Find the Wrap Rate You Need to Win: Competitive and Wrap-Rate Analysis in Pricing

What this does

The competitive analysis in Pricing answers the question every capture lead eventually asks: at what price do we actually win, and what does our rate structure have to look like to get there?

It takes the proposal you have already built and priced, holds your cost structure fixed, and sweeps your discount up and down to plot your total contract value against each competitor's estimated bid. Where your curve crosses a competitor's line is your breakeven — the exact discount, in percentage points, at which your price matches theirs. Alongside that, the analysis shows your implied wrap rate (the multiple of raw labor cost baked into each bill rate) so you can see whether the discount you need to win still leaves a defensible, profitable rate structure.

Use it to decide how far you can move on price before the bid stops making money, and to pressure-test your wrap against the market and against named competitors.

Where it lives

1. In the left navigation, open FP&A → Operations → Pricing.
2. Open the proposal you want to analyze (or create one and build it out first — the competitive analysis reads the positions, rates, and indirect rates already on the proposal).
3. Move through the workflow stages in the left rail. The competitive analysis is the Compare stage (stage 4). If you are on the Validate stage, click Advance to Compare → at the bottom of the left rail; if you have already visited it, click the Compare stage directly in the rail to jump straight there.

note

The Compare stage reads what is already on the proposal. Add your positions and pay rates in the Build stage and confirm your indirect rates in Price first — otherwise the curves and wrap figures will be based on incomplete inputs.

Before you start: check your data coverage

At the top of the Compare stage, the Competitive Positioning panel shows a benchmark coverage line — Benchmark coverage: X of Y positions have CALC+ data. This tells you how many of your labor positions have public market rate data behind them. Higher coverage means the market comparisons below are more complete. If coverage is low, the analysis still runs, but treat the market-relative reads as directional.

The comparison is labor. The Our Bid line and the competitor lines are built from labor categories. Deliverable lines on the Deliverables tab -- products, licenses, subscriptions, with their columns (Period, Line, Qty, Unit price, Extended, Unit cost, Burdened, Net profit, NP %, Basis) and fields (Manufacturer, Part number, Vendor part number, Unit of measure, CLIN (optional), List price ($), Discount (%), Cost basis (optional), Quote reference, Term (months), Service start, Service end, Cost type, Option-year quantities and their per-year CLIN, Not separately priced - price carried under CLIN) -- the quantity price tiers under a component (Min qty, Unit cost ($), Firm through the option years), the ODC's Amortize over (units), and the proposal's Cost Volume settings (Freight-in (% of material), Warranty reserve (% of burdened cost), Non-recurring treatment) -- are not part of it; their value is in the workspace totals and Margin Analysis.

Step 1 — Sweep your discount and watch the economics

The Adjust all discounts by: slider moves every position's discount together, from ten points below your current pricing to ten points above, and immediately recomputes the whole bid.

1. Drag the slider. The value to the right shows the adjustment in percentage points (for example, +2.5pp).
2. Read the four cards directly below it as you move:
   • Blended GP Margin — your gross-profit margin across the whole contract at this discount level.
   • Total Contract Revenue — total contract value at this discount.
   • Total GP Dollars — gross-profit dollars at this discount.
   • Blended Discount — the resulting blended discount off ceiling across all positions.

This is the core trade-off in one motion: every point of discount you give away to become more competitive comes straight out of Blended GP Margin and Total GP Dollars. Find the point where you are comfortable with both the price and the margin.

The GP Margin Sensitivity chart plots the same relationship as a curve so you can see how steeply margin falls as you discount. The dashed reference line marks your base (un-adjusted) margin, so you always know how far you have moved from where the bid started.

Step 2 — Compare your total price against competitors and read the breakeven

This is the heart of the analysis. The Total Contract Value vs Competitors chart draws your bid — the Our Bid line — as a function of discount adjustment, and overlays each competitor as a flat line at their estimated total contract value.

1. Set the Assumed Comp. Discount % field (top-right of the chart) to the discount you believe competitors take off their published ceiling rates. This is the single most important assumption in the comparison — competitor totals are built from public GSA ceiling rates, then reduced by this percentage. The footnote under the chart restates it: Competitor values assume X% discount off published GSA ceiling rates.
2. Read the Breakeven Points: line beneath the chart. For each competitor it names the crossover — match at +N.Npp — and the dollar value at that point. That percentage-point figure is your answer: it is the discount adjustment at which your total price equals that competitor's. Anything more aggressive undercuts them; anything less leaves them cheaper.
3. Cross-reference the breakeven against Step 1. Set the Adjust all discounts by: slider to a breakeven you are considering and read the Blended GP Margin and Total GP Dollars cards. Now you know not just the discount required to win, but exactly what winning at that price costs you in margin.

tip

The breakeven is only as good as the Assumed Comp. Discount %. If you have real intelligence that a competitor bids aggressively, raise the assumed discount and watch how much further you have to move to match them. Run the comparison at a couple of assumed-discount levels to bracket the outcome.

If the chart shows No competitor rate data available, no competitor has a crosswalk on this proposal yet, or none of a competitor's mapped categories matches one of your positions. Crosswalks belong to the proposal, not the vehicle, so a competitor you crosswalked on another bid does not appear here. Continue to Step 4 to pull a competitor catalog and build a crosswalk, then return here.

