Skip Blackburn, Founder and CEO of BIT Solutions, has a knack for always seeing the bigger picture, built from all the pieces of experience he picked up over a lifetime of Government Solution sales. The steadfast leader wakes up every day with the burning question in his mind of “what could make this world better? What could make it easier for people?” He is supported every day by his Co-Founder, Drew Blackburn, CTO who has a vision for the technology solutions, always asking “What if…” Together they started BIT Solutions with laser focus on what the duo wanted to accomplish from the company and offer the customers. “I spent many years manually constructing Capture Management sales reports and presentations for Gate Reviews and meetings, which kept me from valuable time in front of the customer.” says Skip.“As an Executive, I managed sales teams that would have done the same. I knew there was a better way, and set out with the goal to create software that automated these types of manual processes.”
Drew shares, “Our first product was the CaptureExec™ system – it’s a BD Life-Cycle Platform, which manages every aspect of the sales process from inception to win. Unlike other sales tools, CaptureExec was designed solely for the Government Contractor business model, while allowing total flexibility for each customer’s unique process.”After understanding the depth of expertise present in CaptureExec’s design, customers began inquiring about consulting services to go hand in hand with their new software. In response, BIT Solutions has grown a robust Consulting Division with over 75 Government consulting experts. For five years, they have provided full-time and project-based support to Government Contractors for both Sales efforts (Prospecting, Qualification, Account and Capture Management), and the Proposal process (Proposal, Graphics, Technical Writing, Editing, Color Team, Blackhat, Price-to-Win and much more).
Skip has been doing complex capture management in the industry for the last twenty-five years, culminating into a wide variety of expertise in how to negotiate with the government, what questions should be asked, how to ask the question, who to be talking to at what point in time. With that knowledge, he and Drew have created CaptureExec software to allow each company to define their own best practice in winning captures; create the questions they want to ask in their system and have their sales team follow their prescribed best practice for each different company that uses the software. “We have a delivered template with our software that allows our customers to immediately get started with really great questions. However, they can modify every aspect of their system without programmers or technical expertise, to match their company processes” adds Drew.
“We have always focused myopically on our customer needs, their new requirements and how Industry changes affect our solutions.” says Skip. “We encourage customers to share their ideas and visions with us, which roll out as new live features every quarter that all customers benefit from.” A direct result of this collaboration has been CaptureExec’s executive dashboards, which now brim with features and tools to help owners of companies, division executives, and department managers to effectively manage the health of their pipeline. Skip remarks “We consistently hear back that the system is so easy to use, not only in its design, but its automation and integration across the entire sales enterprise. Even in their first year, they tell me that they have already increased revenues and decreased cost of acquisition because the system identified which deals to bid and which deals to drop before spending additional Pre-B&P and B&P money.” In reflecting from all his years as a Capture Manager and an Executive managing teams of Capture Managers, Skip says “This product is revolutionizing our industry, one that has historically been managed manually by using Spreadsheets, where most of the collected intel (G2) remained in the heads of each Capture Manager – this is a game changer for companies doing business with the Government.”
Currently, BIT Solutions is in the process of taking their Brand and Software deeper into the GovCon market space and continue to help Government Contractors improve their sales process. Skip and Drew, along with their team of experts, are creating a new product solution to allow Small- and Mid-sized Government Contractors to have a platform (Network), for marketing their SB Certifications, Past Performance and Talent values to Mid- & Large-sized companies, who are always looking for new and fresh thinking subcontractors that add value to each opportunity they work on. “We are also planning several new software products to solve other Industry shortcomings, again focused on repeatability and automation of business processes,” adds Skip.
For additional information on our CaptureExec software or our new Network Teaming solution, please contact Skip Blackburn at skip@bitsolutionsllc.com or call 410-925-0424.
