If you're looking for government bids and RFPs, one logical place to start is the government itself – namely, the FedBizOpps online database.
FedBizOpps (short for Federal Business Opportunities and also called FBO, located at www.fbo.gov) lets government vendors access contract opportunities from more than 120 federal agencies. You can search on FedBizOpps by keyword, NAICS code, agency, set-aside code, geographic location, solicitation number, and more.
Though FedBizOpps is a comprehensive source of federal government bids and RFPs, it has two significant limitations:
- It contains only federal contracting opportunities
- It doesn't list bids valued at below $25,000.
As a result, if you rely solely on FedBizOpps for your sales leads, you're getting only about 20% of the leads that you could be getting by searching at all levels of government.
For example, a recent search of FedBizOpps yielded about 32,000 active federal opportunities over the past 90 days, while Onvia's Online Database – which covers state and local contracting as well as federal contracting – turned up more than 162,000 opportunities during that same period.
And Onvia's database tracks the spending activities of more than 89,000 government agencies, compared with FedBizOpps' 120.
When you subscribe to the Online Database, you can search for government leads nationwide by agency, keyword (including "ARRA" for Recovery Act projects), geographical location, industry, time frame, and target markets. Plus, we can send notifications of government bids, RFPs and grants directly to your e-mail inbox in the form of the Onvia Guide, a daily PDF containing the latest government-contracting opportunities in your company's industry sector and market areas.
With the combination of the Database and Guide, you can…
- Identify the buyers and decision makers for each opportunity, so you can develop agency relationships before the RFP
- View purchasing histories to see which agencies are buying your product or service
- Check planholder and bidder lists to find out which companies are competing with you
- See which competitors have been winning contracts in your industry sector
- Download RFPs and bid documents that’ll help you prepare your next proposal
- Locate subcontracting opportunities on major projects
Onvia gives you the tools and business intelligence you need to find, compete for and win more contracts in the gBusiness marketplace.
