Building Your Company Capability Profile

Your company capability profile is the foundation of everything GovScout does for you. It powers AI relevance scoring, drives personalized search results, and determines which contract alerts you receive. A well-built profile means better matches. A thin or generic profile means missed opportunities and noisy results.

This guide covers how to build a profile that gets the most out of GovScout's AI matching engine.

Why Your Profile Matters

When GovScout scores a contract opportunity against your company, it compares the opportunity's description, NAICS codes, set-aside type, and scope against your profile data. The more detailed and accurate your profile, the more precisely the AI can determine whether an opportunity is a good fit.

Think of it this way: if you tell GovScout you are "an IT company," the AI has very little to work with. It cannot distinguish between a cybersecurity firm, a help desk provider, and a software development shop. But if you describe your specific services, technologies, agency experience, and contract history, the AI can make nuanced distinctions between opportunities that are a strong fit and those that are only tangentially related.

Step 1: Start with the Basics

Navigate to Dashboard > Companies and click Add Company. Begin with the required fields:

• Company Name -- Use your legal business name exactly as it appears in SAM.gov. This ensures consistency if GovScout cross-references your registration.
• Capability Description -- We will cover this in detail in the next section. For now, enter a draft and plan to refine it.

Then fill in the recommended fields:

• UEI Number -- Your Unique Entity Identifier from SAM.gov
• CAGE Code -- Your Commercial and Government Entity code

Step 2: Write a Strong Capability Description

This is the most important field in your entire profile. The AI uses it as the primary basis for semantic matching against contract opportunity descriptions.

Structure Your Description

A strong capability description follows this structure:

1. What you do -- Your core service lines in specific terms
2. Who you serve -- Target agencies, sectors, or mission areas
3. How you do it -- Technologies, methodologies, frameworks, and certifications
4. Your scale -- Team size, geographic coverage, clearance levels
5. Your track record -- Types of contracts delivered and relevant past performance areas

Example: Weak vs. Strong

Weak:

"ABC Solutions is a technology company providing IT services to government clients."

This tells the AI almost nothing. It would match equally against cybersecurity, cloud hosting, help desk, software development, and data analytics opportunities.

Strong:

"ABC Federal Solutions delivers managed IT services and cybersecurity operations for federal civilian agencies with 500-10,000 users. Our core capabilities include enterprise help desk and end-user support (Tier 1-3), Security Operations Center monitoring and incident response using Splunk and CrowdStrike, cloud infrastructure management on AWS GovCloud and Azure Government, and network architecture design and implementation. We hold FedRAMP authorization, maintain CMMC Level 2 certification, and our team includes 45 cleared personnel (Secret and Top Secret). We have delivered on contracts ranging from $2M to $25M annually for agencies including HHS, DOT, and the Census Bureau."

This gives the AI specific, matchable information across multiple dimensions.

Tips for Writing Your Description

• Use government terminology -- Write "help desk" not "customer support," "incident response" not "security troubleshooting." Contracting officers write solicitations in government language, and your profile should match.
• Name specific technologies -- "AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, ServiceNow, Splunk, CrowdStrike" are all terms that appear in solicitation descriptions.
• Mention certifications -- FedRAMP, CMMC, ISO 27001, ITIL, PMP -- these appear in contract requirements and help the AI match capability to requirement.
• Include contract size context -- If you typically deliver $5-20M contracts, say so. This helps the AI avoid matching you against $500M enterprise-wide vehicles you cannot realistically compete for.

Step 3: Select Your NAICS Codes

NAICS codes categorize the type of work you do and determine your small business size eligibility. Select every code that genuinely applies to your business.

How to Choose the Right Codes

1. Start with your primary code -- The one that best describes your main line of business
2. Add secondary codes -- Other services you regularly deliver
3. Research competitors -- Search for similar companies on SAM.gov and note their NAICS codes
4. Check awarded contracts -- Look at recent contract awards in your field and note which NAICS codes agencies used

Common IT Services NAICS Codes

Do not pad your profile with codes for work you cannot actually perform. The AI will match you against those opportunities, and pursuing contracts outside your capabilities wastes time and damages your reputation with contracting officers.

Step 4: Set Your Certifications

Check all set-aside programs you are currently certified under:

• Small Business -- You meet the SBA size standard for your NAICS codes
• 8(a) -- Certified through SBA's 8(a) Business Development Program
• HUBZone -- Certified through SBA's HUBZone Program
• SDVOSB -- Certified through SBA's VetCert Program
• WOSB / EDWOSB -- Certified through SBA's WOSB Program

Your certifications directly affect AI scoring. When an opportunity has a set-aside that matches your certification, the relevance score increases. When it has a set-aside you are not eligible for, the score decreases to reflect that you cannot compete.

Step 5: Add Contract Vehicles

If you hold any existing contract vehicles, add them to your profile:

• GSA Multiple Award Schedules (MAS)
• Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs) such as Alliant 2, CIO-SP3, VETS 2
• Agency-specific BPAs or IDIQs

Contract vehicles appear in many solicitation descriptions, and listing them helps the AI understand which opportunities you can respond to through existing vehicles versus those requiring a new proposal.

Step 6: Add Past Performance Keywords

The past performance keywords field lets you add additional terms that describe your track record beyond what is in your capability description. Think of these as tags:

• Agency names you have delivered for
• Specific program names
• Technology implementations completed
• Mission areas supported (e.g., "veteran healthcare," "border security," "financial management")

Reviewing and Refining Your Profile

After building your initial profile, run a few searches and review the AI scores. If results feel off:

• Scores too low across the board? Your capability description may be too generic. Add more specific details.
• Matching irrelevant opportunities? You may have NAICS codes or keywords that are too broad. Remove or narrow them.
• Missing opportunities you know about? Check whether the opportunity's NAICS code or set-aside type is represented in your profile.

Plan to revisit and update your profile quarterly, especially when you win new contracts, add certifications, or expand into new service areas. Your profile should evolve as your business grows.

A well-maintained company profile is the difference between GovScout being a useful tool and GovScout being an indispensable part of your business development process.