Service Excellence is Key

Strong Past Performances lead to long-term government contracts and new business

The Hughes Government Solutions team has seen a surge in business during the second half of 2016. That surge is largely attributed to years of Hughes service, operational excellence and strong Past Performance ratings, all of which have led to contract renewals and new business.

Eight Years and Counting. . .

During the past 8 years, Hughes has provided comprehensive managed network services to support more than 200 locations for a large Federal Government agency. The GSA Schedule was used to contract for these services, despite the fact that since 2008 most Federal Agencies have typically used the GSA Networx contract. This agency chose the GSA Schedule route because it was a good fit to support its dispersed offices around the country; and Hughes was able to earn long-term loyalty—extending the service contract for more than 8 years— because of its dedication to ongoing support.

Another major win is to be a subcontractor to Level 3 Communications, which coincided with the end of the final option year under a Networx contract award. When the agency chose to move its procurement efforts over to Networx, it was able to maintain continuity of Hughes services through Level 3. To kick off the new contract, the customer ordered an upgrade of routers, moving from the Hughes HN7700 to the HR4700. The Hughes HR4700 delivers best-in-class enterprise-grade security and routing, with innovative broadband optimization technology in one easy-to-deploy unified platform managed by Hughes. Most recently, the customer also added 356 more sites to that network, pointing to Hughes stellar and long-held record of service delivery, operational, and program management excellence.

“Keeping a customer happy, having good references to share, and having them display their faith in us twice by upgrading and adding more sites, validates that Hughes is a good fit for Federal Agencies,” said Tony Bardo, Assistant Vice President, Hughes Government Solutions.

From Pilot to Procurement

Another wide-reaching Federal agency—tasked with working in areas largely underserved by terrestrial broadband—was intrigued with the concept of using managed broadband services to support its network.

Since Hughes has supported one of the agency’s smaller bureaus for several years, the organization had a positive perception of the company’s people and technology capabilities. To demonstrate the promise of moving to a managed broadband model, Hughes conducted a pilot which was executed flawlessly across a number of sites.

Once the agency decided to move beyond the pilot stage, it chose to procure the necessary managed broadband services through Level 3’s Networx contract. With the Hughes/Level 3 agreement in place, the team had a viable way to compete for the work. Then in September, after conducting an extensive proposal evaluation process that involved representatives from several bureaus, the business was awarded to the Level 3/Hughes team.

“This was the first-ever managed broadband procurement and award under Networx; a historic milestone for the industry, the Federal government, and for Hughes,” Bardo said. “Users who were reluctant prior to the ‘fair bid’ process to give up the Hughes equipment and services which were deployed for the pilot, were also relieved to hear of the award.”

The bulk of orders will be for HughesON™, a suite of managed solutions that will help the agency empower its network and operations with new, cutting-edge technologies available only from Hughes. Ordering and implementation will take place over the next several months.

A Signature of Sustained Excellence

Hughes reputation for sustained service excellence is not limited to these examples; it extends to a host of government customers. One such example is the Government Education Training Network (GETN), a consortium of agencies that purchase satellite and programming services to support their distance learning efforts across 800 sites worldwide. Hughes has been delivering services to GETN since 2007, even as the program has evolved and the contract has been re-competed twice.

Similarly, since 2008, another government customer has had a satellite network with more than 450 sites. The network supports an important public-facing government website. Through the delivery of a strong program management team and an innovative network engineering team, Hughes supports surges in website activity, as well as periods of lesser activity. The network management effort to support the ebbs and flows of the site’s traffic is quite complex, but the customer has been satisfied with Hughes performance to continue with its contract over and over again.

The Past is a Predictor of the Future Past

Performance questionnaires are detailed evaluations of contractor and subcontractor performance on government contracts. They provide an overall snapshot of how a company has performed overall within the government. They have become a critical tool for determining which contractors are awarded future work, even if the Past Performance does not cover the same services or even apply to the same agency.

For Hughes, which has always received high ratings, Past Performances have become an important avenue for demonstrating operational excellence. Be it the continual high performance of Hughes satellite technology, a successful pilot of managed broadband services, or consistently high ratings on other contracts, Hughes Past Performances are a hallmark of its dedication and commitment to government customers.