Creating Federal Commodity & Service Profiles for Federal Bid Opportunities
Federal
Bids and Solicitations require that you use the FSC code
profile. There are two sections to complete for an effective
federal bid program. Enter you program and select Account
Management. Then select List
Commodity Codes. Then select Edit
FSC Keywords. The following screen will appear.
Your screen
will display a jump menu, click on the menu to find your FSC
category. For our example we will use class 84 Clothing.
Federal
Government Buyers do not always use a sub-code and typically
all clothing items are included into one category. This creates
a problem for companies that sell only specific or limited items
with in this group. You may create Keywords within a FSC
group to receive more specific bid opportunities. Our example
vendor sells only polo shirts and knit socks. When you create
a keyword filter the program will only send bids that contain
your keywords and disregard all other bids with in this class.
This may require a combination of keywords to receive all bids.
For example, our vendor could use the keywords, polo
and shirt. The system will only send solicitations that
contain these keywords.
Other combinations
could be knit shirt, golf shirt. You may also
add product brand names, competitor company names, product model
numbers and national stock numbers to your keyword profile.
These keywords are only associated with the FSC group you have
added them to. After you complete the keyword profile you may
select other FSC groups to modify with keyword filters and add
to your profile.
Creating
successful bid document filters is a process that is accomplished
over time. You may build an extensive library of keyword filters
that will provide meaningful and specific bid opportunities
resulting in greater sales.
After you
have completed creating you keyword filters, return to your
sub-menu and select List FSC Codes.
Select the Edit button at
the top left of your screen. The following screen will appear.
At the top
of you screen you will see a blue button marked Select
From General Code Listings. This will display all
the FSC code listings. Once you have selected the desired category
click on the listing to display all sub-code contained within
that group.
SELECTING
THE PRIMARY CODE DOES NOT INCLUDE ALL THE SUB-CODES. YOU MUST
SELECT EACH SUB CODE SEPARATELY.
For this
example choose FSC code 8400 Clothing, Individual Equipment
and Insignia. After you select the sub-codes you need to
scroll to the bottom of the page and click the button Choose
These. The following screen shows the sub-codes you
selected are now added to your FSC code profile. Like FSC key
words you can select other FSC categories and add other FSC
sub-codes.