If the chart instead reads Competitor data could not be loaded — that is not the same as there being none., the request failed; it says nothing about whether you have competitors loaded. Click Retry.

Step 3 — Read your position-level pricing against the market

Expand Rate Card Comparison for a line-by-line view. Each row is a base-period labor position, with columns:

• Position — the labor category.
• Our Rate — your extended (post-discount) bill rate.
• Disc% — the discount applied to that position.
• CALC+ Median — the public market median rate for that category.
• vs Median — how far your rate sits above or below the market median, in percent.
• One column per loaded competitor, showing their rate for the matched category.

Our Rate reads green when it sits more than 5% under the CALC+ median, amber within 5% either side, and red more than 5% over; vs Median turns green or red past the same 5% line. Each competitor column is colored the same way, comparing your rate with theirs, so green there means you are cheaper. A -- means there is no median, or no rate from that competitor, for the category. This is where you find the specific positions dragging your total price up — the ones worth re-examining before you commit to a blanket discount.

Step 4 — Position against a named competitor and build a crosswalk

The Competitor Positioning panel (bottom-right of the stage) lets you bring a specific competitor's public rate catalog into the comparison. Beside it, Incumbent Intelligence lists the incumbents on record for this proposal, each with its contract number and value. It reads No incumbent data. Use Market Intel to import USAspending data. until that import has run. If it reads Incumbent data could not be loaded — that is not the same as there being none., click Retry.

1. If competitors are already loaded, they appear as buttons showing each vendor and its LCAT count — click one to select it. To add a new one, type at least two characters into Search CALC+ vendors... and click Search.
2. In the results, click Load next to a vendor to pull their public catalog. You will see a Loaded ... confirmation.
3. With a competitor selected, click Build Crosswalk. Pricing maps your labor categories to the competitor's; you will see a Crosswalk built confirmation.
4. Review the resulting table. Columns are Our LCAT, Comp LCAT, Our Rate, Comp Rate, Delta%, and Status. A negative Delta% (green) means you are cheaper on that category; positive (red) means you are more expensive. Our Rate here is your ceiling rate, compared ceiling to ceiling with the competitor's published rate; the Our Rate in Step 3 is after your discount, so the two columns are not the same number.
5. Confirm or reject each mapping. Each row offers Confirm and Reject. A confirmed row shows Confirmed. A rejected mapping leaves the table altogether, and a row you have not acted on keeps both buttons. This is the AI proposes, human confirms pattern — the automated match is a starting point you validate, not a black box.
6. Read the summary chip below the table. It labels the overall position from the average Delta% across the matched categories: competitive when you average more than 5% cheaper, expensive when more than 5% dearer, neutral in between. Beside it is a count of categories matched / cheaper / more expensive.

Building the crosswalk is also what puts a competitor on the Total Contract Value vs Competitors chart in Step 2, so this step and the breakeven analysis reinforce each other. The chart does not wait for you to confirm anything. As soon as the crosswalk is built, every mapping you have not rejected counts toward that competitor's total, reviewed or not. Rejecting a mapping takes that category out of the total. So review the mappings before you read a breakeven off the chart.

Step 5 — Sanity-check your wrap rate

Wrap is the multiple your bill rate applies over raw labor cost — the combined effect of fringe, overhead, G&A, and fee. A discount that wins the award is only worth taking if the resulting wrap still covers your cost structure.

• On each position in the workspace, the Wrap column shows the implied wrap multiple for that line (for example, 2.85x).
• When you add or adjust a position, the live preview shows Implied Wrap as you type, and flags a healthy band in green so you can see immediately whether a rate change has pushed the wrap out of range.

Use these alongside Step 2: if the discount you need to hit a competitor's breakeven compresses your wrap below what your indirect rates require, that is the signal to compete on something other than price — or to walk away.

Putting it together

A clean pass through this analysis looks like: confirm your benchmark coverage, load and crosswalk the competitors you are actually up against, read the Breakeven Points: to learn the discount each one requires, drag the Adjust all discounts by: slider to that point to see the margin cost, and confirm the resulting Wrap still holds. When the breakeven discount is one you can give while keeping Blended GP Margin and wrap intact, you have found a price that wins and still makes money. When it is not, you have your answer just as clearly.

The workspace around the panels

Competitor analysis runs inside the pricing workspace, and the grid it sits beside has grown two cost dimensions worth knowing when you compare bids. A position can name the overhead pool that burdens its labor (the OH Pool column — blank means the proposal's single rate), and a deliverable line's cost can be built from a component tree: Component, Qty/unit, Scrap / Yield, Unit cost, Hours, Rate, Curve, OH pool and Burdened labor (build) columns (the last is the part's touch labor, burdened and extended across the whole build, so a part with no touch labor reads zero there and its material cost sits under Unit cost), with each part's Description, Qty per parent unit, Scrap %, Yield %, Material unit cost, Touch labor hours, Labor rate, Learning curve % and Overhead pool stated on the part. A competitor priced against a two-pool cost structure is answered with the same structure, not a blended rate — which is exactly the comparison these panels exist to sharpen.