Webinar Recap: Product Spotlight, Market Intelligence by HigherGov Inside Awarded AI

Procurement Sciences recently hosted a product spotlight session on Market Intelligence by HigherGov, the newly integrated data layer now available inside Awarded AI. Sam Cooper, Director of Solutions Consulting, walked through what the integration means in practice, why it matters for the BD lifecycle, and demonstrated it live.

Why Market Intelligence and AI Need to Live in the Same Place

The backstory: roughly five months before this webinar, Procurement Sciences acquired HigherGov after evaluating a range of market intelligence platforms. The deciding factor was scope. HireGov tracks more than 1,100 data sources across federal, state, local, and grant markets. For an AI platform, that breadth of data matters in a specific way: the quality of what AI produces is directly tied to the quality of the data it can access. More data, better sourced, means more accurate and trustworthy outputs.

But the integration is not just about adding a data source. The more important shift is architectural. All that HigherGov data now lives inside the same FedRAMP-authorized boundary as Awarded AI. That means AI agents can access it directly alongside a company's own proprietary data, past performance records, capabilities, and preferences, without switching tools or losing context in the handoff.

That single-environment design is the core of what makes this meaningful. Every time a team switches between tools, context gets lost. When AI is involved, context is everything. A market intelligence briefing that lives in one tool and a capture workspace that lives in another forces a manual translation step that degrades both the quality of the AI's output and the speed of the team's decision-making.

What the Data Actually Covers

The HigherGov dataset now accessible inside Awarded AI includes:

• 65 million contract awards, covering competitors' past performance, spending patterns, and award histories
• Labor rate benchmarking across schedules and competitors, supporting price-to-win research
• Company profiles for teaming partner identification and evaluation
• Agency profiles including full spending histories, active contracting officers, upcoming recompetes, and forecasted opportunities
• 7 million historical documents including previous performance work statements, evaluation criteria, and solicitation records
• 1,100+ live data sources updated continuously across the federal market

The practical effect is that AI agents can now answer questions that previously required hours of manual research: who has the incumbent contract, who else is likely to bid, what did this agency buy last year, what contracts are coming up for recompete in the next two years, who are the key decision-makers in this office.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Sam demonstrated the integration live, using a scenario where a BD analyst at a large contractor wants to build a capture pipeline. The prompt to the AI was essentially: find me five opportunities with RFP release in the next two to three years, score each one for fit, identify incumbents and likely competitors, flag capability gaps, suggest shaping strategies, and surface key customer decision-makers.

The AI ran across multiple data sources simultaneously, pulling from HigherGov's award and forecast data, agency spending histories, and public web sources, all within the FedRAMP boundary. What came back was a structured pipeline briefing with qualification scores for each opportunity, capability fit and gap analysis, incumbent identification with citations, contact information for program managers and contracting officers, and preliminary shaping recommendations.

Every piece of information was cited back to its source. Sam flagged this as particularly important for teams newer to AI: being able to trace what the AI said back to the underlying data builds trust quickly and helps users understand how the AI is reasoning, not just what it concluded.

The same research that might have taken a BD analyst a day or more to compile manually came back in the time it took to run the prompt.

Getting Ahead of the RFP

One of the clearest advantages of having this data integrated directly into the AI environment is the ability to work significantly further upstream in the pipeline than most teams currently do.

With access to agency forecasts, recompete timelines, and budget-to-opportunity traceability, AI agents can now support strategic account planning at a level previously reserved for teams with dedicated capture resources. Which agencies are spending in our target NAICS codes? Which contracts are two or three years from recompete? What problems are agency leaders publicly discussing that we could address?

Those questions used to require a combination of SAM.gov filtering, USASpending queries, web research, and the kind of relationship-informed intuition that only comes from years in a market. Now an AI agent with access to HigherGov data can surface the same picture in minutes, leaving the team to focus on the strategic judgment: which of these opportunities are actually worth pursuing and how do we position to win them.

Security and Compliance

For government contractors working with Controlled Unclassified Information, the boundary question is not optional. It affects which tools can be used, how data can be handled, and what the compliance posture looks like under CMMC.

The HigherGov integration was built specifically to address this. All data, both the HigherGov market intelligence and the customer's own proprietary information, lives inside the FedRAMP moderate authorization boundary. The AI's web search capability also operates within that boundary. That means teams do not have to choose between having access to rich market data and maintaining a compliant posture. Both are available in the same environment.

Sam noted that for many of the teams he works with, security and compliance have historically been a barrier that prevented access to tools that would genuinely improve their BD performance. This integration is designed to remove that barrier rather than work around it.

