Strategic Priorities
Configure your organization's strategic priorities to power AI-driven bid decision scoring and opportunity alignment
Strategic Priorities define what matters most to your organization when evaluating procurement opportunities. These priorities power the Strategic Fit scoring in the Bid Decision module, ensuring that your go/no-go decisions align with your business strategy.
Overview
Every organization has different goals — growth in a new market, margin improvement, client diversification, capability building. Strategic Priorities lets you formalize these goals and have AI automatically evaluate how well each opportunity aligns.
Setting Up Strategic Priorities
Accessing Strategic Priorities
Navigate to Settings → Strategic Priorities. You'll see the priorities configuration panel with your current priorities (if any) and options to add or modify them.
Creating a Priority
Example Strategic Priorities
Here are examples for different organizational strategies:
Growth-focused organization:
| Priority | Weight | Criteria | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Increase federal revenue | 9 | Federal departments, > $500K | Medium |
| Win first DND contract | 8 | Department of National Defence | Short |
| Expand cloud services | 7 | Cloud/SaaS keywords, SSC, TBS | Medium |
| Build past performance in health | 6 | Health Canada, PHAC, provincial health | Long |
Profit-focused organization:
| Priority | Weight | Criteria | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Improve margins | 9 | Contract value > $200K, T&M/FFP | Short |
| Reduce bid costs | 7 | Standing offers, pre-qualified suppliers | Short |
| Focus on repeat clients | 8 | Existing client departments | Medium |
| Exit low-margin sectors | 5 | Avoid construction < $1M | Short |
Diversification-focused organization:
| Priority | Weight | Criteria | Horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enter Quebec market | 8 | Quebec provincial, SEAO | Medium |
| Add new capability area | 7 | Adjacent UNSPSC codes | Long |
| Diversify client base | 9 | New departments, max 30% single client | Medium |
| Build teaming relationships | 6 | Subcontract and JV opportunities | Long |
Understanding Strategic Fit Scoring
How Scores Are Calculated
The AI evaluates each opportunity against your priorities:
- Keyword matching: Does the opportunity description match priority criteria?
- Department alignment: Is the issuing department in your target list?
- Value range: Does the contract value fall within your target range?
- Geographic fit: Is the work location aligned with your priorities?
- Capability match: Do required capabilities map to priority focus areas?
Each priority receives an alignment score from 0-100, then weighted by the priority's weight to produce an overall Strategic Fit score.
Score Interpretation
| Score Range | Interpretation | Action |
|---|---|---|
| 80-100 | Strong strategic alignment | Priority pursuit, allocate top resources |
| 60-79 | Good alignment | Pursue if resources available |
| 40-59 | Moderate alignment | Pursue only with compelling factors |
| 20-39 | Weak alignment | Generally skip unless exceptional |
| 0-19 | No strategic alignment | Do not pursue |
Tip
The Strategic Fit score is one component of the overall Go/No-Go score. A high strategic fit can compensate for moderate scores in other areas (like win probability), and vice versa. Consider the full picture when making decisions.
Integration with Bid Decision
The Strategic Fit score feeds directly into the Bid Decision module:
- It's displayed as a component score on the decision page
- It contributes to the overall Go/No-Go recommendation
- Individual priority alignment details are shown in the breakdown
Managing Priorities
Reviewing and Updating
Note
Review your strategic priorities at least quarterly, ideally aligned with your business planning cycle. Outdated priorities lead to misaligned bid decisions.
| Action | When to Do It |
|---|---|
| Review weights | Quarterly, or when strategy shifts |
| Add new priorities | When new strategic initiatives launch |
| Archive priorities | When goals are achieved or abandoned |
| Adjust criteria | When you notice misalignment in scoring |
Priority History
Cothon maintains a history of your priority changes:
- When each priority was created, modified, or archived
- Who made the change
- What the previous values were
This audit trail helps you correlate bid performance changes with priority adjustments.
Team Visibility
Strategic priorities are visible to all organization members by default. This ensures:
- Capture managers understand what opportunities to pursue
- Proposal writers can emphasize strategic alignment in proposals
- Business development can focus relationship building on target areas
- Leadership can verify that pursuit activity aligns with strategy
Advanced Configuration
Conditional Priorities
Create priorities that only apply under certain conditions:
- Seasonal: Active only during specific quarters (e.g., "Year-end spending" in Q4)
- Capacity-dependent: Active only when team capacity exceeds a threshold
- Performance-based: Activate when win rate in an area drops below target
Priority Groups
Organize priorities into groups for complex strategies:
- Must-Win: Highest priority opportunities (weight 9-10)
- Strategic Growth: New market development (weight 6-8)
- Maintenance: Existing client retention (weight 4-6)
- Exploratory: Low-risk experiments (weight 1-3)
Custom Scoring Rules
For advanced users, define custom scoring rules:
| Rule Type | Example |
|---|---|
| Bonus | +15 points if opportunity is from a target account |
| Penalty | -10 points if contract duration < 6 months |
| Threshold | Automatic "No-Go" if no priority alignment > 40 |
| Override | Force "Go" if opportunity is from strategic account |
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