GSA Schedule deliveries are an essential part of maintaining not only a good relationship with buyers but also maintaining contract compliance. When creating an offer, you establish shipping/delivery terms and abiding by these terms is an essential part of compliance. In an effort to help buyers and sellers, GSA Advantage! has been sending out an order status for contract holders. This status takes shipping/delivery statuses and times and assigns a score (in percentage). GSA has recently cracked down on GSA Advantage! order status, and if this score gets below 50%, your business could be in jeopardy of being suspended by GSA Advantage!. This is just one of the many reasons it’s essential that you know your company’s delivery terms and best practices associated with them.

It’s well known that you can sell to the federal government through the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) program, but you can also sell to state, local, and tribal governments under certain circumstances. Some states even have their own MAS contract vehicles that are the preferred medium of procurement. A great example of this is the California Multiple Award Schedule (CMAS), a special contract vehicle for state and local entities in California. This is a popular vehicle and is often overlooked by GSA contractors. In this blog we’ll share with you what CMAS is and how it could be beneficial for your GSA Schedule.

When a GSA contractor hears the terms CAV or Contractor Assessment Visit, it might be easy for them to panic. The idea of being evaluated by GSA may sound intimidating, but if you understand how these visits work and take the time to prepare, you won’t have to worry about your performance. While a CAV might be a sporadic occurrence, it helps to be aware of the expectations and maintain compliance for the life of your GSA Schedule contract. In this blog, we’ll review what you need to know about Contractor Assessment Visits, so you feel confident about them. 

While it’s important to make sure you are prepared to pursue a GSA Schedule contract, it’s also important to ensure it’s the right fit for your company. When deciding whether your company is eligible to get a GSA contract, you should make sure you can compete in the federal marketplace. When compiling your GSA Schedule offer, you will need to adjust your commercial market rates to be determined “fair and reasonable”, while also making sure there is a market for your offering. A good way to determine this before going through the entire offer process is by completing GSA’s Readiness Assessment, identifying the scope of your offering, and researching your competitors.

Competing in the federal market can be difficult, especially if you don’t have the right tools and knowledge to properly market your GSA contract. As a small business, there are so many opportunities in the federal marketplace, but it’s up to you to know where to find them. You may know your industry commercially, but it’s crucial that you understand the government side of marketing.

With an increasing market in Information Technology (IT) and Information Systems, GSA wants to make sure your system is secure enough to support a potential threat. Even if you are not competing in the IT and Information Systems market, it’s important to make sure your entity and server is protected from cybersecurity attacks. We have seen an increase in harmful cyberattacks the past few years, and the federal government is focused now more than ever on improving the nation’s cybersecurity.