Inonde Case Study
2020
Founded
McLean, Virginia
Headquarters
IT Services and IT Consulting
Industry
“Inondé” is the French word for inundated – an adjective that describes how many organizations feel when trying to make sense of large volumes of data to accelerate discovery and improve analytics. This is precisely the challenge that Inonde – a company founded in 2020 by industry veteran David Simon and his son, Colin – is on a mission to solve for its federal customers. Inonde provides a range of services and solutions around data process automation and the application of AI/ML. Their goal is to empower non-IT personnel to easily work with their data while reducing the number of mundane and repetitive tasks that need to be done. The outcome enables customers to transform data into actionable intelligence.
Inonde.io was selected to be part of the GSA Springboard Program, which enables innovative technology companies with less than 2 years’ experience to apply for a GSA Schedule. As a result, in early 2021, less than 12 months after the company’s launch, it won its first multiple award IDIQ and subsequent task order. The Inonde team quickly found themselves trying to sift through hundreds of RFIs and RFPs each week to identify relevant pursuits. Says David Simon, founder and CEO of Inonde, “It’s kind of ironic. Inonde’s focus is on supporting our customers who are inundated with data. When we landed on a GSA schedule having been in business under 2 years and task orders started pouring in, we felt a bit inundated ourselves – but with potential opportunities.”
Streamlining Task Order Qualification & Pursuit
David set out to find a technology solution that could streamline Inonde’s qualification and pursuit of task orders. Explains David, “We considered several CRMs. We needed a tool that would integrate well with our Microsoft environment – that’s where everything is stored for us and where we operate day to day, so we were leaning towards Dynamics 365.” But on its own, Dynamics couldn’t solve Inonde’s core task order management challenge. “We still needed a much more efficient way to sort through and qualify nearly 100 opportunities each week.” This led David to TechnoMile.
“In this industry, where we’re constantly seeing RFIs and RFPs… if you organize your workflows properly inside of TechnoMile’s solution, it allows you to dramatically reduce the amount of time you spend filtering and sorting through the noise to get to the real opportunities.”
David Simon, Founder & CEO of Inonde
Automating Task Order Ingestion
TechnoMile’s Growth Suite provides CRM capabilities designed specifically to address the complexities of selling to the federal government, including task order management. It’s deployed into a company’s Microsoft Dynamics or Salesforce environment, layering on unique features and capabilities required by government contractors. To simplify task order management, TechnoMile’s Growth Suite enables clients to automatically ingest task orders directly into their CRM from more than 25 top contract vehicles. Says David, “We ultimately selected TechnoMile’s solution because it would automatically pull new task orders from GSA eBuy directly into our CRM for evaluation by our team, while working seamlessly to integrate with our Microsoft 365 environment. I also just felt that TechnoMile was the right partner. I have a vision for Inonde and needed a partner like TechnoMile that would embrace that, wanted to go along for the ride to disrupt the industry, and could support the speed and velocity at which we’re growing.”
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Enabling Rapid Task Order Qualification
TechnoMile’s Growth solution also aids Inonde in rapidly triaging task orders and qualifying them for pursuit through dashboards that provide various filtered views of the ingested newly-issued RFIs and RFPs. Explains Colin Simon, Director at Inonde, “We were awarded six different SINs on GSA MAS, including HACS (Highly Adaptive Cybersecurity Services). With multiple SINs and a lot of RFIs and RFPs coming in, we needed to quickly identify very specific opportunities to pursue where we have a higher PWin. With TechnoMile, I have multiple dashboards, including one that specifically identifies task orders associated with a certain SIN or a keyword based on our leadership team’s growth goals, areas of emphasis, a technology focus, or a given customer.” As Inonde’s founder, David, puts it, “TechnoMile gives us the visibility we need to enable the team to make better and faster bid decisions, which will eventually lead to new revenue.”
Solving for Volume & Velocity
Inonde also takes advantage of tight integration between their TechnoMile Growth solution and SharePoint, which keeps all files related to an opportunity neatly organized and enables efficient collaboration. “In addition to the volume challenge associated with managing task orders, you also have a velocity challenge,” says Colin. “You’re typically facing a 5-day to 3-week turnaround, so the ability to rapidly identify relevant task orders is key, but then quickly executing to write and submit a proposal presents its own challenge. With our TechnoMile solution, when we identify a task order of interest and create a new opportunity, the system pre-populates the SharePoint folders we’ll need – for example, a teammate folder for NDAs and TAs, a folder to house government documents, and a folder where we’ll collaborate and work on the proposal. With TechnoMile, being able to store and quickly share documents in a platform where we can collaborate openly and everything syncs up nicely helps us meet the velocity challenge. Our workflows in TechnoMile reduce the time spent on repetitive, mundane tasks that take away from focusing on the customer challenge and our solution.”
Showcasing Capabilities to Partners
Once Inonde is in pursuit of an opportunity, the ability to generate gate review decks and calculate PWin within their TechnoMile Growth solution provides added value. Inonde maintains multiple versions of a gate review deck based on opportunity stage and the system auto-populates the information from the opportunity record into the appropriate deck. Shares Colin, “As we began seeking out partners on bigger opportunities, being able to quickly produce gate review decks was extremely helpful and a critical part of showcasing our capabilities as a small business to a potential large business partner. And the PWin calculator just provides a good gut check to keep you honest about how likely you are to win if you invest all the time and effort.”
Filtering through the Noise
Prior to implementing their TechnoMile solution, each week, the Inonde team invested the equivalent of an 8-hour workday logging into the eBuy system and reviewing, on average, 100 task order opportunities. Now with TechnoMile, they’re spending a fraction of this time – only about an hour per week – to evaluate the same volume of task orders. The solution has also eliminated duplicative effort. Before, Inonde had task order notification emails landing in multiple employees’ inboxes. This has been transformed into a single workstream within Growth, so once a task order is reviewed and designated “no-bid,” no one else sees it and wastes time on duplicative reviews. Says David, “In this industry, where we’re constantly seeing RFIs and RFPs, BD and sales teams are missing deals because the volume becomes noise. If you organize your workflows properly inside of TechnoMile’s solution, it allows you to dramatically reduce the amount of time you spend filtering and sorting through the noise to get to the real opportunities.”
A Fresh Perspective That Enables Growth
As the Inonde team looks to the future, they’re happily growing with their current federal customers while working to expand their footprint. The company has several IDIQs that they are awaiting award announcement on as the prime and are excited about the new growth – especially with the right technology solution now in place to help them effectively evaluate and pursue task order opportunities. Says David, “What I love about our partnership is, TechnoMile truly cares about its customers’ success and continued growth. They provide a perspective aligned to industry’s needs while leveraging technology in the GovCon market space today. And that’s what we need – a fresh way of looking at things.”