Consolidation Opportunity

A practical note Sam raised for existing customers: many teams are currently paying for separate HigherGov subscriptions alongside their Awarded AI subscriptions, or are using other market intelligence platforms entirely. The integration makes it possible to consolidate those into a single subscription and a single working environment.

For teams tracking opportunities across multiple tools, the consolidation means less context-switching, less manual data transfer, and a single AI that can see the full picture rather than a fragmented view across separate systems.

What Is Available Now

Everything shown in the demo is available to current customers with the Market Intelligence add-on. That includes the full HigherGov dataset inside the Awarded AI environment, AI-driven opportunity research and pipeline building, qualification scoring, competitive intelligence, agency and company profiles, and the ability to interact with all of that data through natural language rather than filter-based search.

Additional development is underway, including deeper integration of HigherGov data directly into the pipeline tracking and opportunity management workflow, and further enrichment of the bid search experience with HireGov's opportunity data.

Existing Awarded AI customers interested in adding Market Intelligence should reach out to their account manager. Existing HigherGov customers interested in bringing AI into their workflow can do the same.

Questions From the Session

The webinar generated more questions than there was time to address. Here are answers to the ones that came in.

How will the people data in HigherGov be kept up to date?

‍HigherGov pulls from more than 1,100 live data sources that are updated continuously. Contact data, including contracting officers, program managers, and key decision-makers, is refreshed as new information becomes available across those sources. As with any data of this kind, verifying specific contact details before reaching out is always a good practice.

How does HigherGov compare to GovWin?

‍The key differentiator is that HigherGov is 100% data-driven. There is no speculative content, no analyst opinions, and no opportunities that exist only because a person added them to the system. Every opportunity in HireGov is traceable from budget to forecast to recompete, all grounded in publicly available data. Teams that have used other market intelligence platforms often find they are tracking opportunities that never materialize into actual RFPs. HireGov focuses on what the data actually shows.

I do not see Market Intelligence in my Awarded AI account. What do I need to do?

‍Market Intelligence is an add-on that needs to be enabled on your account. If you are an existing Awarded AI customer and do not see it, reach out to your account manager or customer success contact and they will get you set up. If you are an existing HigherGov customer interested in adding Awarded AI, the same applies.

Which large language model does Awarded AI use?

‍Awarded AI is model agnostic, meaning it can work with any major large language model. For commercial customers, that includes essentially any model available today. For FedRAMP customers, the available models are limited to those with FedRAMP authorization, but that list has grown significantly over the past year and continues to expand. You can select the model that works best for your use case, and Procurement Sciences can advise on which models are best suited to specific workflows.

Does Market Intelligence run automated daily searches and send me new matching opportunities?

‍Yes. Rather than requiring you to log in and run searches manually each day, the AI can be set up to monitor for new opportunities that match your company profile and surface them proactively. The goal is to move away from filter-based search entirely and let the AI, which knows your capabilities, your target agencies, and your BD priorities, bring relevant opportunities to you rather than the other way around.

Can we set up saved searches based on our company's capabilities and have the AI run them automatically?

‍Yes, and this is one of the more powerful use cases for the integration. Because the AI knows your company profile, your past performance, and your strategic priorities, you can instruct it to monitor for opportunities that fit rather than manually configuring keyword and NAICS filters. The AI handles the matching and surfaces what is relevant. Customers who also have access to HigherGov standalone can still use traditional filter-based search for more granular exploration.

What happens when a company or opportunity is not publicly available on SAM.gov?

‍Two things help here. First, HigherGov draws from more than 1,100 sources beyond SAM.gov, so many opportunities and company profiles that do not appear on SAM.gov are still represented in the dataset. Second, Awarded AI includes a web search capability that operates inside the FedRAMP boundary, allowing the AI to search the broader public web for information on companies, opportunities, and contacts that may not appear in structured data sources. Both are used in combination when the AI is researching an opportunity or a competitor.

Does this require separate subscriptions to Awarded AI and HigherGov, or can it be added to an existing subscription?

‍It can be consolidated. If you are an existing Awarded AI customer, Market Intelligence can be added as an add-on. If you are an existing HigherGov customer, Awarded AI can be added. The goal is one subscription, one environment. Reach out to your account manager for specifics on how your current setup can be consolidated.

Is there a trial period, or does access require payment upfront?

‍For the most current information on trial availability and pricing, reach out directly to the Procurement Sciences team. The best contact is your account manager if you are an existing customer, or the sales team if you are evaluating for the first time. Pricing details were deliberately kept out of the webinar to ensure you get accurate, current information for your specific situation.

Want to see Market Intelligence by HigherGov inside Awarded AI in action? Watch the webinar recording or book a demo to learn more.