How to Analyze Incumbents & Competitors

Before You Start

• You need an active pricing proposal (created in the Proposals tab).
• For incumbent analysis: the current contract holder's award ID, contract number, or company name.
• For competitor analysis: competitor company names (the system will pull their rates from CALC+).
• For bid history analysis: your historical win/loss data imported via the Vehicles tab.

Part 1—Incumbent Analysis

Incumbent analysis answers a simple but critical question: what is the government paying today, and how fast are rates escalating? When you're bidding on a recompete or consolidation, the current contractor's pricing is your baseline.

Step 1: Open Incumbent Intelligence

Open your proposal from the Proposals tab to launch the pricing workspace, then go to stage 4 · Compare. Incumbent Intelligence is the left-hand panel.

Step 2: Look Up the Incumbent

Two search methods are available. Method A—By Contract Number (PIID): enter the contract number. Arcvue queries USAspending.gov and returns the contract details. Method B—By Recipient Name: enter the company name with an optional agency filter. The system returns up to 25 matching contracts—select the right one.

Step 3: Set the FTE Count

After the contract loads, enter the FTE count and source. The system uses this to calculate the implied hourly rate:

Implied Rate = Total Obligation / (FTEs × 2,080 hours/year)

If you don't know the FTE count, use the reverse calculator: enter your estimated bill rate and the annualized obligation, and the system computes the implied headcount.

Step 4: Read the Period Breakdown Table

This is the most important output. It shows each funded period of the contract:

Column	What It Tells You
Period	BASE, OY1, OY2, or 52.217-8 extension
Mod #	Modification number from the funding action
Obligation	Dollar amount obligated for that period
Annualized	Obligation normalized to 12 months (for partial-year periods)
Implied Rate	Calculated hourly rate based on your FTE count
Escalation	Percent change from the previous period's implied rate

Screen the Incumbent Intelligence panel as it ships.

The Implied Rate column shows what the incumbent is effectively charging per hour. The Escalation column shows the trend—consistent 2–3% is normal; flat or declining rates suggest the incumbent is under price pressure.

Step 5: Compare Multiple Incumbents

If you're bidding on a consolidation, add each incumbent. When two or more are loaded, the system generates a side-by-side rate comparison and a Consolidation Analysis:

Metric	What It Tells You
Combined Annual Spend	What the government pays today across all incumbent contracts
Combined FTE Estimate	Total headcount across incumbents
Blended Average Rate	Weighted average hourly rate—your pricing target

Screen the Consolidation Analysis panel.

A Savings Targets Table shows what the government saves at different discount levels (0%, 5%, 10%, etc.). If the government's stated goal is 10% savings through consolidation, this tells you the exact dollar amount—price your proposal to deliver that savings while maintaining margin.

Part 2—Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis compares your proposed rates against other companies' published GSA ceiling rates—pulled directly from GSA CALC+.

Step 1: Load Competitor Catalogs

Competitor Positioning sits beside it in the same stage. The Frequent Competitors table auto-populates from your bid history—companies that have won bids where you lost. Start here. Then search and add additional competitors:

• Enter the competitor's name in the search box.
• Click Search CALC+—the system queries GSA CALC+ for their published contracts.
• Click Load Catalog—the system imports all their LCATs and rates.

The catalog is cached for 7 days. Rates come from the competitor's published GSA schedule—these are ceiling rates, not necessarily their proposed rates (they may discount further).

Step 2: Build the AI Crosswalk

Once a competitor's catalog is loaded, you need to map your positions to their equivalent LCATs. The system uses Claude AI to do this automatically: select a competitor from the dropdown, click Build AI Crosswalk, and review the results—each match shows a confidence score and reasoning.

Status	What It Means	Action Required
High (85%+)	Match is reliable	None—use as-is
Review (60–84%)	Possible match, verify	Confirm or correct
Low (<60%)	Uncertain match	Correct or reject

Basis the crosswalk confidence bands as the system reports them.

