Using Haystack® Expands Your Business Opportunities in the Government Marketplace

More than just a convenient means to locate parts for your products, the HAYSTACK Parts and Logistics Service from IHS can be used as a powerful tool to generate new business for your company. In order to remain competitive, firms invest heavily in marketing efforts to find new commercial customers and identify new commercial and government bid opportunities. Another, more exacting option is HAYSTACK, which affords clients a detailed, accurate picture of the marketplace related to government and defense contracts.

HAYSTACK provides immediate information on more than 100 million items in the U.S. Federal Supply Catalog and over 40 U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and related databases. HAYSTACK contains advanced search features to locate a part number, determine its manufacturer, and identify alternative sources of supply through the massive aggregate of government procurement catalogs.

Beyond searching for practical part information, you can also examine different cross-sections of data in HAYSTACK through a few simple queries which provide the past award histories of government agencies and analyses of your closest competition. The database system offers invaluable information about government contracts – their cost and vendors – which can be used intelligently pinpoint new opportunities specific to your competitive advantage.

For a real world example, consider Bell Avon, Inc, who used HAYSTACK to explore the defense needs for rubber and plastic components. According to Bell Avon President Richard J. Reed, the result was $40 million in orders.

"In the past, we placed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filings to obtain information critical in government bidding such as how often is the item purchased, what other companies make the item, what price has it been purchased at in the past, and so forth," Reed explains.

"The problem is that it takes 30 days to get an answer from a FOIA filing and often you don't get the information you may want anyway. With the HAYSTACK service, we can get far more detailed information in 30 seconds. Because the service is interactive, we can browse through the data to make sure the answers are what we are looking for. This kind of detailed information played a crucial role in our winning the lion's share of the requirements contract for making skirting components for the U.S. Navy's landing craft air cushion (LCAC) hovercraft."

Whereas most marketing efforts aim at customers generally, using HAYSTACK to find new business give you the advantage of knowing exactly what technologies potential customers demand, as well as the going prices. Combining HAYSTACK information with strategic thinking also helps increase sales with your current customers. According to research specialist Randy Butler of IHS, HAYSTACK customers often increase sales up to 50 percent as a result of database research.

The subscription to HAYSTACK makes all of this data available for flexible online searching right from your desktop, including not only the Federal Supply Catalog, but also other databases that greatly expand the scope of both spare part searches and business prospecting:

• The NSN historical database; helpful to track government and defense procurements with outmoded identification numbers;
• Inventory Locator Services (ILS); the world's first, largest and most active e-marketplace for the aviation, marine, and defense industries.
• IHS Universal Parts Center (UPC); which allows search by part number, keyword, or company name to find over 11 million parts for industries including aerospace, government, electronic, automotive, among others.
• The Canadian MCRL and Canadian procurement history databases; an IHS exclusive, and an essential tool for work on Canadian contracts.

The HAYSTACK subscription service offers a wealth of information and gives the advance and flexible querying capabilities that generates real value to your business. The FLIS (Federal Logistics Information System), the primary HAYSTACK database, can be searched by:

• National Stock Number (NSN)
• Part number
• CAGE code
• Company name
• Technical characteristics
• Product Item Description (PID) data
• …and many other parameters

Contact IHS today to find out how HAYSTACK can boost productivity and sales for your enterprise.