Normally incumbency is a great thing. It means you know the Customer, you understand their needs, and can tailor solutions for them. Ideally it means they like and want your services moving forward. Incumbency has many advantages over competition when working a recompete. One area of significant risk for incumbents is pricing, which can hurt on LPTA contracts. The competition is starting from scratch with a staffing plan and salary structure for the work. They are not burdened with the potential rut of how it’s done today and current wages. For incumbents to be successful, they need to understand today’s staffing and pay structure and likely competition assumptions. If the incumbent pricing structure is too high when compared to likely competition, you will need to implement some of those creative solutions you competition is devising to beat you. Making those changes can be a hard decision to make. The question management must ask itself is: would you rather make the hard decision and win, or the easy decision and lose.