How Does it Work?

Accessing the Subscriber Sources

GWAC NorthStar™ ingests all government announcements for the vehicles included in the subscriber’s NorthStar service. NorthStar can access this information through a portal login, an API connection, or forwarded emails from the federal agency. These access points are collectively referred to as the Subscriber’s sources.

Preference Matrix

NorthStar’s Preference Matrix enables a subscriber to precisely configure the scoring algorithm by making choices in 24 categories of business development decision criteria. The subscriber completes and saves one or more Preference Matrices in the NorthStar application indicating scopes of work, technologies, agencies and missions, and opportunity parameters that would be of interest. NorthStar will then identify the attributes in each of these 24 categories that are present in each solicitation.

Artificial Intelligence Automated Annotation (AAA)

NorthStar logs into the subscriber’s sources multiple times per day to collect metadata about each announcement and download all the attachments. The documents are then added to our application database where they are annotated. AAA reads all the documents connected with an opportunity and finds all the attributes in all 24 categories of the preference matrix and identifies these to the scoring engine. The process also detects the presence of any Showstoppers. Showstoppers are factors that the Subscriber has indicated, in completing NorthStar preference matrices, would prevent the Subscriber from being a prime contractor for the opportunity. These include, for example, small business set-aside factors, facility security clearances, and capability certifications such as International Standards Organization accreditations.

The scoring engine then evaluates the solicitation attributes using each subscriber’s preference matrix to compute a Druthers Score™, a score from zero to 100 indicating fit to preferences. A score is also computed for each category of the preference matrix, such as scope or proposal requirements.

The Task Order Portal

The task order portal is a web application that gives subscribers visibility into the announcements released by their vehicles and GSA schedules. The portal displays these announcements, their Druthers Score™, the history of announcements on the opportunity, and the documents attached, along with NorthStar’s evaluation of how well each opportunity aligns with the subscriber’s preferences as configured in the product’s preference matrices.

Use the results to shape the market research, respond to the proposal, or find a teaming partner.