The competitive positioning analysis is only as good as the crosswalk. A bad match—mapping your Senior Systems Engineer to their Help Desk Analyst—produces misleading comparisons. Review all Review and Low confidence matches before acting on the data.

Step 3: Read the Competitive Positioning Table

The main output is a side-by-side rate comparison showing your ceiling, your discounted rate, each competitor's published rate, and the delta. How to read the delta column:

• Negative % (e.g., −5.0%)—You're cheaper. Competitive advantage.
• Positive % (e.g., +3.7%)—You're more expensive. Potential risk.
• Confidence flags: no flag = high confidence; * = moderate; ** = low confidence (review the crosswalk).

Summary cards show your overall blended rate vs. each competitor, with an overall position: Competitive (green, 5%+ below), Neutral (yellow, within 5%), or Above Market (red, 5%+ more expensive).

Part 3—Bid History Analysis

Switch to the Bid History tab. This is your historical win/loss record and the most direct signal about whether your pricing strategy is working.

Win Rate Analysis

Select a grouping dimension from the dropdown—Vehicle, Agency, Division, Year, Work Type, or Contract Type—and review win rates by segment. What to look for:

• Vehicle patterns: if your GSA MAS win rate is 45% but OASIS+ is 12%, your OASIS+ pricing strategy needs work.
• Agency patterns: high win rate at one agency but low at another may indicate pricing, past performance, or technical approach issues—investigate.
• Year trends: improving win rate suggests your pricing strategy is working; declining suggests growing competitive pressure.

Price Intelligence

Metric	What It Tells You
Price Losses	Count of bids lost specifically due to pricing
Avg Price Gap	How far above the winning bid you typically are
Loss Reason Breakdown	What fraction of losses are price-driven vs. technical vs. past performance

Screen the Bid History tab.

If your average price gap is 15%, you're consistently bidding 15% above the winner. That's not a small tweak—it may indicate your wrap rate or discount strategy needs fundamental adjustment, not incremental refinement.

The win pricing metrics show your average gross margin and discount on winning bids. Use these as calibration points for current proposals.

Agency Profiles

Agencies where you have high win rates and low price gaps are your sweet spot—bid more aggressively there. Agencies with low win rates and large price gaps need a different pricing strategy or a different BD approach before investing in more bids.

The Competitive Strategy Workflow

The recommended sequence for a competitive bid:

• Load incumbents—What is the government paying today? How fast are rates escalating?
• Load competitors—Who are the likely bidders? Where are you cheaper or more expensive?
• Run market benchmarks—Where do your rates fall in the CALC+ distribution? Any positions above P75?
• Check bid history—What's your win rate for this vehicle/agency? When you lost on price, by how much?
• Run margin targeting (stage 2 · Price → What-If)—What margin can you achieve at competitive rates?
• Adjust and finalize—Increase discount on above-market positions; hold or reduce on positions where you're already competitive.

The Operator’s View

Having more information is almost always better when analyzing incumbents and competitors—but only if you’re analyzing it correctly. Arcvue makes the data side easy: pull a competitor’s published rates, surface their predecessor contract details, select likely LCATs, set an estimated discount, and hit enter. The tools handle the retrieval. The real work starts after that.

Three things worth paying close attention to:

Modifications tell a story. Changes in scope show up in contract modifications. If the legacy contract supported eight FTEs and the new RFP calls for six, bidding against the old staffing model is a costly mistake. Look at what changed, not just what was.

Use the Q&A to pressure-test scope. The pre-solicitation Q&A process is an underutilized source of context. Use it to probe whether support levels have shifted. Numbers without context are either noise or a trap.

Back into their discount. Selecting a competitor’s assumed discount isn’t a science, but if you can get within plus or minus five percent—and you’ve been diligent about matching their likely LCAT selection—that’s genuinely powerful comparative pricing intelligence. If you can confirm current headcount on the contract, run it through the Status Quo analyzer. It compares your pricing to the current contract as though it were going to continue for the new PoP, inclusive of escalations, and returns an estimate of what the Government would pay if the current contract simply continued—in total and per FTE. That number is worth knowing before you price.