IT services contracts remains a big player in Texas

The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) has more than 800 active information technology cooperative contracts included in Deltek’s GovWin IQ state and local term contracts database. Deltek dove into these contracts to see which IT commodities the state is focusing on, and we found that more than 500 contracts include a requirement for IT professional services.

Technology services are by far the leading offering within Texas’ DIR contracts. Displayed in the graph above, more than 50 percent of the cooperative contracts include IT services, even if the contract is primarily offering a commodity. This indicates the importance of IT services as an offering in the state of Texas right now. The next category offering is software, far behind IT services, with only 14 percent. Following that is hardware offerings with 12 percent. The remaining 20 percent of the contracts include training, telecommunications, and networking commodities.

Examples of IT services contracts include IT staff augmentation, with more than 220 (of the near 500) of DIR’s active IT services contracts. Outsourcing IT staff services helps the state cut costs with a temporary solution of fulfilling needs without all the administrative costs of hiring new staff.

More than 130 active Texas IT services contracts are deliverables-based information technology services (DBITS) contracts. These contracts are established based on specific service offerings ranging from application development, enterprise resource planning (ERP), IT assessments and planning, to technology upgrades and transformations. This is another example of how Texas is utilizing IT services vendors as a way to cut costs for specialized projects.

While the software, hardware and other commodity categories remain significant, it’s evident that offering IT services is in high demand in Texas right now. If a vendor is trying to do business with the state, they should consider that more than 50 percent of DIR’s contracts include IT services with their commodity contracts; therefore, offering supporting services of your commodity would only benefit you in winning a contract.

If you want to sell to state and local governments and understand statewide term contracts better, take a look at the GovWin IQ term contract resource. Deltek’s term contract database has full contract records of DIR’s contracts, as well as IT term contracts from the other 49 states. This will help answer questions about where your competitors hold contracts and what their pricing is, how states qualify vendors, and which governments can use these contracts. With more than 12,000 state IT contracts, Deltek’s term contracts resource is also a great place to find similar upcoming opportunities as the IT staff augmentation contract. To learn more about upcoming key term contract opportunities and the recommendations Deltek suggests to vendors looking to qualify for these contracts, visit Deltek’s Term Contracts Top Opportunities for FY 2014 report, here.

Not a Deltek subscriber? Click here to learn more about Deltek’s GovWin IQ database and take advantage of a free trial.